John White was struggling to find a partner for a round of golf one afternoon in July, exactly 62 years ago, after he had finished a morning of pre-season training at White Hart Lane.He tried to persuade some of his team-mates in a Tottenham Hotspur side who, three years earlier, had become the first team in the 20th century to win the league and FA Cup double, and the previous year had become the first English side to win a European trophy — the Cup Winners’ Cup.Cliff Jones, his close friend and partner in crime with practical jokes that would annoy legendary Spurs manager Bill Nicholson, declined as storm clouds were gathering around north London. Terry Medwin and White’s fellow Scot Jimmy Robertson also didn’t fancy it.So White decided to play on his own and left his home in Winchmore Hill for the Crews Hill course in Enfield despite the protestations of his wife Sandra who told him “you’re not going golfing” before relenting and dropping her husband off “just for a few holes”.White never returned home. One of the best footballers in England and the man Nicholson planned to build his ‘new’ Spurs team around was struck by lightning as he sheltered under an oak tree on the ninth fairway when storms hit. He was killed instantly.Spurs had lost their star inside forward and Sandra, at 22 and with two young children, two-year-old daughter Mandy and son Rob, just five months old, had lost her husband.John White was killed at the age of 27 (Don Morley/Getty Images)“There are so many ‘if onlys’,” Rob White, who has spent the 62 years since discovering as much as he possibly can about the father he never knew, tells The Athletic.“Cliff Jones hid my dad’s trousers in the dressing room after training, which was an everyday prank for them, but it delayed dad’s world by 10 minutes while he looked for them. Then there was sheltering under the tree. Why did he do that? You can look at it and say ‘how many red lights did he miss?’ Everything could have turned out differently that day.“I’ve actually played golf a couple of times at Crews Hill. As kids we went to garden centres near there but never to the golf course because it was the stuff of nightmares for me. But when I eventually did go there it was quite peaceful and I definitely felt a sense of closure.”In 2010, Rob White, together with Julie Welch, Fleet Street’s first female football reporter, wrote a moving book about John called ‘The Ghost — In Search of My Father The Football Legend’ (The Ghost was John’s nickname, derived from his ability to float into space unnoticed by the opposition). Two years ago the story was turned into a brilliant play by writer and director — and huge Spurs fan — Martin Murphy.On Tuesday, 62 years to the day after the tragic accident, The Ghost of White Hart Lane will be staged for the first time in John’s home town of Musselburgh, just outside Edinburgh.Actor Callum Lewis Newman puts in an extraordinary performance, playing 31 different characters in this one-man play, principally John and Rob White. “At times it’s as if Callum is my dad,” says Rob. “It’s incredibly emotional for me to watch it. I’m able to get close to how he might have been.”Callum Lewis Newman playing John White in The Ghost of White Hart LaneIt is a play that tells an extraordinary story of a superstar cut down in his prime and one that remains largely unknown to a legion of younger football followers, even Spurs fans.