Fred Williams had been working as a coal miner and playing for his home-town team in Nottinghamshire when he joined Southampton’s amateur ranks in 1937. Signing pro at the end of his first season, he began the next as the club’s Second Division right-back. He had made that position his own, when an ankle injury, at the turn of the year, sidelined him for the rest of the season.When the 1939-40 season began, he was competing, under the new system of numbering, for the No.2 shirt. He had worn it once, when “official” football was suspended and he duly left the area.  Having guested for Mansfield and Liverpool during the War, he signed for Third North Stockport in February 1946 but left at the end of the season, without having made the first team.

Returning to Hucknall, he went back to mining and played, into his 40s, for Linby Colliery in the Central Alliance, a status they exceeded in November 1950 by reaching the First Round Proper of the FA Cup, going down 4-1 to Third South Gillingham.