Yorkshire-born Arthur Coates was a blacksmith;’s labourer who played his early football in the Manchester area, latterly for Heywood United in the Lancashire Combination. This was familiar territory to former Saint, Arthur Chadwick, who was by now managing Exeter in the Southern League and who plucked Coates away to St James’s Park. After only a season there, Arthur joined Southampton. He played in exactly half of their Southern League matches in 1912-13 but then returned to Heywood, where Tony Donnelly, who would fleetingly join the Saints after the War, partnered him at full-back.