Bobby Stokes’s self-assessment, that he “was a bit of an odd-job man for Saints,” must surely go down as a gross under-valuation – especially if Mick Channon has anything do with it.

As Mick put it in his first autobiography, Bobby was “a good players’ player,” who “sort of held things up… If ever we were in trouble at the back, we used to hit Bobby.” That’s because

Bobby was “a great one-touch player,” who could control the ball and knock it off to his oncoming team-mates.

Channon’s allusion to being “at the back” may seem odd, but it is justified in respect of the 4-4-2 formation, to which Lawrie McMenemy switched halfway through the 1975-76 season. Although paired upfront with Bobby, Mick was licensed to drop deep – as he so memorably did in the FA Cup Final, to flick on to Jim McCalliog, who hit Bobby in the inside-left channel. It was no occasion for a hold-up play:

with a simple swing of his less-favoured left peg, Bobby brought the yellow minority at Wembley to its feet and the whole of those who remained in Southampton onto the streets.

His strike from distance was a surprise to so many – not least to the bookies and United’s ’keeper, Alex Stepney – from a player who had announced himself, on Easter Monday 1969, as a predator in the box, scoring twice from close-range on debut. Both goals were from headers:

Bobby was on the short-side for scoring in that fashion but, like his manager, Ted Bates, he could hang in the air and was willing to dive in, headlong, where the feet were flying. As Bates made way for McMenemy in 1973-74, Bobby enjoyed his best season, missing but one game. Such statistics mean nothing, however, compared with the fact that he scored that goal. His regular room-mate, Peter Osgood, was delighted for him. It was “great”, Ossie told Tim Manns, the chronicler of that Cup-run, that Bobby, rather than one of the team’s three international strikers – Channon, McCalliog and he – had scored the most celebrated goal in the club’s history.

But David Peach put a contrary view to Manns, suggesting that Bobby was a “simple-living lad” who struggled with his unexpected fame – to the extent that this “played a part,” Peach reasons, “in his early death.” 

Yet Bobby would have missed the Final if he had been willing to join Portsmouth, his home-town club who had rejected him as a teenager. Having been moved deeper than he liked to accommodate Peter Osgood upfront, Bobby sought a move early in the 1975-76 season and was placed on the transfer-list. Pompey made the only offer, but as Bobby explained in a 1977 Topical Times article, “a local transfer was just what I didn’t want.” So he stayed, thrived on McMenemy’s change of formation and played in every game of the Cup-run while still transfer-listed. McMenemy’s first words to Bobby, after the final whistle at Wembley, were simple: “you’re off the list”. Bobby joyfully repeated that message, the next day, from the Guidhall balcony. But he might as well have remained listed.

Ted MacDougall arrived in September and Bobby scored on Ted’s debut. But with the signing of Alan Ball in December, it was effectively Bobby who made way for MacDougall. And so, at the age of 26, he moved, along with Jim Steele, to the Washington Dips. Over the next two years, he would become a summer visitor to Washington, while spending his winters on loan to a couple of English non-league clubs, latterly Southern League Cheltenham. Their recently-installed manager, Terry Paine, happened to attend the Portsmouth wedding of a friend’s daughter to Bobby’s cousin. An astute judge of Bobby’s qualities –

“he was instinctive, the longer he dwelt on it, the worse player he was; and he was a good finisher” –

Terry thought it “a bit of a coup” to bring Bobby to that level of football. Mark Buckland, an 18 year-old who would go on to play for Wolves, explains, in Paine’s biography, how even a brief acquaintance with Bobby made him “a better player,” notably by demonstrating the art of a one-two, in which Bobby’s “movement was so smooth.” But, a brief stint with Old Simmarians apart, there would be no move into coaching or management for Bobby, who would run the Manor House pub in Cosham and then the Harbour View café in Portsmouth. He also had a side-line, while with Cheltenham, in selling all manner of merchandise, notably a consignment of sheepskin coats, to his team-mates and manager. Paine reckoned that Bobby’s coat-sales probably brought in more than he was earning on the pitch. But, then, Bobby had never made a fortune from football and he fell on hard times. And nor would he be the first ex-footballer to miss the support of the dressing-room, where, as Ted Bates put it, the happy-go-lucky Bobby had always been

“a great little man for team spirit” – the “jewel in the dressing-room,”

Osgood reckoned. Bobby’s life-style – drinking and smoking to excess – and a broken marriage did not help. His self-neglect and deteriorating health was apparent to Osgood and other close friends (see scrapbook section), but it came as a shock to a public not in the know when Bobby died, aged 44, of broncho-pneumonia.

For those interested in finding out more about Bobby the man then Mark Sanderson’s book comes highly recommended.