I remember watching Danny from the Shelf in a game against Preston in the early '60s that we won something like 5-0 or 5-1, cannot remember the exact score, when he went on a run from around the half way line and Gazza-like mesmerised their defenders with his trickery on the ball, dancing through and around them one after another without allowing any of them to get touch on the ball. I recall gasping at the sheer wizardry of it, the way he nonchalantly feinted this way and dummied that as he cut a swathe through their defence before dinking the ball into the box for Johnny White to run onto, something he did with regularity.
But for me the real point about captain Blanchflower wasn't just that he was immensely gifted on the ball, nor even the way he brought his exceptional vision and tactical awareness to bear so effectively on the field of play. No, it was more than anything else the sheer power of his influence on the team overall and on the positive way they played throughout. In essence, Sir Billy Nich was the architect off the pitch but Danny was the supremo on it.
At the beginning of the 1960-61 season, even before a ball had been kicked in anger, he went on record saying boldly that Tottenham would win the Double. At the time the Double had come to be seen as well-nigh impossible. Season after season the most dominant club of the year had come close, but always it had eluded them at the death, the psychological barrier seemingly always proving just too much.
I remember thinking at the time, absolutely no way, the fact he'd come out and said it was in itself the kiss of death. Remember we'd only finished third the previous season, fading away badly in the run-in. But Blanchflower kept on insisting as the results began to stack up that this was the target the whole team were aiming at. He believed we were good enough and that he could see no reason why we wouldn't win it. It was this kind of conviction that looking back you can see had coursed right through the team to the extent they played TO it, believing, you sensed, it was almost their duty to step up and make it happen.
I could happily reminisce until the cows come home about the wizardry both mental and physical of Danny Blanchflower but suffice it to say, I remain convinced to this day if it hadn't been for the transcending power of Danny's influence on the '60-61 side we simply would not have won the Double.
