It may be coincidence. I recognise that. But I have long pondered how what has become the West Ham Academy and would in its earliest days produce amongst others Bobby Moore, Martin Peters and Geoff Hurst and thus a core of Alf Ramsey's 1966 England team came about.  And the answer given is usually Ted Fenton, players at the Boleyn from 1932 until 1946 and then manager from 1950 till 1961. It was after all under his watch that the first of what has now become a long line of talent emerged. But in looking more closely as an explanation it was never fully satisfactory. It made sense. Producing home-grown talent was then thought to be cheaper for cash-strapped clubs. The jury is out on whether it really is. But other clubs had tried it, notably the Hammers nearest rival,  and with some success. The motivation was there but the idea on the face of it seemed to come out of the ether. But then there was Les Bennett.   

Leslie Donald Bennett, an interesting name in itself from the Scottish point-of-view especially as he had a brother called Kenneth, also a professional footballer, had been a very good player, an England reserve but never a cap. He was born in London, in Wood Green, in Blenheim Road to be exact. It is a street that is no longer there. It was buried in the eyesore of a shopping centre two-thirds of the way up the High Road. He came from a known sporting family. His father had been a professional runner. But he was coming to the end of his playing career when in December 1954 at not far off his thirty-seventh birthday he joined West Ham.

Nevertheless he went straight into the first team and played in virtually all the season's remaining fixtures. And it was a season that was almost crowned with promotion. But it is not where Les went from West Ham that is of most interest. It is how he got there. He had grown up up an Arsenal fan. He had even been a ball-boy at the 1932 FA Cup Final that Arsenal lost to Newcastle. Then at seventeen he had signed amateur forms and in May 1939, having just turned twenty-one, became a professional. In the meantime he had spent time at the club's nursery and had developed into a tall but quick-thinking  inside-forward with some pace, a great deal of endurance and a good touch. It seems he was destined for the first team, and so he was, but, of course not quite yet. The war interfered. He was enlisted into the Devon Regiment and saw duty in Burma, India and Egypt, with some Army games interspersed with time at home and some club friendlies. 

Thus it was not until August 1946 and at the age of twenty-eight that he finally made his league debut. It was in the Second Division, against Birmingham City,  a 1-2 home defeat at White Hart Lane. You see the club Les Bennett had joined in 1935 was Tottenham not Arsenal, the nursery club where he had been trained by playing was not Margate but Northfleet and the man to have signed him to be payed for playing was Peter McWilliam. And the team that he eventually would leave to join West Ham would be Spurs.

 In his first season Les Bennett would make forty appearances. With seventeen goals he would be the Hotspurs top scorer.  It was a team that contained  seven Northfleet graduates, product of Spurs Juniors and a local product. The team would finish sixth. The following season it would be eighth. Bennett would have marginally fewer games and goals but would rebound fully in 1948 -49.  Spurs would be fifth once more, which point there would be a change of management. Out would go Joe Hulme, once of Arsenal, and in would come Arthur Rowe.

His arrival, as another Northfleet graduate, would see the full implementation of the Push and Run style that he had been rehearsing at Chelmsford City for the previous three tears. And he did it with a team that was largely unchanged with two exceptions. Bennett was an almost ever present and again top scorer, this time joint, and there was one new arrival, one Alf Ramsey at right-back, replacing Arthur Willis.  And at the end of the season Spurs topped the division by nine points and were promoted.

Yet it did not stop there. Even in the top flight Tottenham was to brush past the opposition finishing ten points above Blackpool and the rest of the rest with only Matt Busby's Manchester United in-between.  However, Bennett, thirty-three at the end of season had shared the inside-forward spot throughout with the four-year younger Peter Murphy, bought in from Coventry.  It looked as if his time was coming as one of the first of the last Northfleet graduates. In fact it proved not to be the case. The following year he largely regained his place, was top scorer, would almost repeat the feat in 1952-53 and in 1953-54 make the appearance but not score as freely.

It was clear that the Rowe's "Northfleet" team was aging. Only four graduates remained. Reinforcements arrived but they were bought-in and still more arrived the following year, again mainly from outwith the club and changing the dynamic of the team. Johnny Brooks, previously with Reading filled Bennett's shoes as he was allowed after six starts to leave, not going far but dropping a division.

Ted Fenton on Bennett's arrival might have been expecting a seasoned professional having a last hurrah before retirement. Indeed, that is precisely what he got except there might have been more. In being under pressure from his Board for success but not being given the money to do it Fenton was in a position that almost mirrored that of Peter McWilliam just over thirty years earlier. McWilliam had had success but was struggling to maintain it. Fenton was just struggling. McWilliam's response was to do his own thinking, perhaps drawing on nursery arrangements that had been contemplated when he had been a player ten years earlier at Newcastle, but essentially going out on a limb. Fenton both could not and did not have to. He had Bennett, both of the epitome of  a  nursery product and a wise, old pro, who he could tap in the knowledge, whilst League rules had made external nurseries impossible, that was not the case with internal ones. 

Who came up with the blueprint for an internal nursery. It could have been Bennett but I suggest Fenton, simply because he knew his club's structure. But that was only the what. The how, with Peter McWilliam having died in 1951, would have had to be drawn from Bennett's memories not just of the old master's way of playing but his model of teaching how to play. And the result: perhaps some educative conversations and an in-house "Northfleet" and all that would mean for the futures of West Ham, England and, to compete the circle, Alf Ramsey too.