Harry Hooper cost Southampton no more than a £10 donation to his home-town team of the Birmingham League. Harry – or “Rufus”, as the fans called him, for the colour of his hair – had signed up for the thankless task of understudying Saints’ formidable full-backs: Fred Titmuss, who would be capped while Harry was there; and Tom Parker, whose first cap would have to wait until Harry had given up the ghost and moved on. That move was to Leicester City, in an exchange deal that brought Fred Price and Dennis Jones to The Dell. Leicester were promoted to Division I in 1925 and Harry to got to play half-a-dozen games at that level. It remained his lot to be mainly a Reserve, however, even when he dropped down to the Third South with Queens Park Rangers. By 1939 he had become a “Railway Goods Checker” in Birmingham.