Swindon-born Eddie Thomas had a deprived childhood, football-wise. He had not long started at school when the male teachers went off to war and, apart from a few “old guys” returning to the classroom, he recalls an all-female workforce and no prospect of organised football. Nor could he and his school-mates watch the professional game, such as it was, during the War. In 1940, the War Department took over Swindon’s County Ground, which was used for a while to accommodate prisoners of war.

It is no wonder, then, that Eddie sums up his pre-teen years with the blunt regret that “football just did not exist.” The War over, it all changed: “once I found out about the game,” Eddie recollects, “I soon found my liking for diving about and ended up in goal, playing for the school and Swindon Boys.”

He dived about well enough to be signed, as an amateur, by Third South Swindon – for whom his grandfather had been a director and where his two brothers would follow suit – while serving an engineering apprenticeship at the newly-nationalised British Rail.  He was playing for the Railways when a combination of factors led to his joining Second Division Southampton.

His father, a master-butcher, was a race-going man and had got to know Herbert Blagrave, the race-horse owner and Southampton FC director, while Ted Nash, a former Swindon ’keeper, also recommended Eddie to the Saints’ new manager, Sid Cann.

He was yet to sign amateur forms when he first kept goal for the Reserves in December 1949, effectively becoming the third-choice ’keeper at the expense of Eric Fountain. Ten months later, with Hugh Kelly away on international duty, Eddie was catapulted into first-team action, still a month short of his 18th birthday.

Talking about that day, 60-odd years on, Eddie reckoned that he “was always nervous and this time was just a little more so.” England Youth caps – you had to be an amateur to be eligible – and then a part-time professional contract, worth £6 a week, soon followed.

Wanting to complete his apprenticeship, however, Eddie was unable to train with his team-mates during the week and felt that this held him back. Indeed, when Cann left, Eddie was a complete unknown to the new manager, George Roughton, for whom he would never get to play.

His League career was over and, following National Service in the REME, he worked, back in Swindon, as a car-body designer for Austin Rover. After a brief spell of Western League football for Salisbury, Eddie was re-instated as an amateur to play local football in Swindon, following which he took on various secretarial positions for the Swindon & District Football League. He gave up designing cars in the 1970s, to have two stints as a self-employed contract draughtsman, either side of a five-year period in which he ran three Swindon pubs: the Wheatsheaf, Bell and Railway, in turn. His final go at draughtsmanship include overseas assignments – in Mumbai, just after it had been renamed; and then Detroit. After which, he retired in 2003 to Warwick.

He remained a Saints fan throughout his life and his son remembers after watching the 1976 Cup final on television, together, his father weeping with joy at the final whistle.