Having been a Scottish schoolboy international in the late 1930s, Tom McGarrity then served as a navigator with the RAF during WW2 before helping Morton win the Scottish “B” Division in 1950. Celtic were apparently keen on him but Annie, his mother, a devout Catholic, vetoed the move worried he would be caught up in Glasgow’s sectarian rivalry.

Tom turned his back on football after falling out with Morton and having qualified as a physiotherapist while still playing came south to practice in Maidenhead. In November 1952, Manager George Roughton was indulging in a spending spree having already acquired Alex Simpson and Roy Williams but nevertheless he forked out a further £4,500 to persuade Morton to release Tom and the inside-forward celebrated turning 30 five days previously when on his debut against Hull – and

playing in borrowed boots from Johnny Walker – he quickly got off the mark.

He played in the next three games but then lost his place to Williams and ended up only playing one more game, a 5-0 defeat at Huddersfield as Saints were relegated to Division 3. Now in dispute with the club over financial matters and refusing to sign on for the 1953-54 season, he quit professional football once more to return to his physio’s job in Maidenhead.

He later maintained a link with the game by becoming involved on the medical side with Oxford United while heading up the Physiotherapy Department at Oxford’s Radcliffe Infirmary. Upon his death in 1999 The Scottish Herald in his obituary described him as

“being highly intelligent but with a broad streak of pragmatism”.

The son of Charles, a Clyde-side plater, Tom had four children himself and all three of his sons played schoolboy football for Oxford.