Having arrived at First Division Wolves as a 17 year-old, David Thompson had a few run-outs during their relegation season of 1964-65. But he was ready, come the summer of 1966, to try “something new” when Jimmy Melia, who had lived just down the road from his Wolverhampton digs, put in a word for him at Southampton, with whom he had just won promotion.

Jimmy had told David that he “reminded him of Ian Callaghan,” his former Liverpool team-mate, but David had no illusions that he’d come to The Dell as a ready-made winger in the Callaghan mould: he imagined being “like a cover” for the established Terry Paine and John Sydenham. That apart, he “didn’t know what to expect,” but it certainly didn’t include Ted Bates’s standard welcome of tea at his home with Mary, where he was offered “a piece of cream-cake. That was something different.”

He would soon discover other differences, such as the bumpy training ground, where “you couldn’t control anything” – although that “probably improved the ball control.” Compared with the long-ball game at Molineux – from which Melia had been so relieved to escape – David now found himself in a side that “had more of a passing game. For me, it was like going to, say, Arsenal now, where they pass the ball.” Not that David’s role in this passing set-up was totally constructive.

He recognised that Bates saw him as “a bit of a workhorse,” who could “play on the left wing and then tuck in and fortify the midfield, especially away from home” –

much as Harry Penk had done during Sydenham’s National Service. His midfield responsibilities might involve interrupting the supply from the likes of play-makers such as Manchester United’s Pat Crerand or Everton’s Alex Young. He revelled in the latter role in one of two crucial 1-0 away wins during his first season. The other was at Leeds, when a large family-gathering from his native Yorkshire watched him float a corner on to Ron Davies’s head for the game’s only goal. It was important to David’s dual role that he could switch from midfield to the wing if the side went behind – a flexibility that Bates surrendered in David’s last two seasons, when he deployed David Walker, or occasionally Tony Byrne, in an advanced stopper-role, while Thompson became a fixture on the wing – and sometimes captain – for the Reserves.

David was not impressed, but acknowledges that, by moving on to Third Division Mansfield, he probably found his “own level,” as is reflected in his 131 League games for them, latterly in Division IV, before a final flourish with third-tier Chesterfield. That ended with a bad knee-injury. David had by now moved back to Otley, where he had been brought up. After working in his brothers’ haulage business for 30 years, he then had five years inspecting roads for Leeds City Highways, until he retired in 2010.