Clubs: St Bernard's, Kettering Town, Crystal Palace, West Ham United, Reading

Peter Simpson, who must rank as one of the best centre forwards in the club's history, first came to the attention of Crystal Palace when the Eagles met Kettering Town in the first round of the FA Cup on 24th November 1928. Although Simpson failed to find the net, manager Fred Maven realised immediately that he was a man who could do great things for the club.

Simpson signed for the club the following summer and came into the team for the fifth match of the 1929/30 season, a home match against Norwich City. Simpson wasted little time in demonstrating his scoring prowess, netting a hat-trick and winning the match for the Eagles.

Peter Simpson has become famed as a Palace goalscorer, but he was that and also much more. His distributive skills were prodigious: he fed Albert Harry and George Clark on Palace's flanks with rare ability and they returned the compliment with a stream of centres and crosses. Simpson read and paced a game brilliantly, his high-scoring feats (even in an age of high scores) tell of a man who could always find the split second of time, the extra half-yard of space or an ounce of energy to beat an opponent.

By March 1930, with a mere 26 League games plus one FA Cup appearance for Palace to his name and an average of exactly one goal per match, Simpson had attracted the attention of big clubs. The Palace directors put a prohibitive price upon any transfer and he stayed at Selhurst Park where he set a new goalscoring record of 36 League goals (in his first season and from just 34 appearances!), which topped the Third Division (South) charts for that campaign and was only improved upon by two other men in the entire Football League. In 1930/31, Simpson was absolutely magnificent. He rattled up no less than 46 League goals (an all-time club record which would seem invincible), including six in succession in the 7-2 defeat of Exeter on 4th October. He went on to top Palace's list of goalscorers for each of his first five seasons (another club record) and, between September 1929 and April 1935, he played 180 League and 15 FA Cup games, scoring a fabulous 153 League and 12 FA Cup goals to establish a tally which no one at the club has ever approached, either before or since.

The Peter Simpson era at Selhurst Park ended with a knee injury in 1934/35. He lost some of his sparkle after this, and his final game for the club was at Swindon on Easter 1935, when he scored the Palace goal in a 1-1 draw. He was transferred to West Ham in the close season and after two seasons he moved to Reading for whom he played against the Eagles on 22 January 1938. He put in a superb second half, scoring twice, and Palace had to come home defeated by a margin of 2-3.

Palace staged a benefit for Peter on Wednesday 31st October 1934, against the popular local amateurs, The Corinthians. After his retirement, Peter took over a newsagent's and tobacconist's shop in West Croydon. He died in March 1974 at the age of sixty-nine; but at Crystal Palace at least, the memory of Peter Simpson remains immortal.

Statistics

	Games	Goals
1929/1930	35	37
1930/1931	48	54
1931/1932	33	24
1932/1933	21	15
1933/1934	29	21
1934/1935	29	14
Total	195	165

Source: Crystal Palace FC, Player by Player Since 1960, Rev. Nigel Sands, (1996, Sporting and Leisure Press)