In the summer of 1960, Ted Bates had a quandary. The government had announced that National Service was coming to an end, but men born in the first half of 1939, like Terry Paine, would be conscripted, while the prospects for those born in the third quarter, like John Sydenham, were “uncertain”. Bates had the ideal solution.

He bought Plymouth’s Harry Penk, who boasted “two good feet” and had played on both flanks for Argyle and, before that, for Portsmouth.

Returning to Hampshire suited Harry and his wife, as they would be near her parents. Sydenham was called up, but Paine was exempted when he successfully played-up a problem with his ears – just as Penk had done, when examined in Liverpool in 1955. The confessions of both examinees are recorded in detail in Paine’s biography.

Posted to RAMC Crookham – Bates’s billet of choice for his conscripted players – Sydenham was available often enough to share the left-wing duties with Penk in 1960-61 (see scrapbook section), although Harry had more opportunities the following season. But, with John’s return from Crookham in 1962, Harry would have only two more League games, as he became a regular, on one flank or the other, in the Reserves. In his 60 first-team appearances, Harry had offered his manager another dimension: he could drop deep to help his left-back in a manner not expected of Sydenham.

Harry recognises that he could never be “a spectator’s kind of player” like the flying Sydenham and that he “was doing a ‘players’ player’ kind of thing” for the manager.

Paine certainly appreciated Harry’s work and told him so: “it used to give you all the confidence,” Harry recalls, “that somebody like that wanted you in the side.”

Picking an XI from his former team-mates, Paine selects Sydenham as his outside-left, but side-steps to commend the contribution made by Harry – and, later, by Dave Thompson of the same ilk: “decent players… very competent footballers, with good brains.” Harry moved into non-league football at 30. Harry worked, long-term, at Husband’s Shipyard in Southampton. He played high-class amateur cricket with Hursley Park and was with them, as he became 50, when they went all the way to Lords in the 1984 village knock-out Final. He has remained local in retirement, latterly in Ashurst.