An expensive oversight facilitated Tommy Allen’s move to The Dell in time for the club’s first game in the Football League. Sunderland for whom he had appeared in 20 games during 1919-20, had forgotten to include him in their retained list so the lightly-built, but tall goalkeeper was free to sign on with the Saints and he quickly became a fixture between the posts. He played in every game of the 1921-22 Division III (S) campaign which ended with Saints being promoted as champions.

He only let in 21 goals, a record for a 42-match season, until Liverpool bettered it in 1979. He also holds the record for going 845 minutes without conceding a goal and has made more appearances between the Southampton posts than any other goalkeeper. As can be seen by the image below Tommy was incredibly slim for a goalkeeper and the other players frequently made him the subject of their dressing-room banter. Players in the communal bath after a game would shout in mock alarm “don’t let the plug out, we don’t want to lose Tommy”.

He fell out with the club at the start of the 1925-26 season over the withdrawal of a benefit match, but he returned in the October

and gave more displays of his consistent ability -once described as ‘miraculous’,

until joining Coventry in 1928 to be nearer his family home. After football he lived in Moxley and kept pigeons for a hobby in the back garden of his Victorian home in Moxley.