Having signed as a teenager for his local League club, Robert Perrett failed to get a game for Third South Bournemouth. He fared only one game better at First Division Huddersfield, where he spent three seasons as a regular in their Reserves. Still a teenager when Southampton offered him a chance of Second Division football, he duly started the 1939-40 season on the Saints’ left-wing and was one of only four players to appear in all three of the games of which that aborted season consisted. When that season restarted in the form of “unofficial” war-time competitions, Robert played in 18 matches before joining the navy.

He took part in the evacuation of Dunkirk, making seven trips on a destroyer, but received a serious knee injury that required cartilage surgery. His commitments at sea, coupled with his failure to recover full fitness, limited him to a handful of appearances over the next two seasons. He served on HMS Illustrious between 1942 and 1944 and then transferred to the Fleet Air Arm at Eastleigh, as an instructor. After the War, he sold insurance and the read gas meters in Bournemouth.