When two Southampton scouts, Stan Cribb and Tom Parker reported favourably to Bates on 16 year-old Havant schoolboy, Malcolm Waldron, there was no competition from the lad’s home-town club: Portsmouth had disbanded their Youth set-up. Bates duly made him an apprentice, just as Lawrie McMenemy was clocking-in as manager-designate.

Signing pro for McMenemy at 18, Malcolm had a couple of outings at centre-back at the end of 1974-75, but then hardly featured during the Cup Final season. A regular for the Reserves instead, he booked himself a place on the post-Wembley trip to Barbados, where he did enough to be in the starting line-up in 1976-77. In the course of that season, he saw off Jim Steele and Mel Blyth, the two Wembley centre-backs, but needed to wear six different shirt-numbers, during the 1977-78 promotion campaign, as he chopped and changed between centre-back, full-back and sweeper, in order to accommodate the new central pairing of Chris Nicholl and Mike Pickering.

In his best season, 1978-79, Malcolm took possession of the No.6 shirt and played in all 56 matches, including the League Cup Final. With his long limbs and boyish looks, he was inevitably christened “Bambi” by the terrace wits and was voted, just as inevitably, Player-of-the-Season. An England “B” cap followed in the autumn, but Malcolm’s progress, thereafter, was largely defined by two injuries. A career-threatening Achilles tendon problem was overcome by pioneering surgery. After six months in plaster, he was sent for rehabilitation, in the summer of 1981, to Washington Diplomats in the NASL.

Billed as “The Rocket” for his deadly shooting, particularly from dead-ball situations,

Malcolm so impressed the Dips with his captaincy and 15 goals that they tried to sign him permanently.They failed. Returning to The Dell, Malcolm resettled comfortably, alongside Chris Nicholl, obliging Dave Watson to head for Stoke, in order to keep his international hopes alive. But disaster struck in April 1982, when he went under the knife for the routine removal of a cyst on his knee. The operation was botched and a piece of floating bone – later removed – wrought havoc. Over the next 18 months, he would have but three games. Then, surprised to pass the medical, Malcolm signed for Third Division Burnley.

Bobby Campbell and Alan Ball soon rescued him from his unhappy spell at Turf Moor, but his stay at Second Division Portsmouth was ended by the knee-problem.After a couple of games for Road Sea, he made a clean break from football and embarked on a sales and marketing career. While working for Abbey Life, he was head-hunted by BUPA. Then, after working as a divisional manager for Norwich Union, he started his own business, brokering private medical insurance. He lives in Christchurch, Dorset.