Bill Nicholson. Brian Scovell
using space. He told his players to keep possession and use the ball simply and quickly.’
In his trainee days, Bill learned a lot from coaching young, aspiring footballers at Cambridge University. Sports writer David Miller, a right winger who was one of his pupils, wrote in the Daily Telegraph: ‘In the old days many men – schoolmasters, bank managers, doctors, soldiers – were cast in the same Victorian mould as Bill Nicholson: strict but fair, dogmatic but logical, austere but open-hearted, wilful but almost perversely modest. Nicholson was all these, yet additionally a crusader, a man with conviction.
‘His anomalous, almost subconscious mission was to take the bricks of the simple game of football and fashion them into jewels for the benefit of public entertainment. In this pursuit, he devoted a literal lifetime to Tottenham. More even than Matt Busby with Manchester United, Bill Shankly with Liverpool or Jock Stein with Celtic, he was the embryo of Spurs’ greatness during a 16-year reign. A man of unlavish lifestyle, living a convenient short walk from the ground in a semi-detached, he spent the club’s money extravagantly, but shrewdly.
‘With his passing, I confess a light has gone out of my life. In his formative coaching years, he spent an afternoon a week with Cambridge University where, besides working us to the point of physical sickness, he chastisingly entrenched the fundamentals of the game: simplicity, to eliminate error, repetition of moves, to breed familiarity, honest sweat, so as to leave the field wholly spent. He would afterwards share toast and honey round the gas fire back in our digs. He spoke quietly of the game being nothing without integrity and discipline. He had several players who became amateur internationals. We loved him like an uncle and when he brought glory to White Hart Lane, it would be for us no surprise.’
When Bill was at his peak as a manager someone asked him: ‘Why do you still live round the corner? You could live in a mansion out on the outskirts.’ Bill’s reply was: ‘Because I want to get to work on time, that’s important.’ John Pratt, who played for him between 1968 and 1979, said: ‘That was a very apt comment. Bill was never late – first in, last out, and he didn’t waste time travelling.’ Bill had almost total control of Tottenham for 16 years basically because the directors, mainly small-time businessmen, recognised they had little expertise about football and left it to the expert.
But his disillusionment set in by the early seventies when the stock of emerging footballers was in decline and he was forced to try and buy second raters for over-inflated prices. The directors, chairman Sidney Wale, vice chairman Charles Cox, Godfrey Groves and Arthur Richardson and his son Geoffrey, all questioned some of his choices and that, together with the stress he felt after working 16 years, was why he offered his resignation. The Board members were well intentioned but they were not really football people. Terry Neill, whose appointment in place of Bill was greeted with derision by most of the players and the fans, recalled: ‘The board meetings were long, drawn-out affairs and it needed considerable stamina to stay awake. Mr Groves senior sometimes nodded off and as the tea lady came in with the tea and biscuits, conversation stopped, as though they were discussing state secrets.’
In 1984, Bill was persuaded to put his name to an autobiography by Irving Scholar, the Tottenham chairman. The book was entitled Glory, Glory – My Life with Spurs and Harry Harris, my friend and former colleague at the Daily Mail, collaborated with me to compile it. Harry’s ambition was to play for Tottenham and his mother wrote to Bill Nicholson to ask if he would give her son a trial. But Harry never went for the trial because he realised he wasn’t good enough. His prowess was aptly summed up by Malcolm Macdonald when a Football Writers’ team played against QPR staff on the Omniturf, the artificial surface pioneered by Terry Venables at Loftus Road in 1981. Said Malcolm: ‘Some people can kick with one foot, or two, but H can’t kick with either!’
Harry wasn’t a star footballer but he was one of the best news gatherers of his era. He had the same persistence as Vic Railton, the late Evening News football writer, who once got hold of the telephone number of a hotel suite where Sir Matt Busby was presiding over a disciplinary hearing. Vic dialled the number and as Sir Matt picked up the phone, he asked: ‘What’s the verdict, Matt? My deadline is only five minutes away!’ Matt told him the verdict. ‘I admired his cheek,’ he said.
Like Railton, Harry Harris was one of the few journalists who could ring Bill Nicholson on his private line when he started his career at the Tottenham Weekly News. Vic would call Bill’s wife Grace, known to everyone as ‘Darkie’, at 8am on some days and ask with a laugh: ‘Where is that old so-and-so?’ ‘You ought to know,’ Darkie would wryly say, ‘He’s at work as usual.’
In Bill’s first chapter of his autobiography he spelt out his concerns about the future of the game. ‘It is a cornerstone of my beliefs as a player, coach and manager that the basics of the game are all important,’ he said. ‘The simple elements that go to make up a football team, such as passing techniques, striking the ball, controlling and trapping it and movement off the ball, are on the wane today and that makes me feel sad. I watch countless junior matches and trials, and I find there is a lack of players who have these skills.
‘The root cause of the problem is the inadequate preparation at the lower level. The emphasis is on stamina, height and power rather than technique and skill. I always thought that the really gifted footballer – a Jimmy Greaves or a Bobby Moore – was born, not manufactured. However, that type of player still needs to practise his skills. Not enough work is done today by young players. Certainly not enough is done at schools, where matches are overly competitive, physical encounters, which discourage the skill factor. If youngsters don’t have the basic skills, there are no foundations on which to build teamwork. Moves will keep breaking down. It is easier for the other team to defend and the game becomes boring and fragmented.
‘When I was with Tottenham, our approach was to concentrate on attacking football. I was striving for perfection, though rarely achieved it. But as I said to one player who complained, “Look, when I have no interest in you as a footballer, that is the time when you start worrying.” Danny Blanchflower had faults but by working on them he became a better player. No sportsman is so good at his sport that he cannot improve some aspects of it.’
Bill also believed the inflated scale of salaries would ruin the game and he was proved right. ‘I believe the players are taking too much out of the game and not putting enough back in,’ he observed twenty-five years ago, when he went into temporary retirement and worked as a scout for West Ham before Spurs recalled him. ‘Wages rose too quickly and the economies of the clubs became unbalanced. Transfer fees were too high. It is a miracle that 92 Football League clubs still survive. Ultimately, some clubs will go bankrupt.
‘It amazes me that there is nearly always an entrepreneur waiting to come to the rescue of an ailing football club at the time when it is about to go out of business. You seriously question the motives of such people while at the same time being grateful to them for saving a club that serves a great many people in its area. Astronomical wages at a time of recession have created a social gap between players and the man on the terrace. ‘There used to be a time when the spectator could identify with the footballer, who was not earning much more than he was. Today’s players stay in their private lounge before driving off to their homes a fair distance from the ground. Players no longer live round the corner, as I did when I was a player and manager.’
He was suspicious of agents and wanted a curb on their activities. ‘There isn’t as much honesty in the game today as there ought to be,’ he said. ‘Admittedly football is all about competition, but cheating has become intense. The more difficult it becomes to succeed and the more pressure on the manager to be winner, the greater the risk of corruption. An aspect which perturbs me is the payment to managers of a percentage of fees. These rogue managers may prefer to deal with agents as that is a good way of obtaining a cut. I question the morality of such payments.
‘Could some players be transferred at much higher rates than they are worth because of the benefit coming to the manager? There is also the danger of a manager dropping the price for a quick sale because he needs money, so the club may suffer. I believe that these payments – and the agents – should be outlawed. The best managers are not necessarily the ones who finished the