Having graduated from local football in Lincolnshire to the Football League with Burnley, full-back Bill Jeffery had half-a-dozen first-team outings before he had two seasons in the south, experiencing a couple of firsts. In 1893-84, he was a regular for Woolwich Arsenal in their inaugural season in the League’s recently-formed Second Division, during which he played 13 games at full-back and nine in goal.

Then, early in the next season, the Southern League’s first, he joined St Mary’s, for whom he played in every remaining game. Having collected a Hampshire Senior Cup Winners’ medal, he returned to Lincolnshire. After a spell with Newark in the Midland League, he was re-instated as an amateur. He worked as a school groundsman for a while in Market Rasen, before he took up farming, initially at Kirkby-on-Bain and later at Manor Farm in Waddington, near Lincoln.