Alan Ball, the youngest member of England’s World Cup-winning team in 1966 replaced Terry Cooper, an England international contemporary, as Exeter City’s manager in August 1991 and was in charge of the team in the third-tier of professional football until leaving for Southampton in January 1994. 

Son of Alan Ball senior ( who managed a number of clubs in the Football League including Preston North End) and father of Jimmy Ball (a former Exeter City youth player who briefly looked after team affairs at Forest Green Rovers when the club was in the Football League), he started his professional career at Blackpool before moving to Everton immediately after England’s World Cup triumph. Another big move followed to Arsenal in 1970, after he had helped Everton to the Football League championship, before later stints in the colours of clubs such as Southampton, Blackpool (as player-manager) and Bristol Rovers. Finishing playing for good in 1983, he started managing again the following year at Portsmouth followed by two years at Stoke City between 1989 and 1991. 

Having left the Potteries in February 1991, he arrived at Exeter City six months later to replace Terry Cooper who had departed for Birmingham City on the eve of the season. After the Grecians 16th place in 1990/91 under Mr Cooper, the new manager’s remit would have been to keep the team in the division and build from there. This was duly achieved, at a time of chairman Ivor Doble’s suspension from football and the first signs of mounting financial difficulties, but not with too much to spare as the Grecians finished 20th and 19th in successive seasons. Subsequently, with the Grecians faring no better, Mr Ball took up an offer from Southampton in January 1994 (soon after a home FA Cup game against Aston Villa) in advance of the club’s relegation at the end of the season. With Terry Cooper returning to replace Ball, the club experienced a desperately poor return to the fourth-tier in 1994/95 at the end of which Peter Fox, an Alan Ball signing from Stoke City, took over as manager. Aside from keeping City safe from relegation to enjoy a fourth season in the third-tier, Alan Ball was credited for fully encouraging the development of an improved youth policy whilst at the club.

 Now aged forty-eight, he continued to manage with spells at Southampton, Manchester City and Portsmouth through to 1999. Settling in Hampshire, and after the death of his wife Lesley, Alan Ball died at the age of sixty-one in April 2007..