Bill Turner was playing in north-eastern football when his progress was interrupted by the First World War. As peace-time football resumed, he left the north-east for Southern League Southampton.Signed, and initially deployed, as a full-back, he was required to play at left-half in the run-in to the Saints’ final season in that League, following an injury to Reg Hackett. And so it was settled.

He was now part of a formidable half-back line – along with Bert Shelley and Alec Campbell –

in the side that now joined the Football League and was soon a respectable member of its Second Division.After five seasons of justifying his £200 fee – he was the only man in the 1921-22 promotion side to have cost money – he was still worth two players in April 1924, when he joined Bury, who had just clinched promotion to the First Division, in exchange for Stan Woodhouse and John Callagher. By 1939 he had become a colliery weighman in Stanley.