“Sid” Kimpton started work on a farm at 11 and then had a job in the Watford train-sheds until his footballing prowess helped to get him a job at Leavesden Hospital, where he was spotted playing by Southampton. He had already failed a trial at Watford but the Southampton management could hardly have been more decisive, following Sid’s trial in a Reserves friendly.

His hat-trick earned him a pro contract and promotion to the first team at centre-forward. He kept his place in the Southern League side, switching, in the spring to outside-right.

Over the next four seasons, up to the abandonment of “official” football in 1915, he alternated between these two positions – but only after a sustained spell at right-half. He remained with the club during the First World War, playing up to 1917 while also guesting at Portsmouth and Thornycrofts. He had two more Southern League games left in him after the War. Then, after a brief spell with Thornycrofts, he began a coaching career in continental Europe that would span 30 years, save for interludes at Coventry and as a war-time internee.

He began in the east – in Prague and then Poland – but by 1923 he was in France, at Le Havre – until his former Southampton manager, Jim McIntyre, who was now managing Coventry, brought him home to coach at Highfield Road.

In 1934, he was recruited by the French FA to coach coaches and then to be part of France’s coaching team at the World Cup finals in Italy. Although his tactical contribution earned him acclaim, his approach did not always endear him to the Frenchmen in charge of the national team. He left them to it, but continued to teach coaching in Paris, while reverting to club-coaching, now at Racing Club de Paris, where his team won both the League and two Coupes de France.

After the second of those Cup wins in 1939, Sid was coaching at Rouen when war broke out. The occupying Germans interned him at St Denis, near Paris, until the camp was liberated by the US Army in 1944. He thereupon returned briefly to Rouen, who duly won Frances’s final war-time championship. Then came a second spell at Le Havre and a final stint at Cherbourg, from which he retired in 1949 and returned to England. In 1964, he was involved in a serious accident, while riding his bicycle on London’s North Orbital Road and suffered multiple injuries. He recovered and went to live in a small shack in his native Leavesden.