Having started playing pub football before he was old enough to drink, Bobby Veck was spotted by a farmer who fixed for him to have a trial at The Dell.A winger who could play centre-forward, he was among the goals in the junior ranks in 1938-39. But war intervened. Called up in December 1939, he was posted to Uxbridge with the RAF and spent time in Scotland and Yorkshire, guesting for League and non-league clubs. Overseas postings followed, culminating in Alexandria, where he represented the United Services and All Egypt and scored a hat-trick for the RAF v The Army. Bobby was home in time to play a few games for Southampton’s Reserves at the end of the 1944-45 season and to make the first team fairly often in the transitional season of 1945-46, in which the only “official” fixtures were four FA Cup matches.

He played in three of them, scoring once. When League football resumed in September 1946, Bobby was one of eight players making his Second Division debut for the Saints. He scored in the 4-0 win v Swansea.He was at outside-left and content to be there – something of a rarity in the early post-war seasons when a succession of right-wingers reluctantly played on the Saints’ left. Two of them, Wilf Grant and Eric Day, restricted him to a dozen games that season, but Bobby was in for the last three matches.

He competed with the newly-signed Tommy Rudkin at the start of 1947-48, but was “disgusted, being chucked out” in October, to make way for yet another new signing, Billy Wrigglesworth. He would never play on Southampton’s left wing again: his remaining four appearances would be at centre-forward, deputising for Charlie Wayman.

In April 1949, he had agreed to join Third South Torquay. But then Wayman was injured – one of the most talked-about injuries in the club’s history and Bobby’s move was blocked. He enjoyed the opportunity to play twice at No.9, but the desperate Bill Dodgin then looked, to no avail, for alternatives. Dodgin duly departed, leaving Bobby in the hands of two men for whom he had a mutual dislike: new manager Sid Cann; and his player-coach, Bill Rochford. He would get two final games as Wayman’s stand-in in February 1950, before joining Gillingham, newly re-elected to the Football League. He had a good season with them, playing half as many League games again as he had in his years at The Dell. Even so, he then went non-league, latterly with Canterbury, whom he captained to victory in the Kent Senior Cup in 1954. One of Bobby Veck’s cousins married Tom Parker.