A £900 signing from Preston North End in October 1912, Billy Wareing was purchased with the intention of shoring up an Everton backline that was proving prone to damaging lapses.

Six months earlier the club had run Blackburn Rovers a close second in the hunt for the First Division title, but were now plummeting toward mid-table.

He was, reported the Liverpool Echo ‘a well built clever left-wing half… [a] really good man, who has helped … to keep the Preston team from utter failure.’  The Everton directors  had scouted Wareing so vigorously ‘that one could readily suggest that they would have done wisely to have taken a season ticket for their journey to and from Preston.’

Alas, his debut was a catastrophe: a record 6-0 home defeat to Newcastle United. ‘One can hardly remember Everton being made to look such exceedingly small fry as they did on Saturday,’ reported the Liverpool Courier of the ‘Everton debacle’. ‘Six clear goals does seem a big margin, but it in no way over-emphasises the superiority of the Newcastle team in a game which was played under the most trying circumstances. Everton never had a look in… and in the later stages the side as a whole became completely demoralised.’

Wareing kept his place in the Everton team, nevertheless, switching to centre back later on in the season.  Everton finished the campaign in eleventh place, one of their worst ever showings. When form did not improve the following season, Wareing lost his place to Tom Fleetwood and was just a fringe player throughout the remainder of his war-interrupted career.