Like his grand-father Aaron, who had been a goal-scorer for Barnsley and Notts County, Ken Jones played his early football up-front, scoring goals for Monckton Colliery, in the South Yorkshire coalfields, where he served his time as an apprentice-electrician. Despite having attracted the interest of Arsenal, Aston Villa and Coventry, Ken switched to full-back – so impressively that Bradford Park Avenue’s Jimmy Scoular signed him. Leap-frogging the Reserves, Ken racked up 100 first-team appearances while still a teenager. Scoular declared Ken to be

“the best full-back in the Fourth Division.”

Ted Bates agreed and took him into Division II in the summer of 1965 (see scrapbook section). Ken was comfortable on either flank. But so was Stuart Williams, which made it difficult for Ken to get a run after Tommy Hare came through and then David Webb arrived. Even so, Ken had seven games at right-back in the side that won promotion, in 1966, to the First Division and his family has remained especially proud that

he made his home debut in that season’s record-breaking 9-3 win v Wolves.

In 1966-67, however, most of his 19 appearances were on the left, starting at Leeds in October. That was a special afternoon for Ken, making his top-flight debut but seven miles from where he’d lived. He had an “excellent match”, the Echo reported, as the home side laid siege to the visitors’ goal. But goalkeeper Dave Maclaren and the Saints’ woodwork held firm – so that although Leeds “annihilated” their opponents and “should have won by 10,” Ken reckoned, he ended up on the winning side, 1-0.

He stayed in Yorkshire for the weekend and, naturally, milked it to the full.

Over the next two-and-a-half seasons, Ken had to compete on the right with the arrival of Joe Kirkup and the emergence of Bob McCarthy, while occasionally deputising for Denis Hollywood on the left. Even so, he managed to play, during a 10-month span from October 1968 to August 1969, in a “hat-trick” of League wins over Manchester United: the “double” of 1968-69, followed by a famous 4-1 victory at Old Trafford. Ken had two nicknames at The Dell. One was “Lucky”, typical of the sardonic way in which the dressing-room referred to the string of injuries that blighted his career.  Even so, he was nearing 100 appearances for Southampton when he took umbrage at Ted Bates’s failure to inform him of interest from other clubs. Consequently, he rejoined Scoular, by now at Cardiff City.

Illness and yet more injuries restricted him to a handful of appearances and he was released early. He worked in Southampton Docks, while playing part-time, non-league, and then coaching, locally, for three seasons. Initially a checker, he became a crane-driver. “I’d no head for heights,” he admitted, but it paid well. He also picked up a few bob at snooker, earning him his other nickname of “The Hustler”. Four times the Southampton & District champion and thrice the doubles champion, Ken coached youngsters on the full-size table in his Chandlers Ford home and was immensely proud that no fewer than five of his protégés achieved full England honours.