Norman Giller's tribute to Martin Chivers

Our resident columnist Norman Giller recalls his old mate Martin Chivers, who died this week at the age of 80 ...

A picture that Martin rated as one of his favourites, with the Master Bobby Moore

MARTIN CHIVERS, who died this week at the age of 80 had many critics during his Tottenham career, whom he continually silenced with the fairly conclusive argument-settling response of scoring goals.

Built like a Greek statue, he sometimes seemed just as immobile but would then make you eat your words by thumping the ball into the net with a power that even Harry Kane would envy.

How times change. In my Fleet Street reporting days, I met "Big Chiv" at Waterloo Station on the day he was transferred from Southampton in January of 1968 and travelled with him by tube to Liverpool Street and then on to Tottenham as he prepared to start his new life at The Lane.

These days, reporters cannot get near the prima donna players, who invariably arrive at their new clubs in chauffeur-driven limos with dark-tinted windows and an agent handing out second-hand quotes. To be honest, I think this sort of "royal" treatment would have been more to Martin's taste. He was suited to the big stage.

Martin, a Grammar school boy educated at the highly regarded Taunton's School in Hampshire, spent the train journey from Southampton to Waterloo tackling The Times crossword. He was different to most footballers I knew, who preferred Page 3 of The Sun.

He told me on the way to The Lane: "This is like a dream for me. I have always been an admirer of the way Spurs play, and it's going to be a thrill as well as a challenge to play alongside Jimmy Greaves."

His fee (including Frank Saul as a makeweight) was a then British record of £125,000. It was a fortune at the time, and for a long while it sat on Martin's shoulders like a sack of coal.

Sadly, an appalling knee injury early in his Spurs career stopped him showing his best alongside Greavsie. He later flourished with the silken Alan Gilzean as his sidekick, but there were always sniping comments being made about Martin's perceived lack of determination and commitment whenever the going got tough.

I had watched him in his early days at Southampton alongside the young Mike Channon, and I knew his apparent casual approach was deceptive. He had the physique of a heavyweight boxer, but to many spectators he seemed too often to have a punchless penalty area presence.

I recall helping Martin move into a smart new home in Epping with his first wife, and he seemed like a young man with the world at his feet. "I've made a slow start," he said, "but I know I will start to give the fans the goals they want once I have settled into playing with Greavsie, who has a style of his own and it will take me time to get on his wavelength."

But all his plans and ambitions nose-dived in a home match against Nottingham Forest in September 1968 when he felt a shooting pain in his knee and sank to the ground with his leg locked. It was even painful to watch from the press box, and it signalled a nine month lay-off that made Martin morose and moody.

He was still not firing on all cylinders when he made his comeback in August 1969, and there was obvious tension in the Tottenham camp. Manager Bill Nicholson got so frustrated with him that he once gave him a ticket to go and watch Geoff Hurst play for West Ham. "I felt quite insulted," Martin said. "But I did what I was told and later thanked Bill, because by watching Geoff's positional play I learned a lot."

He was always having battles with Bill Nick about his game, but even more so with Cockney coach Eddie Baily. They had a continual war of words, and I was witness to two classic cases of Martin making Eddie hold up his hands in surrender. The first time was in Romania in 1971 when Tottenham were playing Rapid Bucharest in the UEFA Cup, a second leg tie that has gone down in the Tottenham hall of shame as the Battle of Bucharest.

I reported in the Daily Express that "Spurs were hacked and kicked about like rag dolls." Bill Nick went on record with the view that Rapid were the dirtiest side he had seen in more than thirty years in football.

The dressing-room at the end of the match, won 2-0 by Spurs, was like a casualty clearing station, with six Spurs players nursing injuries caused by tackles that belonged in the house of horrors rather than on a football pitch.

I noticed that throughout the game assistant manager Baily had been bawling at Martin Chivers from the touchline bench, calling him every name to which he could put his merciless tongue. You could not help but hear the insults being aimed at the Ambling Alp of Spurs because the huge stadium was barely a third full.

Big Chiv finally silenced Baily by scoring a superb goal, and you did not have to be a lip reader to know that Martin responded by shouting obscenities back at his nemesis.

We flew straight back to London after the match, and I took careful note that Baily and Chivers completely ignored each other at the airport and on the flight. Later that week I saw Bill Nick privately and told him I was thinking of writing a story about the obvious enmity between his right-hand man Baily and his most productive forward, Chivers.

Bill looked as pained as if I was telling him I was putting down his pet dog. "I can't tell you what and what not to write," he said, "but let me just say that you'll not be doing me any favours. Off the record, we're having problems with Martin. He is a strong-minded young man who thinks he knows it all. His attitude drives Eddie bananas, but you know Eddie - he often shouts things in the heat of a match that he doesn't really mean. I'm trying to make the peace between them, and any story about them will only make matters worse."

At Bill's request, I refrained from writing about the feud, and it was forgotten as Chivers hit such a rich vein of goal-scoring form that I wrote a feature suggesting he had become as powerful an England centre-forward as legends of the game like Tommy Lawton, Ted Drake and Jackie Milburn.

A frothing-at-the-mouth Eddie Baily went out of his way to confront me about the story and said: "You have insulted truly great players. Chivers is not fit to carry their jock straps."

That's how angry Martin used to make Eddie, but he was forced to bow the knee to him again after the first leg of the 1972 UEFA Cup final against Wolves at Molineux.

Before the game both Bill Nick and Eddie had nagged Martin so much about his expected contribution that he snapped and walked out onto the pitch to get away from them.

During the game, with Baily bellowing from the touchline, Chivers conjured two magical goals that virtually clinched victory, with skipper Alan Mullery making sure of the trophy with a crucial goal in the second leg at White Hart Lane.

After Martin's phenomenal first-leg performance, a contrite Eddie Baily came into the dressing-room and bowed down in front of the giant centre-forward. and mimed as if to kiss his feet "Here you are," he said in his loud Alf Garnett-style voice, "walk all over me. You've won me outright."

In those early '70s, Chivers was as potent and productive as any centre-forward in the League. Powerfully built and as wide as a door, Chiv had a deceptively lethargic-looking bearing, but if a possible goal beckoned, he would suddenly fire on all cylinders and leave surprised defenders in his wake as he accelerated.

He preferred the ball on his right foot and had a rocketing shot that brought him many of his 118 League goals for Spurs. He also netted 13 times in 24 England games and might have plundered many more goals but for a recurring knee injury.

The 1970-71 season was the launch of Martin's peak years, for both club and country. He played in all 58 League and cup games and scored 34 times, including both goals in the League Cup final against Aston Villa, and 21 goals in the First Division as Spurs finished the season in third place. The bad news was that Arsenal finished top and completed the League and FA Cup double on the tenth anniversary of Tottenham's historic achievement.

Martin also notched his first goal for England in a 3-0 win over Greece at Wembley in April 1971 to put the icing on the cake of his resurgence.

It was in the following season that Chivers went into overdrive, netting 44 times in 64 first-team appearances. His seven goals in as many League Cup ties lifted Spurs to the semi-finals where they eventually lost to Chelsea. Where have you read that before?

Free of worries about his troublesome knee, the rampaging Hampshire giant saved his most impressive form for the UEFA Cup, scoring eight times in 11 matches, including a hat-trick in a 9-0 annihilation of Icelandic side Keflavik IF, and that superb brace against Wolverhampton Wanderers that brought Eddie Baily to his knees.

In the First Division, he found the net 25 times in 39 appearances. Even the bullish Baily had to concede that perhaps my article putting Chivers up at the top of the mountain with greats of his playing days was in no way an exaggeration.

The Tottenham victory over Wolves - 3-2 on aggregate - was a personal triumph for Bill Nicholson. Since taking charge of the club in 1958, he had steered Spurs to three FA Cup finals, one League Cup final, one European Cup Winners' Cup final and the UEFA Cup final.

Martin - with the middle name Harcourt, after his German mother - continued his career in Switzerland with Servette and then had brief appearances with Norwich, Brighton and non-League Dorchester and Barnet, and also tried his luck in Norway and Australia.

He briefly owned a hotel and restaurant in Hertfordshire, dabbled with club management, was a popular matchday host at Tottenham home games and had a spell as the National Development Manager to the FA.

Mellowed after all the shooting and shouting was over, he recalled that his career turned round when he started finding the net in 1970-71. "It was all about confidence," he said. "I honestly feared my career was over with that knee injury against Forest. But I began to believe in myself again when I started scoring."

Remarkably, after he had taken his final shots, he became best of friends with Bill Nicholson, the manager with whom he had a long-running battle over wages, tactics and attitudes. Darkie, Billy's long-suffering wife, used to fume over the sleepless nights he gave her husband, but once she got to know Martin during his many visits to their home she was moved to say: "How on earth could Bill have got so upset about a proper gentleman like Martin?" Bill looked to the ceiling.

Chivers accepted that he had been awkward. He always thought Bill was too miserly with the club's money in an era when footballers' wages were just beginning to take off. "Everything Bill did was in the interests of the club," Martin said. "He always had my full respect. We got to like each other a lot. And Darkie was a wonderful lady."

He even made up with his nemesis Eddie Baily and often played golf with him.

Martin Chivers. Enigmatic, but on his day as explosive as they come.

I know I am speaking for our guru Paul H. Smith and all Spurs Odyssey regulars when I say, Rest Easy Big Man.

. Spurs Odyssey's tribute to Martin Chivers

(And to add to the black cloud of despondency that settled over Tottenham, Terry Yorath - Welsh international bulldog who had his peak years with Leeds before joining Spurs - passed away yesterday, aged 75. Terry was a fierce competitor who played 46 League games for Spurs from 1979 to 81. His daughter, Gabby, pulled out of a BBC show she was presenting last night to dash to her father's bedside. Terry was a proper football man and we mourn his passing. RIP).

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