Bill Thompson, a member of the Portsmouth squad that won the Football League championship in 1949 and 1950, was briefly manager of Exeter City between May 1957 and January 1958. Arriving from Guildford City, he was last Exeter manager to operate exclusively in Division Three (South) before the reorganisation of the lower divisions in 1958.

Having missed part of his career because of the war, Bill was twenty-seven when he joined Portsmouth from Carnoustie Panmure in 1948. Never a regular during Pompey’s glory years, he had made forty league appearances when he moved on to Bournemouth four years later before dropping into non-league with Guildford City. Appointed manager of the Surrey club, he led the team to the Southern League championship in 1955/56 and, with ambitions to manage in the Football League, was one of thirty applicants for the Exeter City job in April 1957 following the dismissal of Norman Dodgin. 

Catching the eye of City’s new chairman Albert Stanley Line, Mr Thompson duly started the role as the club entered what was the final year of Division Three (South) football before reorganisation. With a 12th place finish required to make the cut for the new national Division Three, the Grecians made a poor start and a clash of personality arose between the manager and a chairman who primarily wanted his man to be a coach rather than an old-style manager.

Matters reached a head in January 1958 when Bill Thompson left the club by ‘mutual agreement’ (an explanation he disputed) to take up the position of secretary-manager at Worcester City where he remained until 1962 having guided the club to a FA Cup victory over Liverpool in 1959. The Grecians replaced him with Frank Broome and ultimately finished at the foot of Division Three (South) in the division’s final season.    

Mr Thompson later worked in the Netherlands with Sparta Rotterdam and Harlem and died in Portsmouth in December 1988.