When Roy Williams came home to Hereford in 1952, from National Service in the RAF, he had a football career to re-create, with his home-town club in the Southern League. But he was not stopping.

He was soon attracting League scouts, including Southampton’s coach, Jimmy Easson, who went to Loughborough to watch him score the only goal of a Fourth Qualifying Round FA Cup-tie v Brush Sports.That was enough for Roy and his chairman to be invited to lunch with the Saints at the Royal Park Hotel – an event at which new signings were sometimes welcomed. Roy “had no say in the matter,” as he was sold to Second Division Southampton for £4,000 – Hereford’s first four-figure transfer fee, which resulted in the resignation of their manager. Effectively a replacement for Ted Bates, who played his last game on 20 December 1952, Roy made his first-team debut in the next game – at Fulham on Boxing Day. The hosts also had a debutant at inside-forward and Roy loved to joke that both sides were giving a start to a promising youngster in that position: Roy Williams for Southampton; and Johnny Haynes for Fulham. Roy scored in the return fixture, the next day, but being Cup-tied, he had to stand aside, as the Saints made progress in the FA Cup, for Charlie Purves, who would play more often than Roy for the rest of that season.

Roy had the upper hand in 1953-54 but, with the arrival of Tommy Mulgrew, his Dell days were numbered. Never regretting his move to Southampton, where he’d “enjoyed the whole set-up… and met some wonderful people,” he went home to Hereford.

When he retired in 1963, he had scored 154 goals in 357 games for the Bulls – not counting his benefit match v Southampton in April 1961. He would continue to live in the city, maintaining a massive popularity in Hereford’s sporting and charitable circles, while establishing a successful window-cleaning enterprise, initially with the Hereford scout, Bob Dixon, but latterly run by Roy’s son, Mark, whose 68 appearances in League football – as a midfielder with Newport County – bettered his father’s 41 for the Saints.

Handicapped in his retirement by a mind-boggling series of illnesses, Roy loved to entertain visitors, Saints historians included, to reminisce about his Dell interlude. In 2011, he made his last visit to Southampton, to embark on an Atlantic cruise. Although bed-bound some days, he was up and ship-shape to talk football with the cruise’s guest-speaker, Rodney Marsh. You can bet that Marsh enjoyed the story about those two promising kids of Boxing Day 1952: Haynes and Williams.