After leaving Scotland for Bolton as an 18 year-old, John Robertson endured three well-nigh barren seasons before getting any kind of run with the Wanderers in the First Division.

This “really classy half-back and an exceedingly capable player” –

according to the Echo ­– fared a lot better than that with Southern League Southampton, and might have flourished even more so had he not been injury-prone. A serious knee injury sustained on his second appearance in September 1906 rather set the tone: in his six seasons at The Dell, he would never play fewer than 20 League games a season but would only once make more than 30 appearances – his bumper-season of 1909-10, when he turned out in six positions, missing only six games. When fit, his performances could be worth of the Echo’s accolade, to the extent that he twice represented the Southern League in 1911.

Returning, in 1912, to Rangers, where he had been a junior, he soon incurred a career-ending injury to his spinal cord, which left him walking on sticks thereafter. His accident-proneness followed him onto the roads of his native county. In October 1923, he was struck by a car near Maybole, in south Ayrshire, leaving him with double fractures of the arms and legs. Having lived through all of that, he died aged 54 – before he could see his nephew, Tom, win the Scottish Cup with Clyde in 1939.