Maurice Norman obituary

Maurice Norman playing for Tottenham Hotspur against Birmingham City at White Hart Lane in 1956. When he arrived for his first match with the club the previous November, ‘I really wondered what I was doing there.’ Photograph: Topical Press Agency/Getty Images

The footballer Maurice Norman, a tall, powerfully built defender, who has died aged 88, was a mainstay of Tottenham Hotspur’s famous double-winning team of 1960-61 and played 23 times for England – including in the 1962 World Cup – before his career was ended prematurely by injury in a friendly match in 1965.

While at Spurs, Norman played first at right-back and then more notably at centre-half, where he was dominating in the air and a powerful tackler on the ground. He played his first game for the north London club in 1955, and remained at White Hart Lane for a decade, making 411 appearances, 357 of them in the league.