A big, strong-yet-elegant wing-half, Graham Lovett inevitably became known, as he was developing through Black Country football, as the “new Duncan Edwards”. Yet he was still only 21 when he was being rebranded as “Soccer’s Unluckiest – and Most Courageous – Player”. That second label is a reference to his attempts to keep playing, despite two serious road accidents. The first occurred in 1966, two years into his professional career with West Brom.

A blow-out on the M1 left him with dislocated vertebrae and partial paralysis.

During a three-month stay in hospital, he needed a dangerous bone-graft operation from his hip to his neck even to ensure that he could walk again. Incredibly, his rehabilitation was so successful that he played in Albion’s FA Cup-run in 1968, setting up their winner v Southampton, in a Fourth Round replay at The Dell, and being in the side that beat Everton in the Final. But then, in the summer of 1969, a bus hit his car in Birmingham, causing further injuries, from which he never fully recovered. Two years later, he came to Southampton on loan, in a bid to regain match-fitness.

It was a bold move to come to a First Division club, but his three appearances proved that it was a step too far. He duly retired from League football and, after a non-league flutter, quit the game entirely while still only 26. In 1973, he was awarded £14,000 damages against the West Midlands Transport Executive. By then, he was working in the advertising department of Wolverhampton’s Express and Star, where he remained for some 30 years before living in Thailand and Spain. However, by 2017 he was back in England and regularly attending matches and functions at The Hawthorns but after a short illness he died on the 10 May 2018.