I suppose that Push 'n Run, the style of play agreed as used by Tottenham Hotspur in its rawest iteration in the 1950s and also in a more subtle form by the same club in the 1960s under Bill Nicholson formally came to White Hart Lane with the arrival of Arthur Rose as manager in 1949. But the truth is that it had been there since 1912. Indeed it might even be argued that it had arrived, albeit in embryo, in 1898 or 1899. In the latter case it had been with the signing as a player from Everton of John Cameron or the same, one of, in my opinion, two of the most pivotal figures in early World football, taking on the player-manager role a year later. In the former it had been as Peter McWilliam, the other pivotal figure, became the club's first manager only to have been a prominent player. 

Cameron was to have eight seasons at the club, McWilliam nineteen in two stints, the first fifteen ended by choice, the second four by the Second World War. Cameron was to bring the Scottish game to North London ,Arsenal was then still south of the river, and Spurs its first top- flight trophy and probable uniqueness. Its taking of the FA Cup in 1901 as a non-Football but Southern League club will probably never be repeated. McWilliam was to bring the Scots Newcastle game including his own contribution to it and his own variations and developments of it. With it he would two decades after the first win the club's second FA Cup and but for a rampant Liverpool in 1922 a first League Championship.

By then the team was being trained by Billy Minter. Born in 1888, an inside-forward, he had by the age of twenty briefly played for his local club, Woolwich Arsenal, and Reading before arriving at White Hart Lane in 1908 and being retained by McWilliam. He would then play 243 times until retirement in 1920, aged thirty-two, having served two years in the army and being wounded. However, he was immediately appointed to the training staff. And there he remained with for the purposes of this story three notable players passing through his hands. Jimmy Seed, also an inside-forward, essentially his replacement, joined the club in 1920. Cecil Poynton first played for the first team in 1923,  the same year as Arthur Rowe joined Northfleet United, the Kent club that McWilliam had just joined forces with as the London club's nursery.   

And thus it might have remained had not Peter McWilliam finally become frustrated with the Spurs' Board's parsimoniousness. Having peaked in 1921-22 the club slipped to 12th and had remained more or less there for the next five seasons. Despite Seed's sixty-four goals the manager was having to create teams on the cheap with local players and those he scouted. It meant he had built himself a reputation as a consummate spotter of talent, one not reflected in his salary, and meant that sometime or other an offer would come in from elsewhere. In fact it came from Middlesbrough, which had the advantages of being just up the coast from Redcar, his wife's hometown, just promoted into the top flight and seemingly ambitious.   

So it was that at the end of the 1926-27 season Peter McWilliam left Spurs but having given his former club the option not of matching the Teeside club's offer but going some way towards it. The offer was declined. Billy Minter was promoted to fill the vacancy and almost immediately made a move that would be his undoing. To be fair it is unlikely that it was actually his decision. The Board involvement seems likely. But Jimmy Seed was sold to rival First Division club, Sheffield Wednesday. Otherwise the  McWilliam game philosophy would have continued. Minter had known little else. 

Yet there was a problem. Minter might have been schooled by McWilliam but he was not the man himself.  As a result at the end of the 1927-28 season the club found itself in twenty-first position of twenty-two and was down. The only team below it was none other than Middlesbrough. But it was the lower club that reacted best. In McWilliam's hands it bounced back immediately. Tottenham Hotspur did not and, whilst Minter was given a second season, he did not see it through. In November on grounds of ill-health he stepped down to an office job still at the club that he would keep until his death in 1941.

Clearly a replacement was needed and, whilst the Spurs' Board saw the season to an end and a tenth position once more, it looked outward not in. Percy Smith and with no known connection to the London club was brought in from Bury. But he would not have come cheap. Although the Lancashire club had itself just been relegated from the First Division the previous year it had been fifth. And Smith was to have an effect. Tenth became third as a certain Cecil Poynton played his last games, then third became second and promotion in 1933 and in 1934 promotion became third in the top flight behind only Herbert Chapman's Arsenal and Huddersfield. And it was done with new, local centre-half, a product of Northfleet, Arthur Rowe. 

However, even Rowe was not able to prevent what happened in 1934-5. Injury meant he managed only eighteen appearances as the White Hart Lane wheels simply came off. At home all season just eight games were won, two away  and Spurs finished in last place and were down. Smith resigned, happy to drop a division to also relegated Notts County and claiming director interference in team selection. No-one would have been surprised. 

At that point Spurs' directors turned to a man, Jack Tresadern, who as a player was a product of West Ham and as a manager was coming from Northampton and Crystal Palace, fifth a division lower. And at his new club he was again to finish fifth, then dropped to tenth and rose to fifth once more so critically with no promotion. It was far from failure but pressure clearly was building and in April 1938 with on offer from Plymouth Argyle, eight places lower, the club's fourth manager in the decade since Peter McWilliam jumped rather then be pushed.   

And thus it was that Tottenham Hotspur looked across North London to its greatest rival, Arsenal, and recruited its chief-scout. On the death of Herbert Chapman in January 1934 the training staff, Joe Shaw and Tom Whittaker, held the fort as the managerial position was first offered to a football man, who refused but accepted the top scouting role, and then was handed to a manager of the Board with no footballing experience but plenty of  front. And in the next four years as Chapman's team aged it was rebuilt with no loss of form. During them Arsenal would win precisely the same honours as Chapman had in the previous four. And that scout, reputably the best paid in the country, was none other than Peter McWilliam.

There seems little doubt that McWilliam returned to Spurs on a far better financial deal than when had left a decade earlier. He also made it clear that he would only do so on the understanding that there was minimal Board interference. It is said that it was precisely that which had led him to leave Middlesbrough. And he made his mark immediately, no so much in terms of results, the club would drop three places in the table, but in personnel. Moreover the following year he would go further still until war intervened with it left hanging as to how far he could have gone.

And of the

The nursery arrangement that he had begun with Northfleet United was still in place, at least partly. Rather than youth players being there full-time they would train at Tottenham and only travel to Northfleet to play on Saturdays. It functioned in parallel with a Tottenham Juniors team with in 1938-39 the Spurs first team including one ex. Junior and six ex. Northfleet, amongst whom was Vic Buckingham. And of the nine known players the following season two were youth players and five Northfleet, with Buckingham being joined by Ron Burgess, Bill Nicholson and Freddie Cox, who would go on a decade later to form a successful managerial partnership at West Bromwich Albion.

In fact at this point it is worthwhile in the context of what Tottenham was and would be looking at the whole Northfleet operation from its inception. The connection is said to have begun in March 1922. The story is that Kent club tried to recruit Jimmy Ross, the reserve full-back from Raith Rovers, as manager. But there is a problem with this version. Ross did not arrive at White Hart Lane until a year later and played his last game there in the following January, 1924. A far more likely connection is goalkeeper Bill Jacques, who was born in Erith, spent two seasons at Northfleet itself and between 1914 and the very beginning of the 1922-23 season made 138 appearances for the Spurs. And when he stopped playing he clearly return to his home-town, because that was where he was buried in 1925, so only three years later and aged just thirty-six. Moreover, it was in April 1923 that Fred Barnett made his first appearance for Spurs, having been previously Northfleet's "star" player and it is also said that the former Falkirk player, Billy Houston, another Scot so like McWilliam inculcated in the Scottish passing-game, arrived at about the same time to become Northfleet's senior professional. He may have been the same Billy Houston, who in the 1923-24 season turned out three times for Wrexham.       

On the basis of these scraps it seems reasonable to assume that Northfleet had some non-inclusive arrangement with Tottenham from late 1923 onwards. Indeed the first graduate into the Spurs first team seems to have been Harry Skitt in 1924. He had been recruited by Peter McWilliam from Midlands football and remain at White Hart Lane until 1931. Then came perhaps long-term the most important of the earliest products, Jock Richardson. Born in Motherwell he was signed by Hamilton Academicals at sixteen, the secretary of which at the time was none other than Scott Duncan, had arrived at Northfleet aged eighteen and first played for Spurs in 1927. A full-back he would over the next two seasons turn out thirty-six times before moving on for four more years at Reading and, on hanging up his boots, returning to Scotland. Indeed he died there in Law just to the south of his hometown, having fully retired from football only in 1970. And the reason is because for a dozen years of more he had been his former, London club's scout north of the border, in which role he would be pivotal in the Spurs' successes particularly of the 1960s and arguably beyond.       

However, as the promotion of just Skitt, Richardson and a few others shows, any new system needs time to produce. Between introduction and McWilliam's move to Middlesbrough there was on the face of it little benefit. Nor, in fact, would it produce for Billy Minter, his successor. That would only be in the 1932-33 season, when under Percy Smith five of the first eleven, including a new face at centre-half, Arthur Rowe, were Tottenham Junior/Northfleet graduates in a team that earned  because of its speed and a noted style the nickname of "The Greyhounds" and promotion. Moreover, the following season five with the addition of Fred Channell it had become six in a team that finished in sight of the highest peak.

However, it was not to last. Injuries struck, Notably Rowe played just eighteen times, none in the second half of the season, no real alternative was found and team form, especially away, collapsed. Inevitable relegation followed. Smith resigned, at which what seems to have happened is that Wally Hardinge, reserve team coach, stepped up, got Arthur Rowe back and  promoted Andy Duncan, a Renton-born Scottish inside-forward, brought in the previous season but hardly played, as well as six more Northfleet graduates, making nine in all in the team. Moreover, on the fringe with eighteen appearances was another, twenty-one year old Vic Buckingham. 

Tottenham would finish sixth, seven points off promotion. Had they won their last four games it would have six points better, so in second place but two of those games had been against Charlton, the eventual runners-up and promoted, and if anyone knew how to counteract the Northfleet-way, the McWilliam-way, then it was the manager at The Valley, Jimmy Seed. After all it was the essence of how he was trying to play too and of the success he would achieve immediately in the First Division, second behind Manchester City and a place above McWilliam's Arsenal,  then fourth behind the same Arsenal, third and above Arsenal without McWilliam in 1939 and post-war in the FA Cup.

Yet despite what can only be described sweetness out of the lion the progress was on the face of it reversed but in fact only interrupted. The next season with Tresadern brought in Rowe was still there, Buckingham had come through but nine had become five. Tottenham finished tenth. There seems then to have been a rethink. Five became six but now Rowe, at the age of thirty- two, could manage just twelve starts and, despite improvement, it was only to sixth,. Tresadern was out, Peter McWilliam back in, drawing from his own well  first Arthur Hitchins and Albert Hall, both of whom were robbed of what might have been their best years by the coming war and then Burgess, Nicholson and Cox.

It is a matter of sadness that another casualty of the Second World War was to be Peter McWilliam's time at White Hart Lane second time around. He had been fifty-eight on arrival and sixty-two on final departure. He would bring in Harry Lowe, one of his former players, as his assistant. Lowe post-War, although he did not die until 1966, did not stay in football but other links remained. Some were quiet.  William Whatley, a Northfleet graduate, and in McWilliam's 1938-39 team became a Spurs coach and scout. Jock Richardson we know about. Leslie Howe, another product of Northfleet and team-mate of Arthur Rowe, was Spurs' 'A' team coach from 1946 to 1948 before leaving to manage Enfield and then seemingly drop out of the game. Others were more obvious, Rowe himself and Bill Nicholson, but there was one person , who would provide a bridge from when Northfleet was first set up and through the first McWilliam era to glory days of the 1950s and 1960s  and even a little beyond, Cecil Poynton.

 
A left-back recruited by Peter McWilliam from the Midlands Poynton joined and first played for Spurs in 1923 as a twenty-two year old. And over almost the next decade he would make one hundred and fifty-six appearances, never quite a regular partly because of injuries.  And that might have been it had not been offered and accepted the role as player-trainer of the reserve side. It lasted just a season, 1933-34, until an injury also brought it to an end, at which he left the club but not fully. Interspersed with two periods as player-manager of Ramsgate he still work as a scout, whilst having an outside job as an electrician.

Peter McWilliam had left Spurs in 1927. He returned in 1938 with Harry Lowe, after five years managing in Spain, his assistant and a both a former McWilliam player at the club and teammate of Poynton. The war would, of course, see the end of league football, although friendlies continues. McWilliam would retire from the game in 1942, as Poynton helped on an ad hoc basis on match-days. It meant that in 1945 he was associated with the club and was offered and took on the role of first team assistant trainer, when, with Harry Lowe overlooked, Joe Hulme, ex-Arsenal, became manager in 1946. Under him Poynton was in 1947 promoted to club trainer, whilst before retirement Lowe scouted for Chelsea, became manager at Bournemouth in Division Four for three years and then for two years from 1951 at Yeovil in the Southern League, all without conspicuous success.

Hulme lasted three years at White Hart Lane again without much success until replaced by Arthur Rowe, who was also former Spurs player, recruited once more by McWilliam but having never played in the first team under him and again a former Poynton team-mate. Poynton was retained. In fact he remained in post throughout Arthur Rowe's six year tenure, the three years of Jimmy Anderson, another of Tottenham's stalwart coaches, that followed and then all but the two last year's of Bill Nicholson's sixteen seasons, Nicholson having been recruited to the club not in McWilliam's first stint but his second.  In other words Poynton was the first team trainer cum coach at Spurs throughout the Push 'n Run years, the pass, go and re-collect style that Rowe opening admitted was based on the training routines at the core of Peter McWilliam's game.

But the facts remain that both Arthur Rowe and Jimmy Anderson stepped down as Spurs managers because of ill-health. Anderson was sixty-two so it was perhaps understandable. Moreover he had a Bill Nicholson, retired from playing, said to be ready to step up. However, Rowe was  relatively young at forty-nine and essentially suffered a nervous breakdown due to pressures coming from two sources.

On arrival he had inherited a team that was largely formed and largely in its prime. To it he had made only one real alteration, the bringing in of Alf Ramsey notionally at right-back. But Ramsey with his game-reading and passing ability was far more than that. He was the team's right-side play-maker. Today the idea of an attacking full-back, a wing-back, is nothing out of the ordinary, indeed it is more common than not, even if the distributive full-back is still a rarity. Then both were revolutionary but could only work with planning. If Ramsey advanced  someone had to drop in to fill his space and that someone was the right-half, Bill Nicholson and he seems to have done the job well but not without resentment. Moreover that resentment seems to have developed into rivalry as both he and Ramsey saw themselves on retirement as future club coaches.

In addition the five year to 1955 had seen the Championship-winning Spurs inevitably age. Medley and Willis had been the first to go in 1953 and Burgess, Bennett and Nicholson in 1954, Les Bennett down a division to West Ham.  Rowe was left with not a single, first-team Northfleet product, had tried to rebuild to the same standard but with just three Tottenham Juniors' graduates essentially faced failure and buckled but not before making it clear that longer-term he saw Nicholson not Ramsey as the club's future.

Alf Ramsey knew his days at Spurs were numbered and on retirement from playing he did not hesitate in moving on. He went to Ipswich taking his version of  Push 'n Run with him. Nicholson's stayed in theory at least. In his first team in 1958-9 he had four ex. Tottenham Juniors. All the other seven had been bought in, Blanchflower and Johnny Brooks by Rowe, Maurice Norman, Bobby Smith, Jim Iley and Terry Medwin by Anderson and only Cliff Jones by the new manager.  The team finished a very average 18th, which is when there was a change of direction that might be seen as a last name in the Northfleet coffin but equally as returning to its McWilliam source. Spurs had not only recruited Scots but had gone back into Scotland to find them, turning to Jock Richardson in the process. On his recommendation, it is said, twenty-four year-old left-half Dave Mackay had come from Hearts at the very end of the previous season and played just four games. The goalkeeping experience of Bill Brown arrived in the summer from a decade at Dundee and twenty-two year-old John White from Falkirk in October. And the results were immediate. At the end of season Spurs finished third, the following year the Double was theirs and the year after that both the FA Cup once more third place in the league, behind Burnley and Champions, managed by a no doubt smiling Alf Ramsey, be it for Freude or Schadenfreude,  newly-promoted Ipswich, the year after that the Cup Winners' Cup and in 1967 again victory in the FA Cup.

And this return to Scotland is fascinating  Forty year earlier under the stewardship of Peter McWilliam there had always been Scots in the White Hart Lane squad, if no more than one was a regular in the league eleven. But by the early 1930s not only was there not one in the first team but not one in the squads either. And whilst from 1935 until the War there was at least one Scot at the club post War there were none throughout throughout the stewardship of Hulme and Rowe and the first year of Anderson's. Only in 1957 was the first recruited, centre-half John Rymen, Alloa-born but via Accrington. 

It seems on the face of it strange. But there is an explanation. Throughout the more than half a century from the end of the Great until Bill Nicholson's retirement in 1974 Spurs had mostly played the McWilliam way, the Scottish, short-passing, interchanging, McWilliam way. True it changed somewhat from The Cross version of 2-2-5  at the beginning, through Rowe's essentially 3-4-3, to Nicholson's 3-2-4-1, 3-3-4 and finally 4-2-. But throughout it relied on an attacking and a defensive half-back and a play-maker or -makers, more often than not a ghost inside-forward; Bert Bliss and others under McWilliam himself; Bennett under Rowe. Moreover, with Northfleet in place there was  not just a steady stream of just such players but others in other positions, who, because they too were trained in it, understood the system equally well. Furthermore, for precisely the same reason, they did not have to be either Scots-born and/or raised. They could in fact be, if you like, pseudo-Scots, local and inculcated or bought in from elsewhere, English and other players taught to play not exactly like Scots but like McWilliam Scots.

But what happens when with Northfleet closed by the Second World War the stream dies up? In the case of Arthur Rowe it was no recognition of a way through and resultant breakdown. In Nicholson's, perhaps every Anderson's and Nicholson's case it was realisation that perhaps was a way, i.e. to recharge from source, where the old, Scottish philosophy lingered. And it not only worked but rapidly. Brown would bowl the ball out as Ditchburn had. Mackay would lock the half-back line like Nicholson himself. John White would fill Bennett's shoes and become known literally as The Ghost. And all three would buy time to look for others from no matter what source considered to have the required special aptitudes. Alan Mullery would replace Mackay, Jennings Brown and Scotsman, Alan Gilzean, another of Jock Richardson's recommendations, and then Martin Peters, John White on his tragic death.

And this was all done with Cecil Poynton in the background taking and training on the Tottenham juniors as they came through in the McWilliam way, Eddie Baily as Nicholson's managerial assistant from 1963. Poynton would retire as a trainer in 1971. He was seventy years old, would still work at the club as a physiotherapist and die still in Tottenham in 1983. Both Nicholson and Baily would step down in 1974, the former in August and Baily a month later. Not quite fifty he would then scout for Chelsea and become West Ham's Chief Scout. Nicholson was due to remain an advisor but fell out with the chairman, went instead also to West Ham before being brought back to White Hart Lane a year later as a consultant and staying to 1991. It was the year Terry Venables also left the club as manager, the last of its players from the McWillam/Push 'n Run eras.