Local lad Paul Bennett developed into a sturdy, tough-tackling central defender, very much in the mould of John McGrath, the man he followed into the first team.

In an 18-month spell from October 1972, during which he made the No.5 shirt his own,

“he was as good,” Terry Paine reckoned, “as any centre-half playing in the First Division.”

Lawrie McMenemy would prove to be less of a fan and, although Bennett would remain at No.5 following the arrival of Mel Blyth in September 1974, he would surrender that position when the Blyth-Jim Steele partnership was formed halfway through the 1975-76 season. The crumbs that were left for Paul included the Sixth Round FA Cup-tie win at Bradford. He was a track-suited member of the Final squad, but was sent packing that summer, with plenty of League football left in him: 105 games at Reading; and 113 at Aldershot.

The latter figure included the only one of his 334 League appearances in which he ever came off the bench. His quarter-final outing was sufficient to make Paul one of the “Boys of ’76”, so that he is always part of events commemorating the FA Cup win. But because he takes little joy from typical footballers’ dinners, he volunteered to organise the 1998 launch of Ted Bates’s biography as an occasion “for fans like my mum.” Such was its success that he could not escape doing the same, in 2008, for Paine’s biography. A director at Eastpoint Centre, the major community and educational facility in Thornhill, since 1986, he is also an Associate Lecturer at Solent University, where he lectures on Sports Operations in several degree programmes, including Football Studies.