When Arsenal won the Cup-and-League double in 1970-71, only three visiting sides managed to eke out a draw at Highbury. That Southampton were one of them was down to their goalkeeper, Eric Martin,

“flinging himself around,” as the Daily Telegraph saw it, “like a deranged marionette”  in Highbury’s late-December snow.

Bobby Brown, Scotland’s manager, was watching. If he’d come to cast an eye over Arsenal’s Bob Wilson – who would keep goal twice for Scotland within the year – there was nothing for him to see:

Wilson recalls being a shivering spectator at the other end, admiring Martin’s “blinder”.

Eric would never be capped by Scotland. That was so unbelievable to his champions that football’s  rumour-mill was required to supply fantastic explanations, varying from his hair being too wild to Southampton being too far away from Scotland.

Eric would win nothing with the Saints, beyond a winners’ medal, in 1971, in the Daily Express national five-a-sides (see Jimmy Gabriel profile for picture). With his team needing to win three sudden-death penalty shoot-outs in the tournament’s four rounds, he was inevitably the hero, saving both of Leicester’s penalties in the Final, while Jimmy Gabriel slotted the trophy-winner past Peter Shilton.

It is true that Eric’s hair had by then crept over his ears, in contrast to the coiffured curls of the lad who had come down from Scotland in March 1967. Ted Bates had already fielded two Scottish ’keepers in that first season in the top flight. Having lost Campbell Forsyth to a broken leg, he was not prepared to trust his emergency-replacement, Dave Maclaren, in the battle against relegation. Bates had hoped to sign Dundee’s Sandy Davie – as he later would – but bought Dunfermline’s Martin, instead. (At Dunfermline the young Martin had been a colleague of future Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson, see scrapbook section).

With a visit to Everton only two days away, Bates put his young ’keeper through his paces in a way that convinced Eric that “the guy was nuts!” But Eric responded, come Saturday, in a 1-0 win at Goodison Park, with a display that the Echo considered

“about the best display of goalkeeping… seen in the Saints’ side for quite a long time.”

And one national reporter, likening Eric’s performance to that of Frank Swift, scored him 10 out of 10. At 5ft 11 ins and light with it, Eric hardly had the presence of Swift or, indeed, of the average ’keeper.

Agile and unconventional, he had an element of slapstick in the way he kept goal.

Nicknames were inevitable. “Harpo” is attributable not only to his hair-style but, he insists, to the manner in which he was heard to whistle for a taxi in Bilbao.

His crowd-pleasing antics included his trick, just before the kick-off, of hurling the training balls towards the man on the touchline, who would attempt, in true It’s a Knockout-style, to let them fall directly into his sack.

Each success was greeted by a big cheer from the Milton Road end. All joking apart, between December 1969 and the end of the 1972-73 season, Eric missed only one game – when, ironically, the eventually-signed Davie made his only appearance. But then new manager, Lawrie McMenemy, brought in Ian Turner and Eric was soon bound for Washington DC, having established a club-appearance record for post-war goalkeepers. After 50-odd appearances for the Diplomats, his career succumbed to a double-fracture of a leg. He also represented Team America in a friendly played in Seattle against Brazil in the summer of 1976.

He then had various jobs, with an American TV network; as a bar-tender; in a half-way home for troubled juveniles; and finally for a mail-order company in Maryland. Now retired he sometimes posts Facebook photos of him trekking around some of North America’s beauty spots looking very much in shape.