Tommy Hare had been doing a decent job at right-back for Ted Bates in 1965-66, as the Saints struggled to keep up with the Second Division leaders, but the manager ‘swooped’ (as the papers always like to say), as the transfer deadline loomed, to bring in 19-year-old David Webb from Leyton Orient, with a disgruntled George O’Brien moving to Brisbane Road. David made an instant impact (see scrapbook section).

Terry Paine, who would come to value him as a “great asset when he came up for dead-ball situations”

took a corner at Molyneux from which the debutant Webb, who had indeed “come up” scored with an overhead kick. The 1-1 draw launched a 12-game unbeaten run and promotion was secured. David played in eight of those games as a right-back, but debutised, in the other four, for Tony Knapp at centre-half. As Paine put it in his biography, when explaining why he had picked David at centre-back in his Select XI, those four games in Knapp’s stead “it suited those of us who had been on at Ted for ages to play him there, because David was more stable than Tony Knapp, when the pressure was on”. But Bates stood by Knapp, however much his team-mates fretted about his perceived nervousness, and Webb would be used mainly as a right-back.

After Jimmy Gabriel displaced Knapp in 1967, though, David had a sustained spell partnering Jimmy at centre-back – until Bates swapped him for Chelsea’s Joe Kirkup in February 1968. In his first full season at ‘The Bridge’ David was their only ever-present player, being voted the fans’ Player-of-the-Year and earning a top-rating in the memoirs of his chairman, Brian Mears, not least

for being their “most versatile” player, who would sometimes “appear to be just everywhere”.

His eight 1968-69 goals included a Boxing Day hat-trick at Ipswich. He topped that, the following season, by scoring the goal that won the FA Cup. Playing at right-back at Wembley, he was run ragged by Leeds United’s Eddie Gray. Switched to centre-back for the Old Trafford replay, “Webby played like a man inspired” according to Charlie Cooke’s autobiography, coming up to meet Ian Hutchinson’s long throw with his cheek and so snatch an extra-time winner. After six seasons at Chelsea, David had another six seasons at QPR, Leicester and Derby, in turn – all of them in the top flight, save for a few games with relegated Leicester. After which he spent the next 30-odd years in the lower divisions – save for a fleeting Premiership spell managing Chelsea – in a variety of posts from management to ownership, which he has combined with various businesses including a car sales company and a successful property company in Dorset.

In March 2019, still based in Poole, David was travelling to and fro to Nassau, buying land, developing it and selling it on. He was happy to pose for a picture on a homebound flight.