Portsmouth paid £75 to sign Bill Beaumont from Swindon in 1907. He repaid them with consistency over the next three seasons. A motor engineer by trade, he was on the verge of retiring from the game in 1910 when Southampton offered him the chance to play Southern League football. He continued to work full-time in the Portsmouth Dockyard, training every evening at Fratton Park and meeting his new team-mates only on match days.

Versatile rather than brilliant,

he played all across the half-back line in that 1910-11 season. He left at the end of it and died in the autumn, after contracting pneumonia.