New Forest born, Bob McCarthy was a young Saints fan with but one ambition: to play for his local club. Although he represented Southampton Schools (see scrapbook) and he signed pro-forms at the same time as Mick Channon, his junior by a week, Bob took a bit longer to break into the first team.

Primarily a defensive right-back, strong in the tackle and blessed with good positional sense, he found his route blocked by the ever-consistent Joe Kirkup.

In fact, he had clocked up 100 appearances for the Reserves before he reached 10 League games. When he did get a run in the side in 1971-72, it ended with the infamous 7-0 hammering at Leeds, broadcast to the nation on Match of the Day. “Had Mick Channon scored, as he should have done, to put us 1-0 up,” Bob continues to reason, 40 years on, “it might have been a different game.”

As it was, the principal scapegoats were the local full-backs, Roger Fry and McCarthy. Roger never appeared in the first team again, but Bob came back strongly after only two more games, to start a run of 46 League and Cup appearances.

Having finally made the No.2 shirt pretty much his own in 1973-74, Bob was devastated when that season ended in relegation.

After an in-and-out 1974-75, struggling to recapture his best form after a cartilage operation and knowing that he didn’t figure in Lawrie McMenemy’s plans, he weighed up his options. The prospect of scratching around the lower divisions, with the possibility that he might never make it back to the top flight, held little appeal.

He chose, at only 26, to retire from the professional game.

He played in local football for a while, while embarking on a sales career in the Licensed Trade. Following early retirement from that, he has become a professional toastmaster, in circumstances explained in Mick Judd’s profile. No lesser judge than Terry Paine selected Bob in his “pick” of a Saints team from his era, explaining, to readers of his biography, that “McCarthy was one of the most brilliant readers of what was happening on the other side of the park,” which meant that he’d “be on the cover, to mop up whatever came through.” Which is why Terry feels that “Bob deserved a lot more games” for his only League club. Arguably, what he did deserve, after a decade of loyal service and nearly 300 Reserves and first-team appearances, was a testimonial. That was not forthcoming. Bob lives locally and keeps that damaged knee exercised at the New Forest Golf Club in Lyndhurst.