In October 2018 Frank Saul finally got his hands on a medal he had – technically – won 58 years earlier.

Tottenham Hotspur, taking advantage of a recent change of rules, were able to present him with a Division I Winners medal in recognition of the 6 games he played in their 1961 famous double season. Then as a 17-year-old who had recently turned his back on a career in the Merchant Navy he scored three goals in six games as stand-in for Bobby Smith. Having made his debut for the reserves as a 15-year old his future looked bright, but he never quite delivered on his early promise, with one Spurs website describing him as becoming an “ordinary” player.

Ordinary or not he had a further moment of fame in the 1967 FA Cup Final when he scored the winning goal against Chelsea, but even that feat did not prolong his career as a Spur by long, as soon he was on his way to The Dell as a makeweight in the £125,000 deal that took Martin Chivers to White Hart Lane, with Frank’s value being put at £45,000 (see scrapbook section). Ted Bates knew he had an able replacement for Chivers in 19-year-old Mick Channon, but as Ted put it in his biography “he was still feeling his way”, and therefore Frank, the stop-gap “plodded around a bit” until Channon was ready.

Frank’s scoring in league football was poor, just two goals, but perversely when it came to domestic cup outings Frank came alive scoring five times that number in a quarter of the starts. By 1970 the coltish Channon had become a thoroughbred and Frank returned to see out his football days in London. (At the annual meeting of the Dell Supporters Club in September 1970, Bates told fans that “the reason I let Frank go was that I felt there was nothing Frank could do that Bobby Stokes couldn’t do”). Later at Millwall he played alongside Eamon Dunphy, who in his book ‘Only a Game’, a warts and all diary of the 1973-74 season, wrote

“Franky always has a go. He never jacks it in. He will always want to have a go, to get involved”.

He also reckoned that, even at 30, Frank was still “developing [and] adding real vision to his game”.

Afterwards Frank settled in Essex where he operated a building and decorator’s business in Billericay and at the time Spurs tracked him down to give him his medal, he was living in Stock, some six miles south of Chelmsford.