William Fenwick featured as a player during the first season of the recently-renamed Exeter City in 1904/05 and continued to play until the club turned professional in 1908. Working as an accountant, and chairing the still-amateur club’s committee between 1906 and 1908, he was an important figure in the club’s transition to the professional game as he became a director of the new Exeter City limited company established in 1908.   

He made his competitive debut for the renamed Exeter City against 112th Battery Royal Artillery on 18  March 1905. A left-back, he played in the final four games of 1904/05 ahead of playing in 8 (of 12) games during the following season and 21 in 1906/07. He then added another 18 appearances during City’s final season as an amateur club making his last first-team appearance against Looe on 18 April 1908. Overall he is known to have made at least fifty-one first-team appearances in the pre-1908 amateur era. 

Shown as an accounts clerk on the 1911 census, and aged around twenty-six at the time he first played for the club, he was probably slightly-older than most of the former St Sidwell’s United players which may explain why he quickly became involved in his new team’s administration prior to chairing the committee between 1906 and 1908 either side of F H Gardiner also serving in the role. 

With both financial and football expertise, he would then have been seen as an excellent candidate to serve as a director of the brand-new Exeter City limited company that oversaw the Grecians’ entry to the professionalised Southern League in 1908.   

Later living in Blackboy Road (close to St James’ Park), William F J Fenwick died in Exeter in 1958 aged around eighty.