Leaving school Sidney Ireland became a “cycle fitter” but in July 1902 he signed up with Royal Warwickshire regiment but was hardly a model soldier as he was, in 1904, imprisoned for 14 days for “misconduct”. By 1909 he had gone underground and it took him a while to adjust from the life of a miner in Warwickshire to that of a footballer on the south coast. But once he had got a firm footing in the Saints’ Southern League team in March 1912, he missed only five games in that League, and none in the FA Cup, up until the abandonment of “official” football in 1915.

A natural leader and team captain, he was regarded as the best left-back in the Southern League and represented it against both the Scottish and Irish Leagues.

Joining the Durham Light Infantry, Sid initially guested around, played for an England XI in 1916 and was playing for the Saints as late as the 1916-17 season. But posted to the Western Front, he was captured in 1918 and remained a prisoner-of-war for eight months, before being repatriated in time to play one last game, for the Saints, in a Victory Cup match in February 1919.

As clubs prepared for football’s competitive revival, however, Sid moved to Merthyr Town for a final season of Southern League football. The transfer fee of £250 was money much needed by cash-strapped Southampton – even though Ireland received £83 of it, as payment long overdue, after the players had agreed, in 1914-15, to defer a proportion of their wages – while the Athletic News deemed it “an outstanding capture” by Merthyr. Yet Sid would not get to play for them in 1920-21, when they, like the Saints, launched the Football League’s new Division III. In 1939 he was a “spot welder” in Coventry.