Spotted by Jack Hixon, playing in the same north-eastern league, George Shipley and Tony Sealy became Lawrie McMenemy’s first two apprentices. George’s first taste of League football came in March 1979, on loan at Reading, where he joined ex-Saints Paul Bennett and Pat Earles in the Royals’ run-in to the Fourth Division title. He arrived at Elm Park just in time to start the last 11 games of the season, each of them a clean sheet, a sequence that record-breaking goalkeeper, Steve Death, would maintain into the start of the next season. Meanwhile, George, had returned to The Dell, to make his Southampton debut, as sub, in their last game of the 1978-79 season – a fact lost, it seems, on every leading compiler of football statistics. Four games into the next season, he had made three more appearances and his first-team career was over.

Loaned to Blackpool, he returned without having made a single appearance for them and was soon sold to Fourth Division Lincoln. The Red Imps achieved promotion in George’s first full season and missed promotion to Division II by a whisker, the following season, when he outscored future-Saints Glenn Cockerill and Gordon Hobson, thanks to his prowess from the spot. Promotion was becoming habit-forming, however. After his impressive stint at Lincoln (230 League games, with 42 goals), George followed Lennie Lawrence, who had been a coach at Sincil Bank, to Second Division Charlton, who immediately won promotion.

Which meant he had the satisfaction of lining up against the Saints (Cockerill and all) at The Valley in November 1986. After a season at the top, he moved to Third Division Gillingham, where his career was cut short, despite five operations, by a cruciate-ligament injury. George started his coaching career back at the Saints Centre of Excellence with Dave Merrington. He then teamed up again with Lawrence – at Middlesbrough and Bradford, in turn. Then, after a spell at Sunderland, he had a 13-year association with Newcastle in various coaching and promotional roles.

His job of full-time Events Manager turned sour overnight, however, when support from the local community drained away at the start of the Mike Ashley era. Which is why, in April 2009, George started a (now flourishing) garden-maintenance business from his home in County Durham.