The son of David Dixon Warn who was a well-known paddle boat captain often seen on the Southampton to Cowes route, Monty Warn was but 16 when he joined the Young Men’s Association in 1886 and still only 17 when he played in their first competitive fixture in 1887, as they started what would become a three-season campaign to win the Hampshire Junior Cup three times in a row.

Monty, the baby-faced player in the first-known team photo of the club (as seen in Frederic Crossley’s profile), would play, in four different forward positions, in all 17 of the games that it took to complete those three wins, scoring six goals, including the winner in the 1888 Final.

In 1888-89, he was in a comparatively settled position at outside-left, partnering Arthur Farwell – in arguably the finest wing-pairing of the club’s pre-Southern League era

– as the Saints saw off Cowes in a marathon semi-final that went to four games. He joined the Islanders for the 1890-91 season, but then returned to St Mary’s and had a spell captaining Queens FC, although he never got to play in any of Saints extended competitive portfolio of Cup competitions. Like Farwell, who became a lifelong friend, he became a draper, at first working for Edwin Jones and then in the mid 1890s moving to Fareham to open his own successful premises in the High St (see below). Fareham FC took advantage of his arrival in their town and he turned out for them in the 1896-97 Hampshire Junior Cup.

Alongside his three Hampshire Junior Cup medals (see scrapbook section) he won others for swimming – he was the captain of the Southampton Swimming Club – and rowing. He also owned the first car in Fareham, was involved in local politics and sang baritone for Fareham Operatic society. He later became a Conservative and Unionist agent in Shropshire, but in 1926 he was motorcycling from Wellington to Bridgenorth when he collided with a pedal cyclist who was pushing his bike up a hill and, thrown to the ground, died instantly. The local paper described his funeral gathering as the “largest seen in Wellington in some years.” Today, his medals are in the proud possession of his great-granddaughter.

Monty had two brothers, Lancelot and Bertram who played left and right-wing for Romsey while his nephew was Commodore Raymond Hart CBE,DSO,DSC Bar who was something of a WW2 hero credited with the sinking of several U-boats.