Bill Rawlings was an 18 year-old playing for his home-town Andover in the Hampshire League when war broke out in 1914.

He enlisted and was in action so quickly – serving with the Wessex Field Ambulance – that he was awarded the 1914 Star, a medal limited to soldiers serving in France or Belgium by 22 November 1914. Southampton marked his card when their Reserves played against his unit in October 1916 and he signed amateur forms when the War ended, two years later. As he began to rattle in the goals – finishing the season with 16 in 15 appearances in friendlies and war-time competition – he was soon signed on pro forms. When peace-time football resumed in 1919, the goal-scoring partnership of Rawlings, at centre-forward, and Arthur Dominy, at inside-right, took off.

Powerful in the air and with a lethal right foot, Bill was a centre-forward in the traditional mould.

In 1921-22, the inaugural season of the Third South, Bill’s contribution to instant promotion was 30 goals in 38 appearances – a club record until Charlie Wayman happened along in 1948-49 – and, notwithstanding the level at which he was operating, he would be twice capped in that spring of 1922.

That would be the end of his England career, although he did tour Canada with an FA XI in 1927. Meanwhile, never missing an FA Cup-tie, Bill carried on scoring for the promoted Saints – until he was transferred late in the 1927-28 season. Having spurned enquiries from Everton and Newcastle, the Board accepted an offer of £3,860 from Manchester United. Bill’s 10 goals in the remaining 12 games of the season helped to spare United relegation from Division I. But after a further 24 games for nine goals, he dropped down to Third North Port Vale. A serious injury on Christmas Day 1929 ended that adventure, obliging Bill to return to non-league football in Hampshire.

That included a reunion with Dominy, at Newport on the Isle of Wight, where they won the Hants Senior Cup in 1932.

This redoubtable duo had an unexpected Southampton swansong in May 1931, as strike-breaking guests in a Hants Benevolent Cup-tie, one of the two charity matches with Portsmouth affected by the industrial action headlined in Fred Allan’s profile. After all of which, Bill spent 25 years as a civil servant with the Admiralty, based in Wareham, and then, after retirement, took the Glebe pub, near St Mary’s. A taciturn man, he tended not to talk about his footballing days. In November 1965, when the Echo photographed him with George O’Brien, for a story about their respective goal-scoring records, many a neighbour in Kings Close, Chandlers Ford was shocked to discover that they lived alongside the famous Bill Rawlings.