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Dermot Kavanagh is the Sports Picture Editor of the Sunday Times. His writing has been published in the Sunday Times, as well as the football magazines When Saturday Comes and Howler, and he is a contributor to the literary website London Fictions. He lives in London with his wife and three sons.

For Hilary, Arthur, Frank and Jimmy
‘local man finally finishes book’

‘He’ll be greatly missed by me and by all kinds of people because you’ll never, ever get a champion like that again. He’s one in ten, hundred, million, thousand, billion, trillion, you know, and that’s my brother Laurence Paul Cunningham, and he’ll live with me for ever … Jah Rastafari. ’

Keith Cunningham

Dear Reader,

The book you are holding came about in a rather different way to most others. It was funded directly by readers through a new website: Unbound. Unbound is the creation of three writers. We started the company because we believed there had to be a better deal for both writers and readers. On the Unbound website, authors share the ideas for the books they want to write directly with readers. If enough of you support the book by pledging for it in advance, we produce a beautifully bound special subscribers’ edition and distribute a regular edition and e-book wherever books are sold, in shops and online.

This new way of publishing is actually a very old idea (Samuel Johnson funded his dictionary this way). We’re just using the internet to build each writer a network of patrons. Here, at the back of this book, you’ll find the names of all the people who made it happen.

Publishing in this way means readers are no longer just passive consumers of the books they buy, and authors are free to write the books they really want. They get a much fairer return too – half the profits their books generate, rather than a tiny percentage of the cover price.

If you’re not yet a subscriber, we hope that you’ll want to join our publishing revolution and have your name listed in one of our books in the future. To get you started, here is a £5 discount on your first pledge. Just visit unbound.com, make your pledge and type Laurie 5 in the promo code box when you check out.

Thank you for your support,

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Dan, Justin and John

Founders, Unbound

CONTENTS

Foreword: Then Laurie Cunningham Came Along by Ian Wright

Prologue

1 ‘Nothing seemed to faze him’

2 Blues & Soul

3 Land of the Rising Son

4 Young Hearts Run Free

5 Radical to the Third Degree

6 El Negrito

7 ‘Bad Luck … Like Witchcraft’

8 Never Grow Old

Afterword

Acknowledgements

Supporters

Copyright

FOREWORD

Then Laurie Cunningham Came Along

Ian Wright

Before I’d turned professional, when I was playing Sunday mornings, Laurie Cunningham was the player who stuck out for me. It was the same for all the guys I grew up playing football with. As youngsters we knew all the black players, Cyrille Regis, Garth Crooks, Viv Anderson and so on, then Clyde Best and Ade Coker from back in the day – and although we were very pleased they were there, as footballers they didn’t mean that much. They were very good, but they were very straightforward – into him, lay it off, give and go … that sort of stuff – we even used to say they played like white guys. Then Laurie Cunningham came along.

Laurie played how we saw black guys playing football, anywhere, on any level: Sunday morning, at school, in a scrimmage game, down on the rec. He had the skills, but most importantly he had that swagger, he had that ‘vibe’. He played like we’d play; of course there was some showing off involved, but it was all about freedom and enjoyment and celebrating what you could do. Laurie was the first to bring that sort of strut to that level of professional football and he was like a magnet for us.

I remember back in the late seventies, I was fourteen or fifteen, and I saw the highlights of this game where West Brom absolutely annihilated Manchester United winning 5–3 at Old Trafford. Laurie tore the full back Stewart Houston to shreds in that game. Years later Stewart was my coach at Arsenal and I used to tease him about what Laurie Cunningham did to him that day! But for me that game was it; I was absolutely transfixed by everything he did. We all were.

When he went to Real Madrid he’d take corners with the outside of his foot, which is a ridiculous skill in itself, but he’d do it with the outside of his right foot, then go over to the other side and take one with the outside of his left foot. That was such a black brother thing to do – ‘I can do that because I can do that!’ – all of my mates started trying it. Because that was it; we looked at Laurie Cunningham and thought he was the one, the guy we all wanted to be like, a proper representation of how a London black guy is and how he should be playing football.

He was the same off the pitch as well, he was always well dressed, he could dance like anything, he had that same ‘swagger’; in fact that was who he was and he brought that on to the pitch with him. This was as much a part of the impression he made as what he did as a player – there was a generation of black players coming through and Laurie showed them you could be yourself, that you could express yourself like that on and off the pitch. By the time I came in, almost ten years later, it was so much easier to be yourself and to be proud of it – guys like myself and Tony Finnigan and Andy Gray at Palace didn’t care what people thought of us. Laurie Cunningham started all that off because he was like that anyway and didn’t compromise any of his character in anything he did.

The first time I met him was at a testimonial when he was playing for Wimbledon towards the end of the eighties. It was Alan Cork’s testimonial and I was part of the all-star opposition. I don’t usually play in testimonials, and the only reason I did that one was because Laurie was in the team. When he was on the bench I said hello to him, then afterwards I remember him looking really cool in this long black leather coat and me literally not being able to speak. I remember Tony Finnigan saying to me, ‘Go on, go over and talk to him,’ but I was so in awe I couldn’t talk, I just didn’t know what to say. Now, I would hate for somebody to be like that with me, because it would have meant so much to me to have sat down with him and had a ten-minute chat about how I should attack this career I was just setting out on. It was a missed opportunity and something I regret to this day.

Laurie provided a shining light for so many of the second wave of black players coming through in the eighties, that – when you look at how it ended for him – it was such a shame he didn’t get to see them blossom. I would have loved Laurie Cunningham to have seen me at my height; and for him to have seen the other guys – who had grown up watching him, and modelled their approach to the game on him – make it to the promised land, as it were. That would have been the icing on the cake, because I’m sure that if it hadn’t been for him we wouldn’t have been able to have played like we did as professionals.

PROLOGUE

On 20 April 1968, Enoch Powell made his infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech about commonwealth immigration to an audience at a Conservative association in Birmingham. The timing was carefully chosen as it was delivered on the eve of the Parliamentary debate on the new Race Relations Bill. The Bill which proposed outlawing racial discrimination in housing and employment – and intended to make signs such as ‘No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs’ on boarding house windows a thing of the past – appalled Powell who objected to the legal protection it afforded immigrants and their families. In his view, it favoured blacks over whites and by adding the concept of racial discrimination to the statute book, Parliament would be creating a privilege for ‘dangerous and divisive elements’ to infiltrate and dominate the population. The thought of aliens attaining the same legal rights as native British citizens unsettled Powell and he conjured up a vision of a racially divided nation, ‘whole towns will be occupied by different sections of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population,’ he predicted. To prevent this he proposed a policy of repatriation or ‘re-emigration’ as he termed it, ‘in short, suspension of immigration and encouragement of re-emigration hang together, logically and humanly,’ he argued. The following day he was dismissed by his leader Edward Heath and shunned by mainstream conservatives for evermore – but in one sense Powell had succeeded. As a prominent public figure he gave currency to extreme views not heard so openly in Britain since before the War and expressed what many whites dared not say out loud. After his sacking London dockers and Smithfield porters called a one-day strike in protest and marched to Parliament under the banner ‘Back Britain not Black Britain’, and his plan for re-emigration gave licence to xenophobes to jeer and chant ‘send ’em back’ at far-right rallies for years afterwards. To many whites Powell was a prophet who went unrecognised in his own land and ‘Powellism’ continued to exert a strong hold on the psyche of the right wing of the Tory party for years to come. His definition of who was and was not a British citizen, and thus entitled to the protection of the law, posited a crucial question about identity in modern Britain. In November 1968 he further clarified his position and specifically singled out Caribbean immigrants when he said, ‘the West Indian does not by being born in England become an Englishman’.

At the time of the speech Laurie Cunningham had just turned twelve years of age and, if it ever crossed his mind, probably felt as English as anyone else who had been born in London. He grew up in working-class north Islington – an area with a large West Indian population. His parents arrived in London from Jamaica in the 1950s and by the late 1960s had done well enough to buy their first house. Both found employment locally in jobs that were secure, during a time of near full employment, and living in an area with a growing Jamaican population – where many people were in the same boat – social problems, such as discrimination, could be dealt with and eventually overcome. For people like them, the Race Relations Act, although limited in scope, suggested the world was improving and progress was possible.

But by the mid-1970s that optimism had dissipated and been succeeded by a prolonged period of economic decline and rising unemployment. Harsh social divisions and a bleak, unyielding atmosphere of pessimism permeated many inner-city areas. In Parliament and the press, the nature and make-up of society came under scrutiny as commentators and politicians diagnosed a race problem in the country. Finsbury Park, where the Cunninghams lived, was one of the poorest places in the country and life for young blacks was not straightforward – simply walking the streets, particularly in groups, invited instant suspicion from the police. A mood of surveillance, of always being watched no matter what you did, prevailed, which white teenagers simply did not experience. As tabloid newspapers identified a new breed of delinquent to demonise – the black teenage mugger who preyed on defenceless old ladies – the Metropolitan Police stepped up the use of stop and search on the streets. In one case a social worker in Islington filed a complaint against the police for assaulting a fourteen-year-old boy in their custody and reported that during the next twenty-eight days he was stopped thirty-eight times. Arrests made purely on the suspicion of intent to commit a crime under the ‘sus’ law – that required no evidence, witnesses or accusers to be produced – were upheld by the local magistrates court at Highbury Corner, which gained a reputation for referring cases to trial on the flimsiest of claims.

In the drive to rebuild the nation after the war, mass immigration had been encouraged and Caribbean workers were specifically recruited by the government to fill the gaps in a depleted workforce. For their sons and daughters however, who had grown up in Britain’s cities, the experience was vastly different. The jobs their parents had filled were no longer available and, unlike their parents who had been educated in Caribbean schools, these children were taught in inner-city schools that were wholly unprepared to meet their needs. In Islington, black teenage joblessness was estimated to be as high as 25 per cent according to one contemporary Trade Union report, and tension – particularly between fathers and sons – led to an acute divide. The second generation who had grown up in England spoke differently from their parents and held different attitudes to religion, work and authority, and were less prepared to take what they were given by a society that treated them as outsiders and put them at the back of the queue for decent jobs.

Many school-leavers were born in the Caribbean and had only been sent for once their parents had established themselves. Being reunited after such a break must have been difficult for both parties and, with few cultural milestones to share, an inevitable distance must have been common. In the case of the Cunningham family, the two brothers Keith and Laurie had different starts in life. Keith the eldest spent his first four years in Jamaica, apart from his mother and sibling for two years, and as he grew up identified strongly with his Jamaican heritage. His younger brother who was born and bred in London, and never visited Jamaica, was more immersed in British culture through his participation in football from an early age and his father affectionately nicknamed him his ‘English boy’.

The term ‘Black British’ had yet to be defined. For this generation it often felt like everyone was against them and when the realisation hit that they were not considered ‘English’ by others, confusion turned to resentment. The film-maker Don Letts who grew up in Brixton says of this time ‘to most we were black bastards … we were like a lost tribe. It was something new in the seventies and we were struggling to work out what this was.’ In the sceptical world of professional football, where black players were distrusted, Laurie Cunningham needed more than talent and determination to survive; he needed a special kind of bravery, both physical and mental, and the temperament to cope in a sport where the odds were against him from the start.

1

‘NOTHING SEEMED TO FAZE HIM’

The popular myth that modern multicultural Britain was born with the arrival of the transport ship HMT Empire Windrush at Tilbury in Essex in June 1948 is a potent one. Memorable footage caught by dockside film cameramen – with some reporters perched on car rooftops waiting for the historic moment of landing – did not, however, record a pioneering event. Caribbean immigrants had lived in Britain for many years and served in both World Wars. In the First World War, 16,000 had volunteered to fight as part of the British West Indies Regiment – the first contingent of all black soldiers in the British Army – which was established in 1915. In the Second World War 10,000 West Indians volunteered for the services and thousands more served in the Merchant Navy or worked in the factories of the industrial north. Officially Windrush carried 492 passengers (plus eight stowaways), the majority of whom were ex-servicemen or semi-skilled workers able to afford the £28 10s fare. Their average age was twenty-four. Newspaper advertisements placed around the Caribbean invited them to come to Britain and work for London Transport, British Rail and the health service, amongst others – to help the mother country after six years of war. A photo caption from Planet News, one of the main news agencies of the day, reads: ‘They sailed for Britain when they could not find work in their homeland. Fifty-two of them will volunteer for the Services, over two hundred have friends who can give them prospects of employment, and most of the remainder are to seek work in Britain after interviews with the Ministry of Labour. Among the party were a number of boxers, with their manager.’ The last sentence is interesting. Jamaica, with the largest population of all the colonial islands in the Caribbean, supplied the greatest number of migrants to Britain. Many West Indians from smaller islands went on to settle in inner-city areas where Jamaicans had established themselves first, not because they particularly liked them, but because their presence provided a sense of security. Jamaicans had a no-nonsense reputation within the wider community and such truculence was seen as one of their best, or worst, qualities, depending on your point of view. The most forthright had the confidence to walk into a place as if they owned it, and that was one reason why many Jamaican men found employment as doormen and bouncers at West End nightclubs in the years immediately after the War.

After the dispersal of those who had arrived on the Windrush, there was no immediate rush of migrants in their wake. In the five years following barely a thousand crossed the Atlantic to Britain. The bulk of Caribbean migration took place in the following decade, during the late 1950s and early 1960s. During this time a quarter of a million arrived in Britain within a period of seven years, primarily as a result of two events: one in the USA and the other in Great Britain. In 1952 the US Congress passed laws that restricted immigrant numbers. Up to that point America had operated a broadly open-door policy towards migrants from the Caribbean, and Florida with its abundant fruit farms proved a cheap and popular destination for many. In Britain, the Notting Hill race riots of 1958 started a national debate about immigration and its effects on society which prompted calls for tighter border controls. When word got back to the islands that curbs were to be introduced by the British government, this stiffened the resolve and large numbers applied before the shutters were finally brought down with the passing of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act in 1962, limiting entry into Britain.

Mavis Iona Trout and Elias Cunningham met when they were teenagers in the early 1950s. She was one of four daughters of Stanford Laurence Trout, a public works foreman from St Mary’s Parish north of Kingston in Jamaica. Cunningham came from Caymanas Park, the horse-racing district of the island, and was training to be a jockey. He weighed just over seven stone when the couple first met. Together they made an attractive match: he dapper and athletic, she pretty and ebullient with a beaming smile. By the age of seventeen, Mavis was pregnant and gave birth to a son, named Keith. With poor prospects in Jamaica the couple decided to book Mavis a passage to London where she had an aunt living in Islington, north London, who could help her to find work. Leaving Keith with her sisters, and with Elias determined to make a go of it as a jockey, Mavis sailed on a ship bound for Italy in 1955, accompanied by one extra undeclared passenger – she was pregnant again with the due date in the spring of the following year. Upon reaching Italy she crossed Europe by train and arrived in Southampton knowing little of what to expect of life in England.

The baby arrived on 8 March 1956 at Whittington Hospital in Archway, and was named Laurence Paul Cunningham. Mavis was living in a shared house at 3 Brookside Place, an unprepossessing cut-through that joins Holloway Road and Junction Road – just a stone’s throw from the stark Victorian hospital buildings. The Jamaican community had not yet established itself to any great degree in this part of London but with female relatives nearby – in both Holloway and on Caledonian Road – Mavis could count on support. After the winners had dried up at Caymanas Park, Elias brought Keith over with him in 1958 and the family were fully reunited when the couple finally married. By the next decade the surrounding areas to the north, especially Finsbury Park and Tottenham, had become the heart of the black community in north London (there were also sizable Irish and Greek communities), and in all the years that the Cunningham family lived in London, including several changes of address, they never moved far – choosing to remain in the close-knit, working-class north London streets. For whatever reason Laurence’s birth was not registered until February 1961, nearly five years after the event, perhaps because the infant Cunningham was due to start primary school and it simply had not been attended to earlier by his parents. The birth certificate is signed by Elias in a spidery, loping hand with the home address given as 30 Queen’s Drive, Finsbury Park, indicating the family had moved on from the shared accommodation in Archway. Both parents were employed in manual labour. Elias’s occupation is given as paint sprayer and engraver and he worked for a company based in Amwell Street, Islington. Mavis first found work at the Bristol Laundry on Holloway Road then moved on to a job at the Eagle Pencil factory in Tottenham – at the time the largest of its kind in Europe – as a packer on the production line.

By 1962 the Cunninghams had bought their first house at 6 Trinder Road off Crouch Hill in Hornsey. Leaving the pencil factory, Mavis found work at a local garment manufacturer, Classic Fabrication, where she stayed for ten years, eventually becoming a supervisor. Unusually for a black woman she owned and drove a car, indicating an aspirational and independent side to her personality. Of the two parents Elias appears the more introverted and reserved. Eustus Isiae, a school friend of eldest son Keith, who was also born in in 1954, recalls visiting the home regularly and describes the atmosphere there: ‘He was just a quiet man, you’d go round the house and he was sitting there listening to his music, the old woman might be watching telly in another room, he was just a hard-working man, so most of his life was based around going to work.’ The domestic setting was typically Jamaican, with a front room that was hardly used from day to day but kept instead for ‘best’, and was out of bounds for children. Isiae continues: ‘Although it was called a living room we hardly ever went in there. We would go straight through the house and we would go to the bit next to the kitchen. The living room was a special room; at Christmas time you can go in there but most of the time you are not allowed – in there it’s always immaculate.’ The décor was typically Jamaican too with walls covered in a variety of contrasting wallpaper, patterned carpet, and numerous family photographs. A large reproduction painting of gondolas in Venice bought by Elias took pride of place in the living room, above vases of flowers and a collection of ornaments and decorative plates that were supplemented in later years with Laurie’s trophies and medals.

Cunningham had a similar character to his father. Softly spoken and introverted as a young boy, he was a natural when it came to any sporting activity. At Pooles Park Primary School he excelled at running – both sprinting and longer distance – and was singled out as an exceptional hurdler by his games teacher. His natural fitness and native ability gave him a self-belief that he wore lightly. Mavis recalls his easy-going way and lack of arrogance when it came to his athletic talent, which he never exploited in the playground: ‘He wasn’t the kind of person that really go around showing up these things,’ she reflects. A sensitive and imaginative boy, he possessed artistic skill which he expressed in differing ways. Mavis recalls with pride a painting he brought home one day from primary school: ‘Drawing was something that he loved. I remember he’d drawn an old man and his teacher asked him, “Who is it?” and he said, “I don’t know, I just draw this old man.” It was really good, I’ve still got it hung up in my house.’ Years later in a cover article for the Sunday Times Magazine in 1976, the doyen of football writers, Brian Glanville – a man not easily impressed – commented on the picture on display in the family home, ‘On the Cunninghams’ wall there hangs a strikingly well-observed portrait of an old man, painted by Laurie.’

He liked music too and had an affinity with the piano, which he taught himself to play at an early age. As in most Jamaican households music was an integral part of daily life and an essential element at social gatherings such as wedding parties, christenings and birthdays. And where there was music, there was dancing. Given his propensities it is not hard to imagine the young Cunningham, with his casual grace, thriving in such a creative domestic environment. Mavis recalls: ‘He loved dancing, he loved music. I bought him two pianos you know. I bought him one that was electrical when he was younger, then when he was older, I bought him a very big one, a stand-up one.’ Returning to the theme of his love of all things sporty she adds, ‘He was really good at swimming. I didn’t really know he was so good at football until his teacher wrote to me and asked me to come and see. He kept telling me how good he was at football and swimming, if it wasn’t football, I think it would be swimming.’ It is interesting to note this relaxed versatility was apparent at such an early age, and it continued to be a character trait throughout his later life. Even as a young boy he found great pleasure in a variety of pursuits, all of which he mastered quite naturally without the need for much instruction from the adults around him.

The Cunningham brothers although close throughout their lives went in different directions early on. Keith the eldest by two years naturally looked out for his younger brother but the boys had very different temperaments. They attended Sunday school at St Mary’s Church on Hornsey Rise together, and joined the Boys’ Brigade where they took part in gymnastics and played in the marching band. Keith was quick to anger with a rebellious streak that got him expelled from primary school and led him into trouble with the police as a teenager that culminated in a prison sentence – but he says his brother never judged him even when he become famous. He recalls: ‘He never ever said one bad word about me. We never had a rivalry, we rarely argued, it wasn’t like that. As little boys we used to share the bed and he’d wet it and I woke up soaking wet, so I used to get annoyed by that. He never hung his clothes up properly. I was tidy, he was messy … He matured mentally, football just came to him out of the blue really, he just melted into it all of a sudden. We both went to training but I didn’t stick to it, I was doing my own thing by then. He loved what he was doing but he didn’t big it up.’

Living in an area that was often harsh for black teenagers, Keith sums up the filial differences between the two boys when he states, ‘He studied and played his football … I went a different way.’ He recalls one formative experience when the family were living in Trinder Road. The brothers were playing in the playground of a white council estate that was considered a no-go area for black children, and as soon as they were spotted by a group of local boys they were chased back home through the streets. Arriving breathless and agitated at the front door their father asked what was up and when Keith explained he insisted that Keith go back outside and fight the ringleader.

Finsbury Park had few recreational spaces compared to other, leafier London boroughs. The best places for informal football kick-abouts were Finsbury Park itself or Highgate Wood. The effects of bomb damage from the war were still visible on the streets and large craters dotted the area which offered an irresistible and impromptu playground for the curious and adventurous.

In September 1967, Cunningham left primary school and started at Highgate Wood Secondary School in Hornsey. On his first day, uncharacteristically, he got into an argument with a boy called Robert Johnson. Johnson a big, physically strong boy, who had spent his first eight years in Jamaica, commanded respect by his appearance alone. A grandfather now and speaking in his comfortable, suburban, front room in Woodford Green in north-east London, he cuts a genial figure with a smiling voice that is never too far away from a spontaneous and infectious laugh. He recalls with a still discernible Jamaican lilt: ‘Laurie never fight, but he fought me on our first day. It was all about defending somebody else that I tripped over and he thought that I was wrong. I shouldn’t really have done it because I was bigger. But we were best friends after five minutes.’

Johnson became the first of a series of friends in Cunningham’s life who looked out for him on the football pitch. Where Cunningham was quick, balanced and skilful, Johnson was strong, fearless and resolute. Both were natural sportsmen and seemed to spark off each other with an instinctive understanding of each other’s ability.

‘For the first year at school I didn’t play football because my mum didn’t like me playing it, so for the first year I played rugby and that’s where me and Laurence got together. We were very quick, we were very tricky. Nobody could catch us. Then we started to play other sports as well, cricket, basketball, we were all-rounders basically. Laurie was a better all-rounder than I was, but still we had a great friendship and we played well together in everything. He’d look for me, I’d look for him. Playing football we didn’t need to look to see where each other was, we just hit the ball and knew we were going to be there. I could hit long balls to him and he could hit long balls back to me. I just knew where he was going next, it was like ball over the top, Laurie’s on to it, goal.’

Apart from his talent as a sportsman Cunningham stood out in other ways too. Despite the fact he had to wear school uniform he managed to style it to his own taste. For example, the school jumper was navy blue, a colour he disliked and refused to wear throughout his life. Instead he chose to wear a black jumper which matched the black uniform trousers and highly polished shoes he favoured. If the desired effect was to get himself noticed it worked. Teenagers tend to pick up on the smallest stylistic transgression and the merest detail can have quite an impact. Johnson expands:

‘Laurie always had this fashion thing even at school because he used to tie his tie differently. He was one of the first that came in with a short tie, that was his unique style, all of us used to try and blend in and tie it properly … Laurie just had a way about him when he dressed, even with the school uniform he made it look good. Although he was in uniform he was just different. On the first day going back to school, you all want to make an impression, you’d dress up the morning you were going back into school, but when you got in the playground you’d look at one person and go “Oh God! Look at Laurie.” His shoes weren’t school shoes, they were patent or brogues. Anything in fashion, you name it, Laurence would have it before anyone, everybody, regardless. He always looked smart, but I had a feeling sometimes going to school that his mum did all that for him. He looked good but it wasn’t him that did it, his mum sent him out like that.’

At the same time as Cunningham and Johnson started secondary school a remarkable football team was being assembled in Highgate by a forward-thinking social worker originally from Yorkshire called Bob Cottingham. Born in 1922, Cottingham had started coaching football in his mid-forties as a trainee social worker in Bermondsey, south London, where he formed a five-a-side football team for the youngsters in his care. After completing his training he began working for Islington council where he stayed for many years. The success of the Bermondsey side encouraged him to establish a similar five-a-side team closer to home in Highgate. Highgate North Hill, named after the address of the local primary school that his son attended, were formed in October 1967 and quickly transformed into an eleven-a-side team as word spread around the area.

The previous summer in 1966 England won the World Cup by beating West Germany 4–2 in a thrilling and unforgettable game at Wembley. A week after that famous victory Cottingham attended a residential Football Association coaching course at Loughborough College devised by the former England manager Walter Winterbottom. The need for a codified national coaching scheme had become paramount after the humiliating defeat suffered by England at the hands of Hungary in 1953. England were beaten, 6–3, for only the second time ever at Wembley. It was not so much the margin of the defeat as the manner of it that shocked supporters. England were inferior in every aspect. Led by the visionary Ferenc Puskás, the Hungarian side obliterated England with a dazzling display of flair and organisation that seemed to be light years ahead of the English game. In the return fixture a year later in Budapest an almost identical England team, having apparently learnt nothing, received a 7–1 drubbing. As a serious and enlightened football man, Cottingham wanted to emulate the skill and simplicity that the Hungarians had shown. His son Steve Cottingham says of his father, ‘The teams that influenced him the most were the Hungarians in the 1950s, they really broke the mould, Real Madrid and to some extent the Brazilians – this was before the 1970 World Cup – who were arguably the best side ever … my father’s philosophy was you put the team out and let them play, you wouldn’t tie them down with tactics or tie them down with having to treat the ball like a hot potato, and that worked.’

Real Madrid sealed their reputation as the undisputed kings of European football after a superlative performance in the 1960 European Cup Final when they beat Eintracht Frankfurt 7–1 at Hampden Park in Glasgow – their fifth consecutive victory in the competition. Fluid and devastatingly effective they epitomised the new style of European football which made the English game look geriatric by comparison. England’s World Cup victory was a vindication of coaching and tactics after the Hungarian humiliation – but seemed to do as much harm as good in the years that followed. Instead of embracing individuality and flair, organisation and a desire not to concede goals became the paramount concern. Adventure was frowned upon as players were urged to stick to the game plan devised by their coaches rather than relying on their instincts as footballers. Anybody who contravened this orthodoxy was deemed to be ‘unprofessional’ in an age when being called a ‘good professional’ was the ultimate praise. A dark ages for creativity at international level followed as flair and guile perished in the face of conformity and grit.

Steve Cottingham is a friendly and engaging man who was born in 1957. Now a lawyer he remembers the first time he heard the name Laurie Cunningham. A friend came round to his house to tell him about a boy he had met at school who was interested in joining Highgate North Hill. He was an amazing winger, he said, and lived nearby in Finsbury Park. His friend was worried because he was a winger too but he brought him along to the next training session anyway. ‘Laurie was just out of this world, he was dribbling around three or four of us as if it was the most natural thing in the world.’ The new team was a true representation of the area and reflected Bob Cottingham’s inclusive social worker beliefs. Steve adds ‘we were drawn from the local community, a mixture of different backgrounds and race and class. We thought it was natural; I think it bothered other people more than it bothered us. Often a lot of sides we played were white, which coming from north London in those days was a bit odd because north London was a very mixed community, we had people from West Indian backgrounds and Greek Cypriot backgrounds all of whom reflected the community we lived in.’

Bob Cottingham said of his team ‘we were just a street side, we didn’t have any premises but we won the under-16 Middlesex Cup against bigger, better equipped teams’ and said of the young Cunningham, ‘he played the game pretty cheerfully, he never blew up … he was a very happy and well-disposed youngster. In the team they knew who the star was, he had this remarkable skill, but he never put on side, he never carried on as though he thought he was God’s gift to football; he was a well-balanced boy I always thought. I felt he could go very far in the game, he had all the talent. He had such devastating effects on the opposition that you just let him loose and you got your results.’

From the outset the club was a family affair. The Cottinghams lived in a large house on Dukes Avenue in Muswell Hill with a spacious garden that was open to all visitors. After training each Saturday the boys would go back there for orange squash and hotdogs provided by Mrs Cottingham, who also washed and ironed the kit. Boys stayed until evening playing football in the garden and often shared dinner with the family. Robert Johnson, who joined the team at the same time as Cunningham, refers to the Cottingham house as a ‘home from home’, but didn’t mention his visits there to his mother because she disapproved so strongly of his playing football. The informal and idyllic-sounding atmosphere found there would appeal to any boy and Cunningham became a regular visitor to the Muswell Hill house. Steve Cottingham fondly recalls: ‘He’d just turn up sometimes and come in and we’d get on with whatever we were getting on with. If we were going down to my grandparents in Highgate he’d join us. He just fitted in. He didn’t try and adapt himself for other people, he just was who he was, he had that confidence in himself; he could find himself in any number of situations and be able to deal with it. For example, my grandparents were fairly well-off middle-class Jewish people living in Highgate and they got on really well with him. Nothing seemed to faze him. He remained the same person whatever he was doing and whoever he was with. At school I do not recall him getting into fights or trouble. Looking back he seemed to have an inner confidence which never came across as arrogance. People may have envied his astonishing ability, but no one I knew resented him. Far from it, we all wanted him to do well.’