The story of the Southampton side that did so well in the 1957 FA Youth Cup has been told in the biographies of Ted Bates and Terry Paine, interviewees for which queued up to talk about one of the team’s youngest members, inside-left Peter Vine.

They unanimously agreed that Peter was the greatest talent in the side.

He would soon make his debut for the Reserves, while still only 16, and would be a regular for them during the 1957-58 season and the next. Yet he would make only one appearance in the first team – so belatedly that it was Paine’s 90th game at that level. Peter’s non-realisation of his “terrific ability” frustrated his manager: “that’s what used to annoy me,” Bates recalled,

“to get somebody special like him and he didn’t work at it.”

His Youth-team manager, Ernie Jones, had “sleepless nights over that lad” and his under-achievement: “he was perfect; he had everything.” As Bill Ellerington saw it,

Peter had “two great feet” and “was as good, or better, a passer of the ball than any of the pros.”

And Peter’s fellow inside-forward in the 1957 side, Terry Simpson, can think of only two footballers he’d seen kick a ball better than Peter: Ellerington himself; and Bobby Charlton. In fact, “for all-round skill,” Simpson rated Peter “on a par” with Charlton.

So where did it all go wrong? Youth team wing-half, Joe Harley (see image above), who would never make the first team at all, felt that the “single-minded” Paine was something of an exception among a group of lads who “played for the love of the game – and that was it… there wasn’t that ambition to play then.” Peter’s did not have that, though. He insisted that he “always wanted to be a footballer,” but accepted that “he probably had the wrong attitude.”

He offered no further excuses, although he does feel that the failure to gear the training programme to individual needs – “everybody ran round the track; everybody lifted weights” –

inhibited the development of a special talent like that of Youth international, John Bailey, another promising youngster who never made it. Peter cited Bailey as “a classic example” of a player who had the “magic” trained out of him.

Yet Peter didn’t blame the training regime for his own lack of progress.  After all, he never got a first-team game at Fourth Division Palace, whom he joined after a season at Southern League Poole, even though he enjoyed Arthur Rowe’s training methods. Peter rejected Ellerington’s assessment that he was “throwing a life away.” He had no regrets at not developing a career in football – he enjoyed a successful career in the waste-paper business, which he found “a good industry to work in” – so much so that he commuted to Swindon, in his final working years, from his home near Botley.