Greavsie
Jimmy Greaves was a footballing will o’the wisp. His nimble skills lifted him over despairing legs, intimidating tackles and rugged assaults of a much more physically fearsome game. Those skills alone would have been sufficient for stardom. But there was more. Jimmy Greaves was a penalty-box rapier. Statistics prove the point: for Chelsea, even briefly Milan, Tottenham Hotspur then West Ham United and England.
Greaves, who has died at 81, was an enduring personality not only for his football achievements, but also through his TV engagement with a generation born after his retirement.
He was born in1940, in Poplar, East London, but when he was only six weeks old the family were bombed out and moved to Dagenham. His father had progressed from a guard to driver on the Underground when they moved again to Hainault in north-east London.
By then young Jimmy had made his mark as a schoolboy footballer in
