Cyril song is living on
HAD HE still been around, Cyril Knowles would almost certainly have smiled on hearing the terrace chant “Nice one Cyril” amended for, and by, the new generation of Tottenham regulars.
While its reprise at Bournemouth on Sunday was in honour of a new hero Son Heung-Min – “Nice one, Sonny, nice one Son, Nice one Sonny, let’s have another one!” – a generation and more of Spurs fans will forever associate the chant with Knowles, marauding down the left flank for Spurs in the late Sixties and early Seventies.
Knowles’ story was to end early when he was taken by cancer aged 47 and it was also one tinged with huge tragedy when he lost his young son in a freak accident in 1974.
But those who knew him well, either admiringly from the stands, or affectionately from the dressing room, remember a man, fiercely proud of Yorkshire roots, who never lost the smile from his face whatever was sent his way.
Steve Perryman, the former Spurs captain who overlapped with Knowles’ time at Spurs, recalls a “bubbly man” who was hugely popular from the moment he walked into White Hart Lane after being signed by Bill Nicholson from Middlesbrough in 1964.
“When it came to banter in the dressing room, he was always proud of where he came from,” said Perryman.
“His big hero was Geoffrey Boycott and he was forever chipping at Middlesex v Yorkshire and the like. On the field, he had a left foot to die for and was one of the first real attacking full-backs in the top flight. And as a man he was an all-round nice guy. Likeable. Always smiling.”
That sunny demeanour was tested terribly in November 1974 when a freak accident on the motorway took the life of his son – a stone kicked up off the road by a lorry flew through the windscreen and hit him while he was a passenger in the back seat.
Such unimaginable heartbreak might have doused the spirit of others but, according to Perryman, Knowles remained a hugely positive figure.
“What happened to his son was awful but he had a very strong family behind him,” he said. “He remained smiling after that and continued to live his life on the front foot.”
Knowles played in the Spurs teams that won the FA Cup in 1967, the League Cup in 1971 and 1973 and the UEFA Cup in 1972. In 506 matches in white, he scored 17 goals, including twice in a memorable final-day win over Leeds in 1975, which kept them in the top flight.
When his playing time came to an end, he had spells as a coach at Doncaster, Darlington, Torquay and Hartlepool. In February 1991 he was diagnosed with a brain tumour and by August was gone.
Perryman said: “The funeral was in Barnsley and you could not move in the town that day. That said it all. But I heard the fans singing the ‘Nice one, Son’ chant on Sunday. He would have liked that.”