Ilkeston, April 1976. Chris Waller remembers his day in the sun

In the first of a series of features in which we will celebrate the performances of old players, we visited Shoreham-by-Sea, where Wal lives with his wife, Lesley, to recall the day.

We were lucky to find him alive. Waller, 77, almost died five years ago. “It was a rare neurological disease, and I was on a life support machine for two weeks so it was pretty serious,” he says.

“It’s a disease which stops messages getting from your brain to your muscles. I couldn’t eat or speak. It happened suddenly, while I was coaching up at Cuckfield, which I still do.