Ironically nicknamed “Tiny”, John Joyce was anything but.

Indeed, this hulk of a goalkeeper established a reputation for his powerful clearances: his dead-ball kicking was measured at almost 95 yards in a competition, while he reportedly punched the ball 76ft 2in, playing for Tottenham’s Reserves at Peterborough in 1911.

 Signed by Southampton from Derbyshire football shortly before his 21st birthday, Tiny had the thankless task of under-studying the England

international, Jack Robinson. Although Joyce soon had a first-team outing in the Western League, Robinson was ever-present, in 1898-99, in their Southern League goal. You can blame Warmley for that. Tiny played in a 6-0 home win over them in December 1898, but they withdrew from that League soon after, so their record – and Joyce’s Southern League “debut” – were expunged.

He did get half-a-dozen games at the level the following season, but then moved to fellow-Southern Leaguers, Millwall. That would be the start of a long association, initially intermittent. The first interruption took the form of a diversion to the Football League – starting at his home-town Burton United, a newly-formed entity in Division II, and then at First Division Blackburn. After a second spell with Millwall, Tiny joined Tottenham, recently admitted to the Football League, for by far the most significant period of his playing career. Despite having to compete for a while with Robinson, again, he played 113 times for Spurs, up to the abandonment of “official” football during the First World War. And he became a penalty-taker. His spot-kick against Bolton in April 1914 was the first League goal by a Tottenham ’keeper – and would remain the only one until Paul Robinson scored in open play in 2007. Tiny repeated the act, on tour the following month, against Bayern Munich and converted a further eight penalties for the Reserves.

He returned to Millwall during the First World War and, after a brief post-war diversion to Gillingham, he was back at The Den, this time as assistant-trainer. Save for a brief stint as caretaker-manager in the early 1930s, he would remain in that post until 1938, at one point assisting another ex-Saint Frank Jefferis . He later worked on the ground staff at The Den.