When John Christie came to Southampton’s attention, during his National Service at Farnborough, Sid Cann was quick to sign him from Ayr and the club organised him digs with Bill Stroud’s mother in Regents Park. Early the following season, however, Cann acquired Fred Kiernan from Ireland and effectively set up a competition for the goalkeeper’s jersey that lasted, through two changes of manager, until, in the summer of 1956, Ted Bates released Kiernan and transfer-listed Christie.

John was wary of Bates, because he only ever watched matches from the dug-out, at an angle from which ’keepers should not, in John’s estimation, be judged.

Yet he came off the list to play all bar the last two games of the following season, whereupon he briefly had a new competitor in Brian Stevens. It was Tony Godfrey, however, to whom he eventually gave way towards the end of the 1958-59 season. He left, in that summer’s mass clear-out, for Walsall, where he immediately won Fourth, and then Third, Division promotion medals, so he had a season back in Division II prior to a non-league flurry that began at Burton, where Peter Taylor was serving a managerial apprenticeship.     

His last game at The Dell, for Walsall in September 1961, was spoiled when he allowed George O’Brien to beat him from 35 yards, but he will surely be remembered by Saints fans of the 1950s for his agility on his line and for his bravery coming off it. Terry Paine rated his “continental” style and selected him, as a sub to Campbell Forsyth, when he picked an “All-Time” side, in his biography, from his team-mates.

The admiration is mutual: Christie affectionately recalls his voluntary sessions with a teenage Paine, practicing angles. Returning to Southampton in 1964, John had a 27-year stint as a rep in the electrical business, while helping out Pat Parker at Cowes, followed by a pre-retirement interlude as a site supervisor at a Winchester school. He was a regular at Saints home games and could constantly be found, of a match-day, reminiscing on the St Mary’s forecourt with the club historians – not least about the penalty he saved from Fulham’s Charlie Mitten, the “Penalty King”, on Boxing Day 1952.