When Ted Bates let 21 year-old David Webb go to Chelsea and accepted 28 year-old Joe Kirkup in part-exchange, it looked as though Kirkup must be the makeweight – especially when you consider that Bates had asked Chelsea for Marvin Hinton, who, like Webb, had been alternating between right-back and centre-back. Yet the Saints’ manager had first tried to sign Joe in his West Ham days. True, Joe wasn’t as fast as he had been, after slipping a disc while with the Hammers, and he couldn’t double as a centre-back. But as a right-back, who played a handful of games on the left, he served Southampton well, running up almost 200 appearances.

A calm and dependable professional, “Gentleman Joe” as he became referred to by the fans was always on time for training, despite travelling by rail from Surrey – so that Ted Bates waived the requirement for him to move nearer and allowed him to commute for the rest of his stay at The Dell.

When the incoming manager, Lawrie McMenemy, released him in February 1974, Joe was approaching 400 League appearances, all of them in the top-flight, for his three clubs. Not bad for a rugby-playing teenager who had switched codes. His move to South Africa came “out of the blue”, with a ’phone call from the infamous Jimmy Thompson – see Charlie Livesey’s profile – although Joe “didn’t know the bloke at all.” Returning to England, he ran a pub in Alton, a sports-shop in Guildford and then a newsagent’s in Ewell, before retiring to Haute Provence in France.