A figure of gargantuan proportions in the club’s Southern League era, Sammy Meston arrived in Southampton as part of the controversial “Stoke invasion”, explained in Jack Farrell’s profile.

As a perusal of this website will readily demonstrate, so many of the players who “invaded” from the Football League, in the rush for the richer pickings to be had in the early years of the Southern League, soon returned north – disillusioned, unable to settle or whatever – which makes it all the more remarkable that Meston remained for 11 seasons, during which he won six championship medals (a record) and two FA Cup runners-up medals.

The first player to exceed 400 competitive appearances for the club,

he is near the top of other club-record charts: a near-second to Bert Lee’s 252 appearances in the Southern League, he lies third, behind Terry Paine (50) and Nick Holmes (45), in FA Cup matches played. Capable of playing in most positions, Sammy was happiest at right-half where he could fire off his “long toms”, a reference to his cannon-like shots which became his trademark. The club twice offered him a benefit match. The weather on the first occasion, in March 1900, was so bad that he was out-of-pocket – which explains why he declined a second bite, on the grounds that he could not afford to accept. When he eventually left the club in 1906, he fancied a shot at coaching, starting with a summer in New York. He returned to assist Croydon Common as player-trainer in the Southern League’s Division II, after which he played and/or trained at several local clubs, while making a living as a brake fitter’s mate at Eastleigh’s Railway Works. He was still turning out for the ex-Saints in the 1920s as his son, Sam Meston Jr, was starting his professional career at The Dell.