For one of my servers set up I have to use an older version of Laravel. (5.5)
So I have to set things up to suit that ..... see previous post
The problem for me was that I copied the html files across that were from a newer version (5.8)
In the newer versions the csrf is simply done like this @csrf
Older versions are like this <input type="hidden" name="_token" value="{{csrf_token()}}">
That's all there is to it....small thing causes a little splinter of an error