Billy Smith joined Exeter City from Hyde United, his hometown club, in 1913 and made 66 Southern League appearances before joining the war effort in 1915. Having been a member of the team which toured Argentina and Brazil in 1914, he was forced to retire from football after losing a leg in the Great War.

Billy was signed from Hyde United of the Lancashire Combination in the summer of 1913.

He played his first game for the Grecians at Gillingham in October 1913 and, making the left-half position his own, missed just one game thereafter as he tallied 30 league appearances for the season. 

A member of City’s 1914 summer tour to Argentina and Brazil, Billy was again a regular from the start in the following term when he appeared in every league match aside from the home fixture against Swindon Town in March 1915. 

Billy joined the military for the duration of the First World War but such were his injuries that he had a leg amputated in a Liverpool hospital 1919. Visiting Exeter around that time, he married a young woman from Exeter and consequently maintained his association with the area.  

Billy died in 1959.