Eric Day was an accidental footballer who became the first man to top 400 post-war games for the Saints. Dartford-born, he was educated at the rugby-playing Watford Grammar School. He was pursuing that code, during war-time service as the RAF commando, when he broke his hand. Playing football while he recovered, he caught the eye of Bill Luckett, his PT instructor. Ex-Saint Luckett recommended Eric to another ex-Saint, Arthur Dominy, the club’s caretaker-manager in the later years of the War. Eric duly guested in a couple of games for Southampton in December 1945, when “official” League football had yet to resume.

The Echo was instantly impressed by

“the most promising left-winger seen in the Saints’ side this season.”

The following Saturday, Eric scored his first Southampton goal, but then duly returned to RAF duties. Neither those appearances nor his goal would “count” in the official statistics. As far as those are concerned, Eric Day made his Saints debut at outside-left in November 1946. Switching wings, the following season, he soon had a hat-trick to his name, although his most memorable performance in that 1947-48 season was perhaps an FA Cup-tie when he scored twice in a 3-2 win over Blackburn Rovers. The Echo had “never seen anything more perfect in pace and precision than the way Day took his first goal.”

He had by now made the No.7 shirt his own – for six seasons, that’s all. For the final two games of the sixth season, 1952-53, he has switched again – now to centre-forward – marking the occasion, against Blackburn again, with a hat-trick. He felt much more “in the game”, he reckoned, than when going “up and down the wing, waiting for passes.” And he enjoyed the increase in scoring opportunities:

in 122 Third South appearances at No.9, he would bag 77 goals, topping that division’s scoring charts for three seasons running.

Which begs the question as to why he was not tried in that position in the Second Division, as promotion beckoned in the 1949 run-in and manager Bill Dodgin struggled to replace the injured Charlie Wayman. Towards the end of the 1955-56 season, his first as manager, Ted Bates moved Eric back to the right-wing, where his career whimpered out in 1956-57. Eric, now 35, sought to remain on his full-time contract, training in the morning, but then “doing the paperwork” for a garage in the afternoon. The Board debated this, at the meeting after meeting for six months, and plotted with brewers to find Eric an off-license – a position deemed compatible with a part-time contract, which the manager was asked to negotiate with his former team-mate.

Neither man wanted that, but Eric felt that Ted should have talked it through with him. Eric departed for a non-league stint, initially in his native Kent, “shattered” by the sad, anti-climactic ending to a one-club League career in which he had scored 158 goals in 422 games – remarkable statistics when you think that he made his debut at 25. It took him three or four years to get over the nature of his severance. In later years, after retiring from his job as a caretaker at the Hartham Park Estate in Wiltshire, he fell out with the club again over some match-tickets, but all was forgiven in 2001, when Eric was on fine form as a guest, with his wife Brenda, at the Farewell-to-The-Dell evening.