By Will Foster

At a concert for Tommies in April 1940 the entertainer noted they had a soccer star in their midst. Indeed the player had sat atop the 2nd Division scoring charts at the outbreak of war. Poor Hugh Billington, the bashful, humble man the crowd turned towards, could not have been more embarrassed by the attention.

‘I shan’t go to another concert for a long time,’ he told an interviewer.

Hugh was born in Ampthill in 1916 but grew up in Luton. He was living on Inkerman Street around the time Luton finally managed to persuade him to turn professional in the summer of 1938, leaving behind an incredible spell at Waterlows where his 100 plus goals, including 80 in a single season, had helped the Dunstable side to two Spartan League titles. Billington would later admit he preferred the amateur life, ‘we could go out for a drink with our wives after matches. You couldn’t do that once you were a professional!’

He joined a club looking for someone to take on the uneviable role of replacing Joe Payne, who had departed for Chelsea the previous March. At first it was hoped Jack Vinall would be the next in line but injury and loss of form led Town to turn to Billington, who had banged in 14 goals in 15 reserve games, by the time they visited Tranmere on Guy Fawkes night.

‘I was more anxious that day than I’d ever been,’ Hugh said in a 1939 interview, ‘and I can tell you it was a great relief when I saw the ball going into the net for my first league goal.’ He would score again for good measure, helping Luton to a 3-2 win.

It began an incredible goalscoring record in Luton colours. He managed 28 in his first 30 appearances, a number bettered to this day only by Joe Payne’s 35, and ended his first season in the professional game as the 2nd Division’s (now Championship) top scorer. It helped the club to a 7th placed finish, the highest ever achieved in the Football League at the time. All this less than 12 months after turning out in the Spartan League!

Southampton were to suffer particularly badly in the face of his goalscoring prowess. Over the course of the 1939 Easter Weekend Billington first hammered a hat-trick in a 6-3 win at Kenilworth Road, before equalling the feat three days later in a 4-0 victory at The Dell. They were two of the eight hat-tricks he scored in a Luton shirt. Only Gordon Turner, Ernie Simms, Andy Rennie and Joe Payne have managed more.

Naturally this led to scouts descending on Kenilworth Road, with visitors from Liverpool, Norwich, West Brom, Blackpool and Birmingham among the suitors. The Luton directors, seeing 1st Division football so tantalisingly near, were determined not to sell though, and Billington was still around when football was halted after only three games of the 1939/1940 season. Not only was Billington topping the scoring charts, as that entertainer would note a few months later, but Town were heading the division.

Hugh was called up to the Army in March 1940 but continued to play for Town in wartime matches while on leave. Two months earlier, writing in the Sunday Express, journalist John Wadham had ruminated on what Billington might have been worth in peacetime conditions. ‘£10,000 and a not a sixpence less,’ was his deliberation, a remarkable number give the British transfer record stood just £4,000 higher at the time.

Hugh returned to football at the end of the war but was now 30. Still, in the first League match back at Kenilworth Road, a 4-1 win against Sheffield Wednesday, it was said that the visitor’s proccupation with Billington was a large reason when Mel Daniel was left with the space to score a hat-trick.

In all he managed 28 goals in 40 goals in the first season back. This included five in the 6-0 win against Notts County at Kenilworth Road in January, the only time a Luton player has achieved such a feat in the FA Cup. The following season the unthinkable happened and Billington, in the midst of a poor run of form in which he’d only scored once In eight games, was dropped to the reserves by manager Dally Duncan, who felt his star player needed a rest. Hugh was apparently in agreement, though he was back in the first team by the time Chelsea came calling in March.

In the end it was apparently ‘only’ £8,000 needed to secure his services, with Hugh moving to Stamford Bridge alongside Billy Hughes in a £20,000 deal. He would spend three season there before eventually hanging up his boots after a short spell at Worcester City. He lived in Luton until his passing in 1988, when he was survived by his wife Rene.

To many young supporters of the era Billington was their hero. This included Frank Batt who, in a 2010 Supporter’s Club Fanzine article wrote, ‘he was the best centre-forward I have ever seen at Luton…. after the war with little to distract us and no television soccer to taint our biased views, we knew that Hughie was the best thing even before sliced bread.’

Below: Hugh (left) with trainer Tom Mackey