Leaving school to become a miner George Getgood then joined the army aged 16 in 1908. Five years later in September 1913, he bought himself out of the Royal Scot Fusiliers for £18 owing to his mother’s poor health and by then he had made a name for himself as a footballer

“A first class football player (association). Steady,”

was his commanding officer’s succinct assessment. In what remained of peace-time, Getgood deployed his “first class” talents briefly at Ayr United, newly-promoted to Scotland’s First Division, and then at Southern League Reading (see scrapbook section), where sometimes he played under the name of George Goodman. When war broke out, he re-enlisted with the Fusiliers and was refunded half of his £18 buy-out. In 1916, he transferred to the Royal Army Medical Corps. He played football for them and as a guest with his home-town club.

After the War, he remained with Reading until the end of their inaugural, 1920-21, season in the Football League. Then, having signed for Willenhall of the Birmingham League, he moved, before the 1921-22 season began, to Birmingham, newly-promoted to the Football League’s Division I. After 10 games at that level, he then featured, with his team-mate, Jack Elkes, in the four-man exchange move (explained in Elkes’s profile) that took him to Third South Southampton.

A strong tackler, he played in most of the Saints’ run-in to promotion, mostly at left- or centre-half.

He was a Second Division regular in 1922-23, in one or the other of those positions – until December, when he was deployed in the attack for a while. But never having moved house from Birmingham, he eased his commuting problems by moving to Wolves in February 1923, in a more conventional exchange-deal that brought Bill McCall to The Dell.

Instantly relegated with them to the Third North, he experienced another promotion in 1924, as Wolves bounced back to Division II. His up-and-down “first-class” career climaxed in a few months at Aberdare, in what would be their farewell season in the Football League. George became the licensee of the Great Western Hotel, in Bewdley near Kidderminster, and, after a short spell back in Scottish non-league football, he returned to the Midlands, where he played, finally, in the Kidderminster works-team of Midland Red, with whom he was a bus conductor. He later worked as a porter in Worcester.