When Tommy Allen left the Saints in the summer of 1928, their Supporters Club contributed £375 towards the £800 that the club paid for a replacement goalkeeper: Willie White, a longstanding idol of the Hearts’ fans, who had kept goal four times for the Scottish League (see scrapbook section). Going straight into the first team, he was almost ever-present for the next two seasons, contributing in the first of those to a fourth-place finish, an achievement Southampton would not better until 1948.

He gave way, for much of 1930-31, to a young Bert Scriven, who succeeded Willie, for good, during the following season. Having seriously injured his first finger, Willie left Southampton for Aldershot, newly elected to the Third South. The finger never recovered sufficiently for him to play for them. After a brief spell as landlord of the Greyhound in Southampton’s Cossack Street, he returned to Scotland, where he later became the foreman in a Glasgow tube-steel works. He had three brothers who played first-class football. John, who was with Willie at Hearts, played twice for Scotland, before he moved on to Leeds. Thomas was at Motherwell and James at Alloa.