Willie Haines
| Personal information | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Wyndham William Pretoria Haines | ||
| Date of birth | 14 July 1900 | ||
| Place of birth | Warminster, England | ||
| Date of death | 5 November 1974 (aged 74) | ||
| Place of death | Frome, Somerset, England | ||
| Height | 5 ft 7 in (1.70 m) | ||
| Playing position | Centre-forward | ||
| Youth career | |||
| Warminster Town | |||
| Senior career* | |||
| Years | Team | Apps | (Gls) |
| Frome Town | |||
| 1922–1928 | Portsmouth | 164 | (119) |
| 1928–1932 | Southampton | 70 | (47) |
| 1932–1938 | Weymouth | ||
| 1938–???? | Frome Town | ||
| * Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only. | |||
Wyndham William Pretoria "Willie" Haines (14 July 1900 – 5 November 1974) was an English footballer who played at centre-forward for south coast rivals, Portsmouth and then Southampton in the 1920s and 1930s.
Haines was born at Warminster Common in Wiltshire and went to the local school at Sambourne where he was a member of the school football team. As a youth he played for Warminster Town before joining Frome Town in the Western League, from where he joined Portsmouth (then playing in the Football League Third Division South) in December 1922.
In his first season at Fratton Park, Haines made only six appearances, scoring three goals. In the following season, however, he displaced Alf Strange and became the first-choice centre-forward, scoring 28 goals from 30 league appearances, making him the division's top scorer as they won the Football League Third Division South championship.
Haines was nicknamed "Farmers Boy" and became something of a legend at Fratton Park, where the Pompey fans would often voice their approval of his forward play with a rendition of the popular refrain "To be a farmer's boy". As a centre-forward he had a style of his own and, rather than dashing around the field, he preferred to play at a more leisurely pace. He seldom tried to strike the ball hard, but preferred to place it with "tantalising precision".
In Portsmouth's first season in the Second Division, Haines shared the goal-scoring with Jerry Mackie with both players scoring 17 goals as Pompey finished in a creditable fourth place in the table. Haines was top-scorer in the next two seasons with 20 goals in 1925–26 when Portsmouth finished in mid-table, and 40 goals from 42 appearances in 1926–27 as Pompey gained promotion to the First Division as runners-up, squeezing out Manchester City on goal average, by a margin of just 0.006. Haines's goal tally included a hat-trick scored in a 9–1 victory over Notts County on 9 April 1927 – this remains Portsmouth's record margin of victory. Going into the final match of the season, Portsmouth and Manchester City were on the same number of points with near identical goal averages. The match between Manchester City and Bradford City had started before Portsmouth's match against Preston North End and finished 8–0. At this time, Portsmouth were also winning 4–1 but needed to score one more goal to take the runners-up spot. Haines managed to score the vital goal in the final minutes of the game, thus sending Portsmouth up by the narrowest of margins.
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