David Staff
professional footballer (born 1979)

David Staff (born 8 November 1979) is an English footballer who played in the Football League for Boston United. He is a coach at Brackley Town.
Before joining Boston United in August 2004, Staff played non-League football for clubs including Rushden & Diamonds, Stamford and King's Lynn, who he joined on transfer deadline day in 2002, making his Linnets debut on 1 April 2002 against Cambridge City. Despite King's Lynn's relegation to the Southern League Eastern Division at the end of that season, Staff remained with The Linnets. He initially played for King's Lynn in a mixture of full back and midfield roles, but latterly became utilized in a more attacking role. He scored 20 goals in all competitions in the 2002/03 season, and was King's Lynn's leading scorer in the 2003/04 season with 23 goals in all competitions, helping King's Lynn to the Southern League Eastern Division title and promotion back to the Premier Division. "Staffy" was seen as something of a dead-ball specialist and a number of his goals came from goal kicks. In February 2004 he scored directly from a corner kick in King's Lynn's 4–1 victory over Banbury United. He left King's Lynn for Boston United in the summer of 2004, making his Football League debut on 21 August 2004 as a very late substitute in the League Two game against Macclesfield Town which finished 1–1, but failed to establish himself in Boston's first team and returned to King's Lynn. Described as a " versatile attacking midfielder", Staff went on to play for Nuneaton Borough, Cambridge City on loan, Rugby Town, initially on loan, Brackley Town, before returning to Rugby Town in January 2009.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “David Staff” is professional footballer (born 1979). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through David, Staff and professional, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5240014. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1979, 2004, 2002 and 2003.
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This entry incorporates text from “David Staff” 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.