Fred Slater

Life and career Slater was born in 1925 in Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire. He played football while in the Army He was prolific in reserve-team football, scored in first-team friendlies in Scotland and Switzerland, and made his senior debut on 13 November 1948a year to the day after signing He missed only four months of the season, but by the time he was fit again, Jimmy Dailey had taken over at centre forward. It was the first instance of what the Sports Argus dubbed "an unhappy knack of bumping into trouble". Over the next 18 months, he injured himself tripping on the stairs, twisted his ankle when he trod on a brick, and what he thought was "just a cold" had turned into pneumonia that left him hospitalised for weeks. He played just five first-team games for Birmingham, and was transfer-listed at the end of the 1950–51 season.

In June 1951, Slater signed for York City of the Third Division North. After York's opening-day opponents, Lincoln City, took the lead after 14 minutes, Slater equalised a minute later, but Lincoln regained and kept the lead. He failed to score in the next five matches and lost his place. Brought back into the side to face Darlington at the end of September, Slater scored both goals in a 2–1 win, but those goals were his last for the first team. He made 14 appearances in league and FA Cup,

There were no takers from the Football League, and he moved into non-league football with Corby Town, newly admitted to the Midland League. He helped them finish as runners-up in his first season, scored 38 goals in his second, but lost form at the start of his third. In December 1954, Corby turned down Peterborough United's offer of a player swap with the ageing and equally out of form Doug Taft. Slater then missed six weeks with a rib injury, but his form returned along with his fitness, and according to the Peterborough Citizen & Advertiser, "there has been a perceptible improvement on the part of Corby since Fred Slater returned and started to score goals again"

He signed for Nuneaton Borough for the 1955–56 season, and finished it with 50 goals in all competitions as his team won the Birmingham League–Birmingham Senior Cup double. He set a club record of 8 goals in a single match, an 11–1 league defeat of Bilston. The season summary on the club's heritage website records that without Slater, Nuneaton would not have won the title: Although he top-scored again in 1956–57 with 23 goals, his form was poor compared with that of the previous season, and he was released. He spent the next two seasons with Hinckley Athletic, another Birmingham League club. By December 1958, the Leicester Evening Mail was suggesting that some of those ageing professionals who had been out of the senior team, including Slater, might be allowed to leave. A couple of weeks later, he returned to the first team and scored twice, "to show he is far from finished." He left the professional game at the end of the season, but played on for a few years for his works team, Dunlop, in the Birmingham Works League.

Slater died in September 2002 on the Isle of Wight.

Honours Nuneaton Borough Birmingham & District League Division 1: 1955–56 Birmingham Senior Cup: 1955–56