East Londoner Tommy Jenkins had failed to make it on his own doorstep – just one game for Orient and none for West Ham – but when Third Division Reading rescued him from Southern League football with Margate, his performances in the first half of 1969-70 persuaded Ted Bates that he would deliver at Southampton, by now in their fourth season in Division I. That decision partly came about after Bates witnessed a Jenkins hat-trick in Reading’s 5-1 win at Tranmere Rovers in the November.

So keen was Bates to then sign him that he offered Reading their pick of Denis Hollywood, Frank Saul, Dave Thompson or John Sydenham, in part-exchange, plus £30,000. After some wrangling, he got his man in a £60,000 cash-deal and assured the Times that Tommy was

“the most outstanding player I have seen in the lower divisions and has the ability to win matches.”

And, just turned 22, he was “a really good prospect.” Bates called Tommy “the Weaver”. In other words, he was a jink-and-glide type of winger, as opposed to the direct Sydenham, whose first-team career ended with Tommy’s arrival. Watching such a player drift past opponents will invariably thrill his team’s fans – and even, on occasion, opposing fans. Tommy’s eigth minute goal on August Bank Holiday 1970 at Upton Park – where a two-month’s trial for West Ham in 1967 had not worked out – was such an occasion.

Brian Hayward in the next day’s Echo described it “ Tommy Jenkins took possession of the ball just inside Saints half, a position West Ham must surely have regarded as harmless. But nothing was further than the truth. With uncanny control, as if the ball was attached to his boot, Jenkins tricked four men in a bewildering run which left Billy Bonds, Peter Bennett, Alan Stephenson and Bobby Moore stranded in his wake. By this time Jenkins had penetrated the West Ham penalty area and shot from his left foot. The ball seemed to burst through Peter Grotier before settling snugly in the back of the net. The West Ham crowd always appreciative of skill were enraptured by the goal. Their reaction was spontaneous and their applause generous and sincere, for this was individual brilliance and artistry”.

Indeed, when historians of the two clubs met at the launch of Neil Ruddock’s autobiography, 30 years later, those from West Ham enthused, unsolicited, about that goal.

Tommy threatened to repeat the act when West Ham came to The Dell the following season, but a similar run from deep was halted illegally at the last, leaving Jimmy Gabriel to convert the penalty. Yet Ted Bates sold his “weaver” early in 1972-73, to Second Division Swindon, even though he lacked an obvious replacement: six different players would assume the No.11 shirt that season. But there’s the rub: they may have been wearing that number, but Bates had pretty much dispensed with a left-winger.

As his tactics relied less and less on Ron Davies’s head and more and more on Mick Channon’s speed there was a declining need for an outside-left, whether of the flying, or the weaving, kind. Even so, Tommy feels that Lawrie McMenemy would have found a role for him, as he was “McMenemy’s type of player.” As it was, Tommy remained at Swindon, missing his “glory days” at Southampton, until he joined Gabriel in Seattle. Having played for the Sounders until he was 40, Tommy has since had a variety of coaching positions in Seattle, retiring from his last one at 65.