he moved into non-league football with Corby Town, newly admitted to the Midland League. He helped them finish as runners-up in his first season, scored 38 goals in his second, but lost form at the start of his third. In December 1954, Corby turned down Peterborough United's offer of a player swap with the ageing and equally out of form Doug Taft. Slater then missed six weeks with a rib injury, but his form returned along with his fitness, and according to the Peterborough Citizen & Advertiser, "there has been a perceptible improvement on the part of Corby since Fred Slater returned and started to score goals again" He signed for Nuneaton Borough for the 1955–56 season, and finished it with 50 goals in all competitions as his team won the Birmingham League–Birmingham Senior Cup double. He set a club record of 8 goals in a single match, an 11–1 league defeat of Bilston. The season summary on the club's heritage website records that without Slater, Nuneaton would not have won the title: Although he top-scored again in 1956–57 with 23 goals, his form was poor compared with that of the previous season, and he was released. He spent the next two seasons with Hinckley Athletic, another Birmingham League club. By December 1958, the Leicester Evening Mail was suggesting that some of those ageing professionals who had been out of the senior team, including Slater, might be allowed to leave. A couple of weeks later, he returned to the first team and scored twice, "to show he is far from finished." He left the professional game at the end of the season, but played on for a few years for his works team, Dunlop, in the Birmingham Works League. Slater died in September 2002 on the Isle of Wight. Career statistics Honours Nuneaton Borough Birmingham & District League Division 1: 1955–56 Birmingham Senior Cup: 1955–56 References Sources 1925 births 2002 deaths Sportspeople from Burton upon Trent English footballers Association football forwards Burton Albion F.C. players Birmingham City F.C. players York City F.C. players Corby Town F.C. players Nuneaton Borough F.C. players Hinckley Athletic F.C. players English Football League players