A grandson of Jock Gilfillan, Portsmouth’s goalkeeper in the 1934 FA Cup Final,

Steve Mills was a lightning-quick full-back, who had a fierce tackle.

By the time he was 20, he was holding down a regular position in Southampton’s defence and had won England U-23 recognition. His future looked assured, not just at Southampton but surely for England. But in February 1975 he was severely injured in a car crash. By the summer of 1976, he was capable of playing a dozen games on loan in Miami but, after two first-team appearances the following season, his injuries forced him to quit football. He worked for Ladbrokes for a while, before taking over his parents’ newsagents business in Gosport. Reminiscing in 1988, Steve said that, “if I hadn’t had the injuries, I know, without being big-headed, that I would have played for England for a lot of years.” By then, he was fighting a losing battle against leukaemia, diagnosed two years earlier.

Having set up a charity for leukaemia research, he organised the biggest fund-raising football match ever staged in the south of England, when an ex-Saints XI including Kevin Keegan, Martin Chivers and Mick Channon, took on the then current side in March 1988. It was hoped that 10,000 might turn up, but the response to Steve’s inspirational fight against his illness was a Dell gate of more than twice that. Steve died a few months later, but his name lives on in the form of the Steve Mills Stem Cell Laboratory in Southampton, created by his charity. NB See Peter Osgood and Forbes Phillipson-Masters profiles for further images.