The following year they beat Atletico Madrid to win the European Cup Winners’ Cup.
Some names from that feted era achieved legend status – Nicholson, Mackay, Blanchflower … but not midfielder John White.
The reason is both simple and tragic: in 1964 John was struck by lightning and died on Crews Hill golf course when he was only 27.
In 2011, his son Rob along with Fleet Street’s first female football reporter Julie Welch published The Ghost of White Hart Lane about the father who died when he was just five months old.
Martin Murphy has now turned the book into a terrific play (first performed at White Hart Lane) which runs at Jackson’s Lane in Highgate until the end of January.
Ever since John’s untimely death, Rob has since been in search of the dad he never knew – not in a morbid way but to find out more about the man who played in one of England’s finest ever sides, scored in a European final, and represented Scotland 22 times.
The extraordinarily talented Callum Lewis Newman plays John and, in a brilliant narrative device, also Rob as he grows from the eight-year-old in the attic who discovers his dad’s trunk full of memorabilia.
Over 17 compact scenes, Callum alternates between John and Rob, telling anecdotes and building a picture of a focused but immensely likeable character who would have gone on to even greater things.
The audience was spell-bound as the story unfolded of his tough upbringing, his signing by Alloa then Falkirk and finally Tottenham – his Scotland career got off to a flying start by scoring in the first minute against West Germany.
For aficionados of the beautiful game, it was wonderful to see Callum wearing Tottenham’s lilywhite jersey free of sponsors’ logos, and to travel back to a relatively simple world uncluttered by social media and astronomic players’ fees
But this is not just a nostalgia-fest. It’s the compelling story of the lives of a father and son, who learns to deal with grief and loss.
The Ghost of White Hart Lane runs until January 31. jacksonslane.org.uk
