During the latter part of the First World War, teenager Cliff Price was combining his day-job as a collier with playing as an amateur for Leicester Fosse. He top-scored for them in 1918-19 but, as they took on a new name – Leicester City – and new players for the resumption of League football in 1919, he returned to Coalville, his former Leicestershire League club, for a spell. Having signed pro for his re-branded club in 1920, he had a couple of seasons with them in Division II before joining Third North Halifax.

A season-and-a-half later, he returned to the Second Division with Southampton. Welcomed by the Echo as

“an inside-left of the studious type,”

he immediately settled into that position and, even though it took him a while to score, he was acclaimed, in the report on his debut – the Saints’ first away-win of the season – as “a good marksman”, who looked as though he had “come to stay.”  He continued to live up to the latter prediction, impressing with his passing and scoring the occasional goal, until it all ground to a halt in November 1925. But he had two more seasons of off-and-on Second Division football left in him with Forest, before he wound down his career in east Midlands non-league. During that non-league period, Cliff sought a position as player-coach at The Dell, even though no such post had been advertised, or even contemplated. The Board was disinclined to invent this job for him, but when the Saints were ‘Up for the Cup’ at the City Ground in 1938, for what had become their annual Third Round exit, Cliff paid a visit to their dressing room.