Eric Gill reckons he would have loved playing in modern day football.

The ability to use your feet and be the first playmaker as your team build from the back would have suited him down to the ground.

His great friend and fellow ex-Albion goalkeeper Dave Hollins is not so keen on the game we see now.

Some of the stuff he sees from keepers drives him mad.

It is one of the few things they do not have in common.

Both were born into poverty in the 1930s, both were considered among the country’s best goalkeepers in their day.

They competed to be Albion’s No.1 in the 1950s.

And they remain great friends and indeed team-mates – in the world of bowls.

Gill at the age of 91 and Hollins at 84.

Freelance writer Spencer Vignes, an Albion supporter, has produced many highly-readable pieces about former players down the years.

Anyone who reads the Seagulls programme will be familiar with his work.

He has done individual pieces on both Gill and Hollins.

But there was so much to work with there, such a special story, a book was born – Eric And Dave (Pitch Publishing, £18.99).

As the blurb says, it represents a journey back to when footballers earned £20 a week and goalkeepers wore string gloves.

It is football nostalgia. The book feels and looks old-fashioned as you pick it up.

But in a good, reassuring, golden glow sort of way.

The two lead characters recall how they dodged Hitler’s bombs as children before pitting their wits for several top clubs including Charlton Athletic, Albion and Newcastle United (plus, in Hollins’ case, Wales).

The list of players they faced included Stanley Matthews, George Best, Pele, Garrincha, Jimmy Greaves, Tom Finney, Denis Law, Bobby Charlton and their nemesis – Brian Clough.

These days they live just along the coast road from each other – in Ovingdean and Peacehaven.

Hollins has moved back south after his career took him as far away as Newcastle.

Spencer said: “Eric is such a character. He is a North London lad, that Camden accent is still there.

“But he has lived in Sussex since the 1950s.

“He says he would have loved to have been a goalkeeper in the modern age, where you are able to do a bit more.

“Have a bit more about you and pass the ball a bit more and not just get clattered.

“He says he would far rather play football today whereas Dave says sometime he wants to throw his shoes at the TV.

“Goalkeepers coming for crosses and just punching it!”

It was a long through ball by Gill which sent Albion towards the first win of their first ever promotion-winning season.

He spotted Peter Harburn making a run and the subsequent finish at Gillingham set the ball rolling in 1957-58 as the club escaped Division Three South at last.

Spencer said: “He was a very accurate kicker, which is why he thinks he would have better in this era.

“I think he would have, too.

“He didn’t just lump it upfield, it was a pass.”

It was only when transcribing his interview with Gill that Spencer really latched on to the fact he had said he and Hollins were still mates.

The idea for a book developed, although interviews had to be done remotely for the most part as a precaution against Covid.

Spencer said: “Despite the fact they were rivals at that time, they had become good mates and were still mates to this day.

“David spent the best part of two years lodging at Eric and his wife’s guest house.

“It just struck me as genuinely remarkable.

“So many footballers are all mates when they are at one club and quite often when they move away they don’t speak to each other again.

“I had never come across a genuine friendship like this in sport.”

And so he set about raiding their memory banks for recollections of those golden days with Albion and elsewhere.

It turned out to be a rich seam.

Spencer said: “The thing that really struck me was how bang-on their memories were.

“I expected when I cross-checked something it might be a bit out.

“But they were spot-on. Their attention to detail was amazing.

“There was the odd little thing but about 97% of it was right.”

Hollins was Gill’s understudy at the Goldstone as the latter went on a record-equalling run of 247 consecutive Football League appearances.

He matched the total set by Ted Ditchburn for Tottenham in 1958 during a 2-0 win over Walsall.

Then came a twist, which gave Hollins his big chance when Gill, who had already been congratulated on his new outright record by Ditchburn himself, fell ill ahead of the landmark match.

Eric And Dave reflects on both sides of that episode.

The irony being, perhaps, that generally the two men have both enjoyed great health (barring some self-inflicted nostril damage).

That is despite being target practice for battering ram centre-forwards back in the day.

The issue of dementia among old-time players is examined in a later chapter.

Of course there have often been rivals for a place in a team who also get on well off the pitch.

If ‘rivals’ is even the right word to use.

Maybe Bruno and Inigo Calderon had it right when they were Albion’s right-backs not so many years ago.

I forget which one said it but they both thought it.

“I don’t have rivals in my own team.”

After all these years, Eric and Dave might see it the same way.

The launch of Eric & Dave takes place next Sunday, October 2, at Denton Island Bowls Club, Newhaven, from 2pm. It has been pushed back from this weekend.