Joe Turner, an Everton player between two spells with the Saints, was strolling on Southampton Common when he noticed

“a fast goal-getter with a deadly shot.”

Which is how Fred “Buzzy” Harrison came to sign for Southampton, where he would become the top “goal-getter” of the club’s Southern League days. It took him six months at The Dell to get started, with a Western League debut and a Southern League appearance at outside-right towards the end of the 1900-01 season. The following season, the wings were dominated by the Turners: Archie Turner on the right; and Joe, back from Everton, on the left.

Fred had to be content with playing in every other Southern League game as a deputy for one or the other of them. It got worse. In 1902-03, he had to wait until January for a run of 12 games in that League. But for the last nine of those, he was at centre-forward. He obliged spectacularly with 16 goals, including two five-goal hauls. Buzzy Harrison was, from now on, a centre-forward. In 1903-04, as the Saints romped to a second successive Southern League title, he contributed 28 goals in 32 games and was given an international trial. In a tribute to the influence of the inside-forwards alongside him that season, the Athletic News described Fred as “modelled on George Hedley with the cunning of Harry Wood,” while the Echo admired the “almost mathematical precision” with which he fed his wingers and the fact that he was “fearless without unduly advertising it.”

The goals dried up a little the next season but he top-scored again in 1905-06 and 1906-07. Harrison had scored only once in the first 13 games of 1907-08, when Fulham offered £1,000 for him and outside left, Fred Mouncher, combined. This was big money, the first £1000 transfer – albeit for a single player – having been completed as recently as February 1905. The club had rejected offers from Football League clubs, but could not resist this bid from Fulham, newly-elected to the League’s Division II. And maybe the directors considered Fred to be past his best: although he would keep on scoring – 47 times in 120 League games for Fulham – he would never again be the “goal-getter” he had been when first converted to centre-forward.

After being gassed in action during the Great War, he returned to Southampton, where he set up a master plasterer’s business. In April 1958 he wrote to the Football Echo from his home in Violet Rd, Bassett to remind fans that while Derek Reeves might have scored 35 goals that season in 1903-04 his overall total had been 41. Six years later he again contacted the Echo to emphasize his point (see scrapbook section).