Terry Gennoe had reconciled himself to a career in teaching after being rejected by West Bromwich Albion and Manchester United.  But keeping goal for Shropshire Sunday League side, Bricklayers Sports, while at teacher-training college, he was spotted by a Bury scout. It was at his next club, Halifax Town, however, that Gennoe really began to get noticed. Graham Taylor had all but signed him for Watford, when

Halifax manager, Alan Ball Sr, alerted his son’s club, Southampton. Lawrie McMenemy snapped Terry up for £35,000.

Terry soon displaced Peter Wells and, as the Saints went on two Cup-runs, he enjoyed a spell that ended in March 1979, a month of considerably mixed fortunes for him. It began with a 2-0 League win over Arsenal that established a post-war club record of six consecutive clean sheets. In the next 12 days, the Saints had four Cup matches, the third of which was the League Cup Final at Wembley, where Nottingham Forest took Southampton apart in the second half to win 3-2. In his Diary of that season, McMenemy blamed a “disappointing” Chris Nicholl for Forest’s first two goals and found Gennoe blameless for the third.

When an unchanged side entertained Arsenal, two days later, in the FA Cup Sixth Round, Gennoe was adjudged by his manager to have presented Arsenal with an equaliser. In keeping with that verdict, McMenemy now revised his assessment of events at Wembley, claiming that Terry had “had the wobbles from the time Forest scored their first goal.” Dropped for the Highbury replay, which Saints lost 2-0, Terry regained his place for the first third of the following season. But now Wells returned and Ivan Katalinić soon arrived, whereupon Gennoe became third choice, popping out for short loans.

He more than rescued his playing career at Ewood Park, however, as he played a record 289 League games in Blackburn Rovers’ goal.

Brad Friedel would later appear in more Cup games for Blackburn but, when he left for Aston Villa in 2008, he was still one short of Gennoe’s League record for a Rovers ’keeper. Terry had started goalkeeper-coaching while still playing and coached Tim Flowers when Rovers claimed the League title in 1995. He combined that role with being an Education Officer in Blackburn schools and later bolstered his cv with an Open University degree, specialising in physiological and biological sciences. When Kenny Dalglish moved to Newcastle United and then Celtic, Terry went with him as goalkeeper-coach. He stayed on as first Martin O’Neil and then Gordon Strachan succeeded Dalglish – until back problems ended his full-time coaching career. After living in Spain for a while, he returned to England in 2011, to coach Aston Villa’s goalkeepers. The first choice was then Shay Given, whom he’d coached at Newcastle. He knew manager Alex McLeish from his time in Scotland and had worked with McLeish’s successor, Paul Lambert, at Celtic. These contacts helped Terry survive various regime changes at Villa Park until March 2016.