July 21 - The Unfortunate Tale of John White

PERHAPS fittingly for a man nicknamed ‘The Ghost’, not many people will remember John White. An inside right, the Scotsman started his career at Alloa Athletic in the mid 1950s and after a spell at Falkirk, he was brought to Tottenham Hotspur by Bill Nicholson in 1959.

White was not an unknown but many scouts were put off by his weak physical appearance and managers worried about his stamina. Joe Mercer, who was Sheffield United boss at the time said: “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.”

Bill Nic was not put off though and checked with White’s former army instructor who told him his stamina was fine and he had been a cross country race winner during his national service. With that and the nod from his captain Danny Blanchflower, Nicholson signed him up for £22,000.

White became an established player in the famous League and Cup double winning side of 1961 and had helped the club win the 1963 Cup Winners’ Cup - the first European trophy to be won by any British club. It was at White Hart Lane that he picked up his nickname as the fans said he would often appear unexpectedly in the opposition’s penalty area. The Evening Times of the day said: “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.”

Between 1959 and 1964 White missed only 15 games for Spurs. Without him, they won just one of those. He was central to Nicholson’s team and had the world at his feet when tragedy struck today in 1964.

He was at Crews Hill golf course in Enfield sheltering from a thunderstorm under a tree when he was struck by lightning and killed instantly, aged just 27. He was found with scorch marks on his hair, back and on the heels of his feet.

His friend and teammate Dave MacKay rushed to the scene. He recalled afterwards: “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.”

Bill Nicholson gathered the Spurs team together before the funeral. Pat Jennings remembers that difficult day: “We all gathered at White Hart Lane before going on to the crematorium. 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.”

The club held a testimonial for White later in the year with a Spurs XI taking on a Scottish XI. He has also been included in the Spurs Opus book brought out in 2007 to celebrate the club’s 125th anniversary. We will leave the last word to White’s former Tottenham teammate Jimmy Greaves who said simply: “Had John lived, he could have been one of the greatest footballers of all time.”

More from us tomorrow as usual but before you go, click here to see what we were up to last year.

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