When George Greenfield, the Tottenham inside forward broke his leg with the team on a good run in the Second Division, manager Percy Smith had to find someone to come in to cover and he went out and picked up Willie Hall from Notts. County. The 20 year old cost £2,500 and was regarded as a good purchase, as the youngster fitted in straight away and helped the side to promotion to the top flight. So well did Hall do in the Tottenham team that he caught the eye of the England selection committee and was selected to play for his country against France in December 1933 at home at White Hart Lane, which cost Tottenham another £500 in what was an early condition of a transfer fee.
Originally a schoolboy prodigy, Willie made the Notts. County first team at the end of the 1930-31 season and stayed with his club until 1932, when he made his Spurs debut. Playing between the defence and the attack, Hall used his dribbling skills and his willingness to chase back to join the two parts of the team together. His partnership with Willie Evans saw him regularly release the Welshman down the wing and create openings.
It was only a year after joining Tottenham that Hall first won an England cap and that debut in 1933 was added to with nine further caps, scoring nine goal sin the process, including five against Northern Ireland at Old Trafford on 16th November 1938, which included the fastest hat-trick for England, coming in 3½ minutes and all five came in 30 minutes. His scoring record was outstanding, but when the war came, it interrupted his international career, as well as his club career. He could not join the forces, because he had sustained injuries while playing football which ruled him out of signing up to go to war, but Willie still managed to play a total of 136 war-time games, hitting 10 goals for Tottenham, while he served in the local London police reserve.
Spurs played well in the 1932-33 and ended the season as runners-up to gain promotion to the First Division and followed that up with another good season in gaining third place in the top flight in 1933-34. However, in a match at Maine Road, three Manchester City players crunched Hall in a tackle and he required surgery on a cartilage tear, which kept him out for five months and the rest of the season was a struggle, with Willie just coming back for the tail-end of the campaign and despite his return signalling an upturn in fortunes, the team finished rock bottom, being relegated back to Division 2.
Willie dropped deeper in the side to fill in at full-back and he was selected for England in three war-time internationals against Wales. During World War Two, Willie also played as a guest at Brighton and Hove Albion.
Sadly, he suffered from ill health and had to retire from playing and in 1945 suffered amputations of both legs. Such was his service to Tottenham respected, the club held a testimonial game against an FA XI at White Hart Lane on 7th May 1946, with a 30,220 crowd paying to see the match and providing £3,000 for Hall's needs. There was also another game staged for him in Nottingham to help him out.
Although handicapped by no longer having the full use of his lower limbs, he continued to play a part in the game with coaching stints at Clapton Orient, Chelmsford City and Chingford Town.
He was so popular with the fans that he was appointed as the Vice-President of the Spurs Supporters Club when it was first formed and after his retirement, Hall took over the Archers pub in Osborne Street, London EC1.
Perhaps he was a trend-setter of his day, as Hall was one of the first footballers to be feature don the TV programme "This Is Your Life."
Willie Hall died in his home town of Newark, Nottinghamshire on 22nd May 1967.
Hall's prominence in the game in the Nottingham area was also recognised by a "Willie Hall Memorial Trophy" being contested among local sides in the area every year since his death and he has a display dedicated to him in his home-town Millgate museum.