Norbert is a moniker one normally doesn't associate with one of the game's most intimidating midfielders, but Nobby provided the steel for the England side that prevailed in the 1966 World Cup, and his gap-toothed visage would have earned him a guest spot in the movie Halloween.

Take a Brunonian list, or New Yorkian; / Lineups of Michigan, Fordham or Yale, / And tell me whence Niemiec, Magal, and Kevorkian, / Sjostrom, Wisniewski, and Kovalcheck hail!

‘You'd find,’ the priest said, ‘that it whittled down until the only divvy moment was when you stood waiting in the booking-office for the young man to take the tickets.’

They'd grown up together, had seen a lot of life, and were mostly inseparable, through six decades of raven, starve-acre days.