Bill Fraser was a serving soldier who, after playing a few games for Southern League Aldershot, was transferred to Southampton in an unusually complicated deal. The down-payment was only £60, but Aldershot were a guaranteed £200 from a friendly visit by the Saints – duly fulfilled in September 1929 – plus another £50 if Fraser played 20 first team games in 1929-30 and 5 per cent of any future transfer.

Despite suffering acutely from nerves in front of crowds and physically shaking in the changing room before a game,

Bill made the step-up to Second Division in a manner that made him popular with the Saints’ faithful. He didn’t complete that transition fast enough for him to cost Southampton that £50 in his first season but, over the next two seasons, he played in more than half of Saints’ League games, mainly at centre-forward or inside-right. But then he was sold to Fulham. He’d taken himself off to Marseilles, with Southampton still holding his Football League registration and badly in need of the £500 offered by Fulham (£25 of which was owed to Aldershot, of course). Fulham, newly promoted from the Third South, proved to have no need of Fraser in the Second Division, however.

So back he went to Division III(S), this time at Northampton, en route to the non-league game. In 1939 he was registered a salesman living in Amesbury but he briefly returned to football in 1956 when he managed Athenian League’s, Walton & Hersham but he had left his post by the time Southampton visited in the First Round of the FA Cup in November 1957.