Arriving from Cheshire football in December 1894, Joe Rogers made four Southern League appearances games at centre- or inside-forward, but was then switched to right-back. Given that he had scored only once when played upfront and that he had the pace, control and kicking ability required of a full-back, that conversion may not appear untoward. But consider this: in the midst of those first four games,

he scored 10 times in an exhibition match against the Wiltshire Regiment, on a quagmire of a pitch.

Yet he would get only two more opportunities in the attack, the following season – for one more goal – when he was again deployed mainly as a right-back. It was as if 10 goals against a bunch of soldiers, on a mud-heap, didn’t count. Joe would confound that assessment in the Football League’s Second Division, scoring freely for Grimsby. He would be less prolific in the First Division with Newcastle and then, as they were relegated from that division, with Preston. Yet while with Newcastle, he played three times on the FA’s first European tour in 1899, obliging with five goals in a 10-2 defeat of a German XI in Berlin. He later went back to Germany to coach, before returning to Grimsby, where he ended his career in the local Thursday League with the exotically-named Tivoli.