Signed from his home-town club as an amateur forward, Thomas Groves got off to a roaring start with seven goals in five outings for the Reserves. That earned him a professional contract, a first-team debut in a Hampshire Benevolent Cup-tie against Portsmouth and a place on the summer’s tour of Denmark (see below). He played in all four games, scoring against Aalborg in a 3-1 win. Yet he was so far out of contention, come the new season, that, after one more appearance for the Reserves, his contract was cancelled in October 1930. Nine years later as war broke out he was an Engineers shopkeeper in Guildford.