Bill Smith (footballer, born 1926)
English footballer born in 1926
William Henry Smith (7 September 1926 – December 2014) was an English professional footballer born in Plymouth, Devon, who played as a forward or wing half. He made 237 appearances and scored 40 goals in the Football League playing for Reading, Northampton Town, Birmingham City, Blackburn Rovers and Accrington Stanley.
He contributed to Blackburn's promotion to the First Division in the 1957–58 season, before moving to Accrington Stanley as player-coach in 1960. Appointed joint caretaker manager with trainer Harry Hubbick in late 1961, he retired from football when Stanley resigned from the Football League in March 1962.
References
General
Matthews, Tony (1995). Birmingham City: A Complete Record. Derby: Breedon Books. p. 125. ISBN 978-1-85983-010-9.
“Bill Smith (footballer, born 1926)” enters the record as english footballer born in 1926. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Bill, Smith and footballer can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Bill Smith (footballer, born 1926)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Bill, Smith and footballer provides the most credible route into that argument.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4910925. VIAF identifies the subject as 110027009. The Library of Congress control number is n80004121. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1926, 2014, 1957 and 1960.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bill Smith (footballer, born 1926)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.