A schoolboy centre-forward, Ken Birch began his Everton career at right-half and after 43 games for them in Division I, arrived at Southampton for £6,000 (see letter below) to assume the No.4 shirt for the last 10 games of the 1957-58 season. Saints needed to finish in the top half of the Third Division (South) in order to qualify for the newly de-regionalised Division III. With seven wins and a draw in those 10 games, the side surged to sixth place.

In Birch’s second season having become captain (see left), Terry Simpson mounted a challenge for his place and when Dick Conner arrived in Ted Bates’s big sell-and-buy summer of 1959, Ken’s League years were over. The highlight of his non-league career was Bangor City’s Cup-Winners’ Cup-tie against Napoli in 1962. Had the away-goals rule then been in operation, he would have been on the winning side. As it was, he had to be content with scoring in the home leg and with an “assist”, from a long throw, in Naples.

After which, he went to player-manage in the Transvaal, but soon left his first club after what the Official History of South African football describes as

“difficulties in motivating his squad.”

After a short spell at Olympia, Ken returned to become a factory worker on the Wirrall where he died after a long illness.