By the time Lew Chatterley first teamed up with Lawrie McMenemy, as a loanee at Third Division Doncaster in 1971, he had spent 11 seasons at his home-town club, Aston Villa. In that time, Villa had fallen from the First Division to the Third, leaving Lew with vivid memories of the final match of 1966-67, when, already relegated, they had crashed 6-2 at The Dell. After his short spell at Doncaster, playing mainly in a defence that had Ian Branfoot at right-back, he joined Northampton. By the end of that 1971-72 season, however, he had re-united with McMenemy at Grimsby, a regular at right-half in the run-in to the Fourth Division championship. McMenemy’s next stop was Southampton.

He did Lew no favours at all when he soon invited him to join him anew (see scrapbook section). “It was the biggest mistake I ever made,” Lew recalls. He and his family had swapped “a house on the beach” on Humberside for rented accommodation in Bitterne, found for them by the club, which they “didn’t like one iota.”

  And nor did his duties at The Dell turn out as expected. Although only 29, Lew thought he was going to help with the Reserves, pending a back-room position of some kind. “It never entered my head,” he insists, that McMenemy would ask him to play for the first team in the last two games of their slide into Division II. And it got worse.

As the Saints floundered in the second tier, Chatterley was given a handful of starts, the last two coming at the turn of the year, when Mick Channon was out with a hamstring injury. After both manager and player had been the butt of the crowd’s frustration during a 1-0 home defeat by Sheffield Wednesday,

Chatterley put it to McMenemy that the manager “had enough problems without having a problem with me.”

He duly decamped to Fourth Division Torquay as player-coach. Devon suited him. His 50-odd games for Torquay took him over the 300-mark for Football league appearances, before he settled for running a guest house and for playing non-league at Barnstaple. But then he was lured back into football, first as coach of Chicago Sting in the USA and then back to The Dell as McMenemy’s right-hand man. This second spell with Saints was an altogether happier experience, with the club not only enjoying success but also playing a delicious brand of attacking football.

During his six seasons as assistant-manager, the Saints temporarily topped the Football League – in January 1982 – for the first time in their history, while they finished runners-up, and reached the FA Cup semi-finals, in 1984. In 1985, Lew – after turning down the manager’s job at The Dell – accompanied Lawrie to Sunderland, but the blueprint for success failed to transfer to Roker Park. The adage that “The Titanic and Lawrie McMenemy have one thing in common: neither should have left Southampton” has been attributed to Jimmy Tarbuck, but it sure resonates with added feeling on Wearside. Lew resigned a few weeks after Lawrie was sacked and returned south. He combined managing Southern League Poole with running the Clump Inn at Chilworth – the location of the Saints’ preparations for the 1902 Cup Final.

But he was soon back in the Football League, assisting his former Doncaster team-mate, Ian Branfoot, at Reading, where he then acted as caretaker when Branfoot was dismissed. His third spell at The Dell, as a youth-development officer, started towards the end of Chris Nicholl’s reign. When Nicholl was fired, to be replaced by Branfoot, Lew assumed the assistant-role, which he retained, following another caretaker-spell, first under Alan Ball and then Dave Merrington. The appointment of Graeme Souness in July 1996 signalled “all change” in the back-room staff, with both Chatterley and Dennis Rofe being shown the door.

Lew scouted for Newcastle United for a while and then trained as a teacher. During his years as a full-time football coach at Winchester College, the school enjoyed considerable success, including reaching the semi-final of the Independent Schools Cup for the first time. He retired Christmas 2016.