Another thing about Alan Ball

and the era he played.

Not only was it an era that England players would be picked from Blackpool, himself and Jimmy Armfield (who is still by far the best football commentator on the radio or TV) following the likes of Sir Stanley Mathews and Stan Mortensen.

But it was an era where you had be pretty decent to carry off wearing white boots.

Today in an age where any Tom, Dick and Heskey get away with footwear that’s far more fancy than their foot skills, you’re hard pressed to find a player from the top league to the bottom in good old fashion black boots.

But wearing them back in the days of Ron Harris, Tommy Smith and Norman Hunter it marked you out as someone who was going to let known the defenders were there ‘early doors’.

So the story goes in the 1970 Ball heard Hummel were offering two grand for a player to wear their new white boots, which sounded good to him but he found out they were crap so got a youngster at the club that cleaned his boots to whitewash his old Adidas, which went OK until it rained. Bang goes the sponsors pride bang goes Bally’s two grand.