Reg Slade was one of three brothers who played local football in Southampton. Ralph made it as far as Eastleigh Athletic, but Reg made it to The Dell for a junior trial match in August 1910, ahead of his older brother, Don Slade, who would sign for Southampton the following month. Reg was a player with Malmesbury United at the time and, having signed amateur forms for the Saints, he was able simultaneously to assist Southampton Cambridge in the local Senior League.

In 1914, he became a full-time professional, but continued to play mainly as the Reserves’ left-back, with very occasional first-team outings thrown in. 

After “official” football was abandoned, a year into the First World War, Reg made a handful of appearances in war-time competition in 1915-16. Then he joined up, guesting both for Everton and Ayr United. When peace-time football was resumed, he had a season with Barrow in the Lancashire Combination, before becoming player-manager at Mid-Rhondda in Wales. That was not the smartest of moves. Mid-Rhondda had won everything in sight in 1919-20, including the Second Division of the Southern League. But their Division I status was snatched from them when that division effectively became the Football League’s Third Division. Reg Slade’s club was excluded from that historic transfer and their demise soon followed.

Reg opted for a life beyond football, becoming, at some point, a civil servant resident in Herne Bay, although initially when he was on Saints books he was a general labourer. Like his brother when the 1939 registration process came around he somewhat imaginatively claimed he was a cinema manager in Hendon.