When Tom Parker was appointed manager at Norwich in March 1933, his first signing was local teenager, Frank Perfect.

By the time Parker became Southampton’s manager, four years on, and went back to Carrow Road to snaffle Ted Bates and Stan Cutting, Perfect had had two more clubs: Third North Mansfield; and then First Division Wolves, where he never got a game. And by January 1939, he was in Division II with Tranmere.In that month, Southampton made a calamitous visit to Southern League Chelmsford, who dumped them out of the FA Cup. The humiliated manager sought new blood in the form of his Norwich Old Boy. Perfect settled in at right-back for the rest of the season, doing what was asked of him in defence and literally putting his weight – the Echo described him when he signed as “a hefty fellow” – into hitting long through-balls. 

After playing in two of the three games that constituted the Division II season in 1939-40, Frank’s professional career was over and in the registration exercise undertaken by the government that year he randomly declared himself to be an aircraft fitter, living in Tettenhall, nr Wolverhampton. What happened next is not known, other than by the time he died he was living in Yorkshire.