Graduating through Lancashire football – including Portsmouth Rovers, a village side not to be confused with any south-coast outfits – to Burnley, Jack Mitton never got a game in the Clarets’ First Division side and emerged from the First World War without ever having played peace-time, first-class football. Coming 24, he joined Southern League Exeter City and remained with them as they started out in the new Third Division in 1920. But Division I Sunderland soon came in for him and he now spent the best part of seven seasons in the Football League, the last three of them with Second Division Wolves.

After which, Southampton of that same division paid £150 for him.

His one season at The Dell – 1927-28 – consisted of a few games, providing cover all across the half-back line. Whereupon, he was listed at £150 but, in the absence of takers, he dropped into Hampshire League football, from which he retired in 1930. In 1939 he had become a publican, running the Butlers Arms in Wolverhampton.  His brother James had a slightly shorter career than Jack’s at Exeter, following a decade at Second Division Stockport. In the 1920 close season, while he was at Exeter, Jack twice played first-class cricket for Somerset – against Cambridge and Oxford Universities – amassing 15 runs in three innings (twice not out) and taking one wicket for 100 runs.