The Ghost of White Hart Lane
A new play at the Edinburgh Fringe tells the story of one of British football’s most gifted and tragic stars.
One day, Martin Murphy was out walking with his friend Rob White. Knowing that Martin was a writer and director, Rob had a proposal for him. Rob had been thinking about his approaching 60th birthday and how that landmark reminded him that a few months later, it would be sixty years since his father, the footballer John White, was tragically killed.
To mark that date, Rob wanted to do something. What he thought of was a play. ‘It’s a story I’ve always known,’ Martin told me. ‘It’s like Goldilocks or something like that.’ Coming from a family of Tottenham Hotspur fans, Martin had grown up with the story of the legendary midfielder who found space on the pitch so easily his nickname was The Ghost. But in July 1964, aged only 27, John White, from Musselburgh, fair-haired, handsome and married with two young children, had been killed by lightning while playing golf. ‘In recent years, knowing Rob, it’s been weird to suddenly know someone who was a living part of something I’ve always known in a kind of fairy tale sense. But when he approached me to do [John’s story] as a play, I was really excited. It was bringing together my absolute passion, which is Spurs, with what I feel I do best, which is writing plays.’
