Glaswegian Roddy McLeod arrived from Scottish non-league football to spend six-and-a-half interesting years with West Bromwich, during which they twice reached the FA Cup Final – winning in 1892 and losing in 1895 – even though they twice finished bottom of the Football League’s top flight. Roddy played in both Finals and scored 50 of Albion’s League goals in 149 games.

After which, he dropped down to Second Division Leicester Fosse for a season and then started the next in the Southern League with Brighton United, for whom he scored in the opening game, as his side went down 4-1 in the first-ever game at The Dell. By the end of that season, he was playing for Southampton in their run-in to a third consecutive Southern League title. Roddy McLeod’s place in the Saints’ history would be defined, however, by what he did, and didn’t, do, the following season, in the FA Cup. In the Second and Third Rounds, Southampton eliminated, in turn, First Division Newcastle and West Brom, with centre-forward McLeod contributing half of the six goals scored. But Jack Farrell, who had scored but one Southern League goal since the Cup-run began in January, was preferred to McLeod, both for the semi-final and for the Final that went to a losing replay. The consequent ructions – which remained, for many years, the subject of speculation and recrimination – are summarised in Farrell’s profile. After which, both men left in the summer of 1900 – McLeod for Brentford, where he wound down his career over the next six seasons, helping them to win the Southern League’s Division II in 1901. He was on such hard times, come 1911, that Southampton appealed on his behalf for a job as a warehouseman. He eventually found work – in a brewery and then as a boiler-mechanic.