I was sad to hear this week of the passing of Mike Neasom, who reported on Saints in my early days at The Dell for the Portsmouth News.

He was very fair and good company - a knowledgeable man and an excellent writer.

He ensured that his Portsmouth paper gave terrific coverage to our FA Cup win in 1976, despite the fact that there must have been many against us having extra publicity in that area.

Later he invited me to a reception in their offices and I went with the FA Cup tucked in my car boot.

I took along Ted Bates, too, and on the way over, while we were passing through Sarisbury Green, he asked me to turn off the main road into a bumpy lane which led into a vast area of fields.

I didn't have a clue where we were going, but after Ted asked me to sound the horn, people began to emerge from the deep undergrowth and I wondered how long they'd been in there and whether they realised that the war was over.

Or where they part of Ted's old scouting system?

Evidently we were in a vast strawberry field producing a giant variety called "the gorilla", which was despatched in great boxes to Covent Garden each day.

Clever old Ted had met one of the bosses at The Dell and after finding him a parking space there on match days, the odd box of strawberries began being transferred from one boot to another in the car park along with some veg from the man at the docks!

Ted had rung the strawberry man to warn him we were coming and, when we arrived, they gathered around to have their pictures taken with the cup.

The fairytale would have been to have filled it with champagne which we could have sipped while nibbling the berries.

Later on I received the odd box myself, usually when Brian Clough arrived. He would reciprocate when we went to the City ground with some Nottingham lace for my wife.

From the idyllic setting of the strawberry fields we eventually arrived in Portsmouth to be greeted by Mike who, with his editor, presented me with a leather-bound picture book of our cup triumph and the procession around Southampton.

I treasured it and it will remind me now of a good man sadly now no longer with us.

20th March 2004