Bill Nicholson arrived at Tottenham as a 17-year-old trialist from Scarborough and went on to become arguably the most important figure in the club’s history; a new biography by Steve Perryman and Norman Giller provides the definitive record of a Spurs legend who won the league as a player and the Double as a manager…
It was 50 seasons ago that Bill Nicholson stepped down from the manager’s seat at Tottenham Hotspur, which makes this book by SJA stalwart Norman Giller and revered former Spurs captain Steve Perryman supremely well-timed.
A case could be made for Nicholson as one of the greatest managers of all time. In the early 1960s, he guided Spurs to the zenith of British and European football.
The first League and FA Cup Double in the 20th century, the first British team to win any European trophy, two further FA Cup victories, two League Cups and the UEFA Cup all in the space of 11 years. It is not hard to see why “Bill Nick” is so highly regarded by one half of North London.
He was summoned to the Palace to receive the OBE but despite the title of this book, never a knighthood.
It was Nicholson who appointed co-author Perryman as club captain and in this book, it becomes evident how many values they shared. Figuratively and literally, both rolled their sleeves up.
“It was because of Bill that this West London schoolboy decided to make the daily trek across the capital to North London,” writes Perryman.
Nicholson also arrived at Spurs when still a teenager in 1936. He was part of the fabled “Push and Run” side which won the League Championship in 1951 after promotion the previous season.
It was also in 1951 that Nicholson made his England debut against Portugal. He scored within 30 seconds but was never picked again.
31 years later, Perryman made his only full England appearance. Both deserved much better.
Giller was himself a teenage reporter on the “Stratford Express” when he first encountered the great man. The meeting was set up by Vic Railton of the Evening News.
“I’m only seeing you because that bloody nuisance Vic Railton talked me into it, you’ve got five minutes,” Giller recalls Nicholson saying.
Something clicked, and Giller came to know the Spurs boss better than most.
The pictures in the book chronicle many staging posts in the story. One, taken with Norwich manager Ron Saunders to promote the 1973 League Cup Final, is particularly telling.
“Bill was not comfortable with any kind of PR,” reads the caption.
“I am a football man, not a song and dance man,” Nicholson insisted.
There is a fascinating aside by Giller, then scriptwriter for “This is Your Life”, about when he suggested Nicholson as a subject.
The secret dossier prepared for presenter Eamonn Andrews is now published for the first time. Everything was “cloak and dagger” so a codename of “Cockerel” was suggested.
“The show producers decided that Bill had led a too one-dimensional ‘football, football, football’ life and that the risk of him saying no was too great,” Giller reveals sadly.
Perhaps they also remembered that Danny Blanchflower, skipper of Nicholson’s double side, had flatly refused a few years earlier.
For those who think that “player power” is a new phenomenon, Nicholson’s thoughts in the 1970s are revealed.
“Players have become impossible, they talk all the time about security but they are not prepared to work for it, I am abused by players when they come to see me, there is no longer respect.”
The many Glory days and Glory Glory nights are here, but sadder moments are recalled with sensitivity.
The most tragic came in 1964 when star midfielder John White died after he was struck by lightning. It saddened all in football but devastated Nicholson.
A decade later, came trouble on the terraces at the 1974 UEFA Cup Final in Rotterdam.
“What happened in Holland was the breaking point for me, hooligans running riot, I want no part of that,” Nicholson reflected.
“You are a disgrace to Tottenham Hotspur and a disgrace to England. This is a game of football, not a war!” Nicholson told the crowd in a tannoy announcement.
He stood down as manager the following season and spent time scouting at West Ham.
The late Terry Neill, a former Arsenal player, took over as Spurs manager.
“I was arrogant enough to think I could follow in Bill Nick’s footsteps but his boots were too big for anybody,” admitted Neill.
Nicholson returned to Tottenham to work as Chief Scout under fellow Yorkshireman Keith Burkinshaw. Boosted by Glenn Hoddle, Ossie Ardiles and Ricky Villa, Spurs won back-to-back FA Cups and the UEFA Cup in the eighties and Nicholson became Club President.
Anecdotes abound and include some from longtime SJA member John Fennelly who headed the media department at Spurs.
Meanwhile, Giller’s son Michael has compiled a statistical record with match-by-match details of the two most significant seasons for Bill the player – 1949-50, when Spurs won promotion back to the top flight, and the Championship season which followed.
Bill the Manager’s greatest season of 1960-61 is recorded the same way and each successful cup campaign is also listed.
The book closes with a famous photo of Nicholson at the gates to the ground, in Giller’s words “The Master of White Hart Lane.”
This is a wonderful book not just for Spurs fans but is a terrific record of the way of things were in a different era still fondly remembered by so many.
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