Perhaps the player in this series who has played the greatest number of games for Southampton Football Club, yet is unknown to anyone under 55.
Despite his nickname, more of which later, David Walker was born about as far away from the sea as you can get, born in Colne in East Lancashire he joined his local club Burnley playing only a minimal number of games for them until joining Saints as he approached his 24th birthday.
His Saints career started at the Baseball Ground in August 1965 and ironically ended there as well eight years later, he was brought in by Ted Bates to add some steel to a side and finally bring them that elusive promotion to the top flight, he played a big part in doing so, although he wasnt wuite a regular in his first season, he still started 27 games plus 1 off the bench as Saints won promotion.
He made the jump to the First division well and helped keep Saints up only missing three games all season and scoring his first and only goal for the club in the process.
For the next few years he would play about 3/4 of the games every season, not bad seeing as even his biggest supporters would describe him as Uncompromising and his rugged no nonsense defending earned him the nickname "Docker" amongst the Dell faithful, an illusion to his hard stature, remember this was in a team of hardmen described by Bill Shankly as "Ale House Brawlers" Saints had their flair players, but they had plenty of those whose behaviour want exactly Saintly and Shanks was not the only manager who would complain.
1970/71 was perhaps the first season he was not a regular and for the next four seasons his opportunities would be limited, first by the John McGrath/Jimmy Gabriel partnership, then by the arrival of Jimmy Steele and the emergence of Paul Bennett, in his final season 1973/74 he would play only twice and would finish his Saints first team career at the same ground it started on as Saints were stuffed 6-2 by Derby County the polar opposite of the 3-0 win they had enjoyed there 8 1/2 years earlier on his debut.
He left to finish his footballing career in South Africa, his Saints stats reading League 189 (8) 1 goal, FA Cup 19, League cup 9, Europe 6 giving a total of 223(8) with only that solitary goal, good value for the £20,000 Saints paid for him.
He soon returned to the Southampton area after a short stay in South Africa and in 2003 was running a guest house in the New Forest, sadly Im not sure many under the age of 55 would remember much of Dave Docker Walker, which is a shame because he was a great servant to Saints over a long spell.