Number three in the countdown belongs to a player whose Lincoln City story almost sounds fictional when read back today, yet every part of it is true.
Jock Dodds was not just prolific, he was transformative, controversial, and utterly unique. His numbers alone justify his place this high in the list. 38 league goals in 60 outings for Lincoln City, a return of 0.63 goals per game, make him one of the most efficient scorers ever to wear the red and white.
Jock Dodds (0.63 goals per game)
To understand just how extraordinary that is, it helps to imagine the scale of his arrival. Picture Lincoln as a Championship club, scrapping at the bottom, short of bodies and short of hope, when the board suddenly sanction a club record fee for a striker. Not just any striker, but one with nine goals in eight internationals, fresh from a top-flight side, described by the national press as one of the five best forwards in the country. Two bigger clubs want him. He chooses Lincoln anyway, steps off the train to be greeted by the manager and a local photographer, and within days is leading the line in a relegation six-pointer.
That is not exaggeration. That is Jock Dodds in 1948.
Before Lincoln, Dodds had already lived a career that most players would struggle to match. Raised in County Durham, he came through the hard yards of local football before joining Huddersfield Town as an apprentice, walking miles to training and helping the groundsman after sessions. Huddersfield were a powerhouse then, serial title contenders, and breaking through was almost impossible. After his release, he joined Sheffield United, where his talent exploded. Once given a chance, he never looked back, finishing as the Blades’ leading scorer in each of his five seasons and racking up 130 goals.
He played in the 1936 FA Cup Final, struck the bar when inches from an equaliser, and firmly believed history would have changed had a defender not shoved him mid header. He was already a national figure, flamboyant, fashionable, driving an open-topped Cadillac through Sheffield, when Blackpool paid a huge fee for him. War then robbed him of his peak years, but even that could not slow him. He scored freely in wartime football, hit seven in a single match for Blackpool, and bagged nine goals in eight wartime Scotland internationals, including a Wembley hat trick against England.
After the war, his career lurched towards chaos. Contract disputes, a controversial move abroad, and a refusal to fall in line left him briefly banned before he resurfaced with Everton, where he again finished as top scorer, twice, with 36 goals in 55 games. Then, astonishingly, he signed for Lincoln.
City paid £6,000, turning down higher offers from elsewhere thanks largely to Bill Anderson and shared North East connections. The Imps were bottom of the Second Division and had been promoted only the season before. Dodds arrived on 7 October 1948 and made his debut two days later away at Grimsby, scoring twice in a 2-2 draw in front of a crowd swollen by 7,000 travelling Lincoln supporters. Home gates surged immediately. He scored against Forest, West Ham, Spurs, anyone who crossed his path. City still lost heavily at times, but Dodds kept scoring.
Tactically, he was ahead of his time. Rather than simply leading the line, he dropped deep, hovering between the wingers, drawing defenders and feeding runners, a role closer to a modern number ten than a traditional centre forward. In a struggling side, he was everything, scorer, creator, focal point.
Relegation followed, but the numbers tell their own story. Dodds missed six crucial matches, and in those games City scored just four goals. Drop into the Third Division North did nothing to blunt him. He scored 21 in 36 matches the following season, including braces against Oldham, Hartlepool and Doncaster. City finished short of promotion, and once again, his absence in key games told its own tale.
Then came the moment that ended everything. Dodds had acted as an intermediary for Colombian club Millonarios, helping arrange moves for British players to a league outside FIFA control. It caused uproar. Complaints were lodged, investigations followed, and despite arguments that no rule had technically been broken, Dodds was expelled from the Football League. While others were later reinstated, he chose not to return. Football, for him, was finished.
Life after football was just as colourful. He owned nightclubs, bookmakers, factories, and is credited with bringing fruit machines to Blackpool, shaping the seaside entertainment industry. He served a prison sentence over a food hygiene case that went catastrophically wrong, later reinvented himself as a health food advocate, became a vegetarian, ran daily, and lived to 91, the last surviving pre-war FA Cup finalist.
Jock Dodds is more than a striker on a list. He is a reminder of how extraordinary footballers once were, not just on the pitch, but away from it too. 38 goals in 60 games is elite output in any era. The rest of the story elevates it into something unforgettable.
That blend of brilliance, chaos, and relentless scoring secures his place at number three.
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