“Ted Bates never had an easier signing to make,” Ron Reynolds has claimed, recalling his rush to Southampton, with the transfer-deadline looming in 1960, to sign for Bates “over a cup of tea at the Polygon Hotel” (see scrapbook section). Yet he might have joined the Saints long before that. His grandfather, Alfie Riddle, had played for Small Heath (which later became Birmingham City), before moving to the Haslemere/Shottermill area.

Growing up there, Ron had joined his nearest League club, Third South Aldershot, playing part-time, while continuing his war-time work as a draughtsman, designing fire engines. Wanting to play at a higher level, Ron had written to several clubs, offering his goalkeeping services: “a highly unorthodox move,” as his biographers – Dave Bowler and Ron’s son David – freely admit. Southampton, one of the clubs Ron solicited, sent Bill Rochford, newly retired from playing in 1950, to have a look at him. Rochford’s negative report held back Reynolds’s Southampton career by 10 years.

In the meantime, Ron moved to First Division Tottenham, where he was a patient understudy to Ted Ditchburn – he waited four years for his first-team chance – and then a more reluctant deputy to Bill Brown. He hung in – for 86 League appearances – but, by the spring of 1960, Ron felt that “it had gone very sour.” Which explains why he was in a hurry to sign for Ted Bates, with whom he had become “pretty thick” on coaching courses at Lilleshall. For his part, Bates wanted Ron’s experience. His teenage ’keeper, Bob Charles, had been coping well enough as a stand-in for the injured Tony Godfrey and the team went into March, topping the Third Division. But when they conceded nine goals in the next two games, Bates took the decisive plunge.

Even Charles’s big buddy, John Page, welcomed Ron’s arrival which, Terry Paine and George O’Brien agreed, was vital to the clinching of the Division III title. Not that this stopped Paine joking about Ron’s need to wear contact lenses “as big as ashtrays”. David Reynolds’s description of his father’s eyesight problems – following a head-injury at Tottenham – confirms that the lenses were, indeed, huge compared with today’s versions. David goes into some of the hazards that they created for a goalkeeper – made worse by the low elevation of The Dell’s floodlights – and reflects more generally on the greater risks of injury that goalkeepers of his father’s era faced. Even by those standards, though, Ron had the misfortune, while with the Saints, to be what Cliff Huxford called “an injury-collector.”

But, then, Cliff did have to take over Ron’s jersey a few times, starting in the League Cup saga v Leeds in December 1960, when Ron cracked a vertebrae. And Ron ended that month by bursting a blood vessel in his throat at Portsmouth. His 1961-62 season lasted 45 minutes, before he injured his ankle and was out for the duration. He played most of the following season, when he was ever-present in the FA Cup-run, although Godfrey questioned whether Ron was fit to play in the semi-final.

Ron blamed himself for Denis Law’s goal that took Manchester United to Wembley. He kept coming back for more, though, and rated Southampton “the best club I ever played for.”

There was no coming back, however, from the dislocation of his shoulder at Fratton Park in September 1963. The damage was so serious that Ron’s playing days ended, there and then. He had by now become a partner in a tailor’s business in Havant. That didn’t work out, but he successfully moved into financial services, starting his own firm in 1967 and soon being joined in it by David. He coached at several public schools and scouted for both Southampton and Crystal Palace.

 Ron retired from his business in 1987, to take better care of his problematic heart. He attended the 1998 dinner for Ted Bates, but died of a heart attack, nine months later, on his 71st birthday.