IN THE second week of July, 1964, John White paid a visit to his great friend and team-mate, Dave Mackay, and his wife, Isobel, a woman who shared with White not just a link with Spurs but also with a particular corner of Scotland; both were born an
d bred in Musselburgh. White had just turned 27 years old and was full of the joys of summer. Six months before, his second child had been born, a boy called Robert joining his little girl, Mandy; six weeks before, Bill Nicholson had taken him aside "Boss, what's this for?" he asked.
"John," replied Nicholson, "since I'm going to build my new team around you, I'd better give you a few quid more." Free money from Bill Nick? Must have been some player, this John White.
Dave and Isobel Mackay remember the night White came calling, they remember the excitement on his face, the pure happiness in his life. He was a League and Cup double winner in 1961 (you had to go back to 1897 to find the last time that had been achieved), had won the Cup-Winners' Cup in 1963 (Spurs were the first British side to win a European trophy) and had played for Scotland 22 times where his triangle with Denis Law and Jim Baxter promised much in the years ahead. He had the backing of his manager and the love of the supporters. The world was at his feet.
Isobel Mackay remembers another day, too, and for altogether darker reasons. "I was staying with my mother for a week up in Musselburgh," she says. "John's family lived close by. It was July 21, 1964. A Tuesday. Somebody came to the door of the house. A reporter. He asked me how well did I know John White. I said 'what do you mean how well did I know him?' He wouldn't explain. He wanted to know where John's mother lived. I thought it all very strange. I phoned Dave immediately."
Dave wasn't available. As soon as he heard that his friend was dead he jumped in his car and drove to the scene of the tragedy. Earlier that afternoon – at about 4pm reckoned the pathologist Dr Rushton – a single bolt of lightning flashed down from the sky above Middlesex, hit White and killed him instantly. He was on the golf course at the time, sheltering from a storm under an old oak tree at the Crews Hill club in Enfield.
A greenkeeper called John Watts found him lying in the ditch that divided the first and ninth fairways, with scorch marks on his hair, back and on the heels of his feet. His body had been taken away to the Prince of Wales hospital in Tottenham by the time Mackay sped his car through the gates of the golf club.
"I got there as fast as I could. I don't know, I think I just wanted to see him before they took him away. Just to be with him before he went off to the mortuary. I sat down by the tree and I was very upset. I looked at it and there were these two burns in a kind of a circle on the bark, about two foot off the ground. It was just unbelievable. It was very, very sad."
Spurs don't give up their heroes easily, especially the members of the most adored team in their history – the storied double winners of 1961 – and particularly the ones who proved most instrumental in the glory, as White did. He never missed a game all season.
This is the 125th anniversary of the club and nostalgia is never far from the door of White Hart Lane these days. There are DVDs and books in production – the Tottenham Opus, a lavish, heavyweight tome is a sight to behold – and, happily, a cup final to savour.
Today, Spurs face Chelsea in the Carling Cup final at Wembley, a stage White graced so many times with Spurs and Scotland.
Mackay asked the other day why we were writing about White now but then quickly answered his own question. "Ah, son, you don't need a reason." How good was he, we asked Jimmy Greaves. "Had John lived," said Greaves, "he could have been one of the greatest footballers of all time." How did the fans take to him? "I've been going to the Lane since 1952," says Peter Barnes, a diehard Spur. "Before me, my dad went from 1926. We cover a lot of history between us and John White was at the top table of greats of this club."
But people forget that. Forty-four years since his death, only people of a certain vintage remember him now. To vast numbers of Scottish football fans it is as if he never existed, this man they called The Ghost of White Hart Lane. To men such as Law and Mackay and their contemporaries, though, White was one of the most extraordinary players Scotland has ever produced.
His story began at Prestonpans YMCA and then Bonnyrigg Rose; Alloa and then Falkirk. But, really, his legend started on an October day in 1959 when Northern Ireland played Scotland in Belfast.
White was an international player by then, scoring in the first minute of his debut against West Germany earlier in the year, a debut he shared with Ian St John. Against the Irish, Scotland won 4-1. "On Monday morning, when I returned to White Hart Lane, Bill (Nicholson] was waiting for me," Danny Blanchflower once recalled. Blanchflower was both the leading man for his club and his country at the time and Nicholson hung his hat on the judgment of his skipper.
"What about John White?" Bill asked Danny. "First class," he replied. "Good positional sense and smooth ball control."
"I can get him for £20,000," said Nicholson. "Don't miss the plane," Blanchflower answered.
Nicholson signed White within a day, ignoring all the negative things that people told him about his supposed lack of stamina and his apparent physical frailties, things that had put off Sheffield United and Middlesbrough and Rangers before Nicholson ever showed an interest. Joe Mercer was manager of Sheffield United at the time. "John had it all, so I thought I'd go for him. My chief scout was adamant the lad wasn't strong enough. Like a fool, I listened."
Wanting to back his own judgment but in need of reinforcements, Nicholson called White's army commanding officer from National Service. "Lacks stamina?" said the officer, incredulously. "The boy's just won the army cross-country. There's nothing wrong with the lad's stamina, Mr Nicholson."
White wasn't an instant success at The Lane. Spurs fans were still in thrall to Tommy Harmer in 1959; a trick artist and exhibitionist. White never went in for showboating. He was the type of player that grew on you.
"We took a look at him when he arrived in 1959 and wondered what we'd got," says Barnes. "He was so small and skinny that we feared for him a little. We needn't have bothered. He had the great Mackay looking after him. Dave was the protector and John was the playmaker. Oh, he was a graceful player. A will o' the wisp type. We called him The Ghost because he'd appear out of nowhere and split a defence open with one precise pass. His distribution was unbelievable. It was his job to play passes into big Bobby Smith and Cliff Jones and he was masterful at it, absolutely masterful."
According to the Guardian of the day, White survived on wit, skill, balance and inventive touch. "He lives above the hurly-burly," they wrote. The Evening Times spoke of his ability to make his own areas of calm in the most turbulent of matches. "His very unobtrusiveness is one of his strong points. Like some Merlin he can fade from the scene only to reappear in positions that confound defences."
His importance to Spurs was evident not just in the goals he scored and created but in Tottenham's fate in the rare occasions when White was absent. He missed just 15 games for his club between 1959 and 1964 and Spurs won only one of them.
Two days after White died the Spurs squad came together as one and Nicholson addressed them on the pitch. In all their years with him, nobody had ever seen Nicholson display his emotions in public, but this was a day like no other. "We all gathered at White Hart Lane before going on to the crematorium," recalls Pat Jennings. "Bill started to talk to us about John. He had been speaking for only a couple of minutes when he was so overcome that he excused himself and disappeared into a washroom to hide his tears."
"You know," says Mackay, "my memory is fading. I can't recall the specifics of games anymore. They're pretty much gone now, most of them. But I remember where I was when I heard John was dead – I was in a restaurant in London and a man called Tommy Burton told me the news – and I remember Bill breaking down. Every anniversary that comes around, we remember him. Spurs have this big Opus coming out and he's remembered well in that, too. That's nice. It's as it should be because he was a great player. More than that, he was my friend."
The full article contains 1597 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
