The Bristol Rovers History Group. |
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(Jack) John Neilson.
Born, 26.12.1874, Renfrew. Died? Début: 1.9.00 v Queen’s Park Rangers. Career: Renfrew Victoria; January 1897 Abercorn; 31.1.97 Celtic [1,0]; 1.5.97 Abercorn [15,0]; 7.9.99 Third Lanark; 4.5.00 Bristol Rovers; 7.5.02 Third Lanark [145,12]; October 1907 Wishaw Thistle; August 1908 Albion Rovers. An unsung hero who remains one of only ten Rovers players to have won a Scottish Cup winner’s medal, wing-half Jack Neilson spent many years with Third Lanark, where his début in a 5-0 victory over Clyde proved to be the first of 145 Scottish League games in two spells. Six goals in 49 Southern League matches with Rovers, including a brace as Gravesend United were put to the sword 10-0 in the Southern League in December 1900, plus an appearance in the 15-1 FA Cup victory over Weymouth in November 1900, preceded his second spell with Thirds. This brought his greatest success, for Neilson was an ever-present as Thirds were Scottish League champions in 1903-04, his only goal in 26 League matches being a long-range shot in the 4-1 victory over Dundee in April 1904, which secured the championship, Thirds ending up four points clear of Hearts. He won a Glasgow Cup winner’s medal in both 1905 and 1906 and added both goals in a 2-0 victory at St Mirren in September 1906 to atone for a missed penalty against Hamilton Academical on the opening day of that season. The Scottish Cup, though, brought even greater success; Thirds lost to Celtic in the semi-final in 1904, but defeated Rangers 3-1 in the 1905 Final, in front of a 40,000 crowd in bright sunshine, before losing 1-0 to Hearts in the final twelve months later. The son of Robert Neilson and Ann Paton, he had earlier played in the Celtic side which lost 2-0 at St Mirren in March 1897 to a brace of goals shortly before half-time. |
(Jack) John William Nevin.
Born, 20.2.1887, Lintz, Co Durham. Died Début: 7.9.12 v Plymouth Argyle. Career: Lintz Institute; Gateshead Town; Sunderland reserves; 24.9.09 Hobson Wanderers; 19.7.10 West Bromwich Albion [2,0]; 21.7.11 Gateshead; 23.5.12 Bristol Rovers; January 1914 Dolphin (Gloucester) (trial); January 1914 Ayr United (professional, 27.6.14; released, 31.3.16); 20.6.19 Ayr United; 12.5.20 West Stanley (player-manager, to January 1921); 4.2.21 Lintz Institute; 11.4.21 Consett Celtic; June 1921 Workington; November 1922 Barrow [54,3]; 1924 West Stanley; October 1924 Crewe Alexandra [23,1]; May 1925 Hobson Wanderers; August 1925 York City; Inverness Thistle; August 1926 Fraserburgh (player-coach). A creative wing-half who had made his Football League début for West Brom at Gainsborough Trinity in October 1910, Jack Nevin played in 23 Southern League matches for Rovers without scoring, before embarking on a long and peripatetic footballing career. In January 1913 he had featured, on this occasion at right-half, in the Rovers side which defeated Notts County 2-0 in an FA Cup upset at Eastville. He made his Ayr United début in a 4-0 victory over Partick Thistle in August 1914 and was said to have played especially well in the side which emerged battered and bruised from Ibrox Park, having been defeated 5-2 by Rangers in a Scottish First Division game in September 1915. Carried off the field with a foot injury sustained in the 2-1 victory over Aberdeen in February 1916, he left the club before recovering. Due to his spell north of the border and wartime football with Hull City, Workington and Bradford Park Avenue, his first Football League goal came more than twelve years after his début. He chipped in with home goals for Barrow against Southport, Wigan Borough and Accrington Stanley in Division Three (North) and later scored Crewe’s winning goal against Bradford Park Avenue in October 1924. Jack Nevin’s married grand-daughter is still living in Newcastle. |
Frederick Nicholls.
Born, 1875, Bristol. Died? Début: 22.12.00 v Reading. Career: Stapleton Road; 4.5.00 Bristol Rovers; March 1901 Bristol City (loan); April 1901 Stapleton Road; August 1901 Staple Hill. Though his second and final appearance for Rovers in the Southern League was a comfortable 10-0 victory over Gravesend in December 1900, half-back Fred Nicholls played in just one more game in that league, for Bristol City at Queen’s Park Rangers the following March. Other than that, he was for many years attached to Bristol and District League side Stapleton Road. He may have been related to brothers Harry and Bill Nicholls who both played for Staple Hill against Rovers in March 1894, the former scoring and the latter having a strike disallowed for offside as Rovers recorded a 3-1 victory. Harry and Fred Nicholls were both with Staple Hill for the 1901-02 season. |
William James Nichols.
Born, 1887, Bristol. Died? Début: 5.12.08 v Brighton. Career: Mangotsfield United; November 1907 Bristol Rovers (professional, 8.5.08); January 1910 Merthyr Town. With Ben Appleby injured, Bill Nichols played at right-back for Rovers in 5-0 Southern League defeat at Brighton, inside-right Bert Longstaff (1885-1970) scoring a brace. |
Henry Charles M Ollis.
Born, 1881, Bristol. Died, 1923, Worcester. Début: 30.4.06 v Brentford. Career: Keynsham; August 1905 Bristol Rovers (August 1906 re-instated as an amateur); 1906 Staple Hill (to 1909). Bristol-born, Harry Ollis was brought up in 4 Chatham Row, Bath, by his widowed maternal grandmother Ann Gould; his father Henry Ollis (1847-1913), a publican of 32 Cornwall Lane, and mother Mary Ann Gould took in lodgers and it is possible Harry was an only child. His sole Southern League game for Rovers, at outside-left, was a 2-1 home win on the final day of the season, when Rovers’ two goal-scorers, Billy Beats and Jack Lewis, were both international players. When the reserves defeated Trowbridge Town 12-0 in September 1906, he scored a hat-trick. Married to Alberta May Harvey, who died in 1976, he worked as a plumber in Bath and they had a large family. One Harry Ollis, who may have been related, captained the Kingswood side which drew 1-1 with Rovers in September 1890. Rovers’ Harry Ollis sadly died aged just forty-one. |
(Jimmy) James Ronald Orr.
Born, East Lothian, Scotland. Died? Début: 6.1.06 v New Brompton. Career: Belhaven Athletic; Cambuslang Rangers; 10.1.01 Hibernian [5,0]; 29.1.02 Airdrieonians; June 1903 Hibernian (trial); 23.12.05 Bristol Rovers (to 1906). Only a bit-part player at Hibernian, Jimmy Orr made his Scottish League début in a 2-0 home win against Partick Thistle in January 1901, featured in a 6-0 defeat at Rangers and last played in a 3-1 defeat in August 1903 at Port Glasgow Athletic. Airdrie were Second Division champions in 1902-03, but he appears not to have been able to break into their successful side and he was out injured for the first half of the 1905-06 season. He subsequently stood in for the injured Davie Walker in a 2-1 home defeat in his solitary Southern League appearance for Rovers. Jimmy Orr had caught smallpox at his place of work in February 1901 in Tollcross, Glasgow, where an epidemic was raging; hospitalised for several days, he was reportedly lucky to survive. He must not be confused with his contemporary, Ronald Orr (1876-1924) of St Mirren, Newcastle United, Liverpool and Raith Rovers, who won four full caps for Scotland. |
Gilbert James Ovens.
Born, 1884, Eastville, Bristol. Died, 17.5.1963, Eastville, Bristol. Début: 11.2.05 v Luton Town. Career: Eastville Athletic; 1902 Master Bakers FC; 28.4.04 Bristol Rovers (professional, 4.4.08); 12.9.10 Chelsea; 15.7.11 Queen’s Park Rangers (to 1916). The irony of a man named Ovens becoming a master baker cannot be lost on any reader. Indeed, Gilbert came from a long line of bakers, his father Henry (1857-1930) running a bakery at 151 Fishponds Road, where he and his wife Asenath Curtis Manning (1852-1931) brought up their two daughters and three sons, Gilbert being the second child. Gilbert Ovens married Ada Victoria Broad (1887-1972) of Long Ashton in the summer of 1911 and they had a daughter Diana. Despite making his club début at centre-forward, his only appearance in the 1904-05 Southern League championship season, Ovens did not score in his 66 games for the club in that league. A reliable central defender, he later formed a strong full-back partnership with Bill Westwood and was “quite first class” (“The Villa News and Record”) in April 1910, when Rovers contrived to defeat League champions Aston Villa 2-1 in an Eastville friendly. Unable to make the first-team at Stamford Bridge, he subsequently and contributed three goals in 103 matches with Rangers in the Southern League, scoring the winning goal at Reading in January 1912 and against both Watford and Swindon Town the following campaign. He was in the Rangers side for both games in the 1912-13 season and in the team which defeated Rovers 1-0 in the Southern League on Good Friday 1914. Gilbert Ovens was living in 1932 at 33 Freemantle Road, Eastville. |
Isaac Owens.
Born, 6.3.1881, Howden-le-Wear, Co Durham. Died, 15.4.1916, Devonport. Début: 1.9.06 v New Brompton. Career: Darlington; Bishop Auckland; Crook Town; 2.10.01 Arsenal [9,2]; 1903 Darlington; 3.10.04 Plymouth Argyle; 16.5.06 Bristol Rovers; 3.5.07 Crystal Palace; 11.5.08 Grimsby Town [6,3]; 5.2.09 Darlington (to May 1909). Isaac Owens, the fifth son of a coalminer from North Wales, is listed as “one month old” in the 1881 census, which was taken on the night of 3rd April; his parents Isaac Owens (1848-1934) and Hannah Williams (1848-1919), had moved from Flintshire to County Durham, settling at Low Beechburn in North Bedburn, near Hamsterley. Five feet ten-and-a-half inches tall and weighing twelve stone seven pounds, he helped Arsenal reserves to secure the London Combination and West Kent League titles in 1901-02 and rare Division Two starts enabled him to score against Gainsborough Trinity and Newton Heath in the autumn of 1901. Owens had played twice against Rovers whilst at Plymouth, scoring in the games of April and December 1905, totalling four goals in 27 Southern League matches and seven in just fourteen Western League encounters at Home Park. A début goal was the first of six in seventeen Southern League matches with Rovers and he later played 22 times in the same league with Palace, scoring seven times and opposing Rovers in both fixtures of the 1907-08 campaign. In addition, his first-half penalty against QPR in November 1906 was saved by goalkeeper Arthur Howes (1877-1960). In September 1906 the reserves defeated Trowbridge Town 12-0, Owens scoring seven times, four of these coming after half-time. He scored against Stockport County on his Second Division début with Grimsby Town in September 1908 and he scored fifteen goals in seventeen North-Eastern League matches with Darlington in 1908-09, including strikes in his first eight appearances. Owens had been hospitalised at Bristol General Hospital for an appendicitis operation in September 1907. Isaac Owens married Elizabeth Graham Blackett (1888-1932) in 1911 and they had a son Hugh. |
John Edward Paul.
Born, 3.8.1873, Blochairn, Glasgow. Died, 1942, Chesterfield. Début: 19.9.98 v Bristol City. Career: Newton Thistle; November 1894 Derby County [28,9]; 6.5.98 Bristol Rovers; 25.10.01 Bakewell Town (to 1903); 3.11.09 Bakewell Night School FC. Born at home at 1 River Street, the son of immigrants from Yorkshire, steelworker Simon Paul and his wife Ellen Smith, who had married in Wath-upon-Dearne in April 1863, shortly after the death of Ellen’s first husband William Smith, John Paul went on to play for Rovers before and after admission to the Southern League in 1899. In addition to three much older half-brothers, John was the fifth of six children from this marriage. Derby were First Division runners-up in 1895-96, Paul scoring twice as Small Heath were defeated 8-0 that November, and he appeared in 37 games in all competitions for Rovers in 1898-99, scoring twelve times, this figure including 25 matches and eleven goals in the Birmingham and District League and a first-half hat-trick in the 10-2 victory over Hereford Thistle in December 1898. Following Rovers’ elevation to the Southern League over the summer of 1899, he added thirteen goals in 51 appearances in that competition to this impressive tally and scored the fifteenth goal against Weymouth in an FA Cup-tie in November 1900 in the final minute, the fifth Rovers forward on the score-sheet. Five feet eight-and-a-half inches in height and weighing eleven stone eight pounds, he added determination to Rovers’ left side. His subsequent move to Bakewell was not an entirely odd one, since he had married, on 16th September 1897, a girl from that town in Derbyshire, the appropriately-named Mary Elizabeth Derbyshire (1868-1945) and their first child Dorothy (1898-1984) was born when the family was living at Seaton Villa, Eve Road, St George; subsequent daughters Lilian and Edith were born in Derbyshire, whilst Dorothy married William Ollivant and had a daughter, also Dorothy, who married Colin Hounslow. |
Charles Mayfield Payne.
Born, 1887, Birmingham. Died, September 1955, Birmingham. Début: 9.9.14 v Southend United. Career: Soho Villa; King’s Norton Metalworks; GEC Works; King’s Norton Metalworks; Stirchley United; 1907 Wolverhampton Wanderers [12,1]; March 1910 Blakenall; 13.7.10 Brierley Hill Alliance; 7.6.11 Worcester City; 13.5.14 Bristol Rovers (to 1915). Charlie Payne, who had scored six goals for Worcester City in 1913-14 as they were Birmingham and District League champions and added one Worcestershire Senior Cup goal alongside Joe Caddick, joined Rovers in time for the final season of football before wartime hostilities put sport on hold. Three goals in 31 Southern League games for Rovers prefaced a brief wartime spell at the club in 1916-17. He scored at Croydon Common and in the home fixtures against Reading and Southend United. Earlier in his career, he had scored a Second Division goal in April 1910, when Wolves recorded a 3-2 victory away to Bradford Park Avenue. He worked in the manufacturing industry, making billiard tables and rising to the position of works foreman at a billiard table works. |
William Watling Peplow.
Born, 21.2.1885, Derby. Died, 24.10.1957, Birmingham. Début: 5.9.08 v Exeter City. Career: St Michael’s School, Handsworth; Handsworth FC; Handsworth Lions; March 1906 Redditch Town (professional, 18.9.06); April 1907 Birmingham [17,0]; 4.5.08 Bristol Rovers (retired, 1915). Watchmaker James Peplow and his wife Felicia Tildesley (1856-1926) had seven children, the fourth being William; they moved from 16 William Street, Derby in the late 1880s and settled in Soho Road, Handsworth. When William’s daughter was born in Bristol in the spring of 1910, he named her Felicia Winifred Peplow after his mother. “Peppy” was an enormous crowd favourite for seven seasons at Eastville and his tally of 216 Southern League matches and 42 goals, five of them from the penalty-spot, is hugely impressive in an era of great change. Bringing Football League experience, his début having been for Birmingham against Bury in September 1907, although he had also been in the side which lost 8-0 at Newcastle that November, he scored on his Rovers début. Indeed, he impressed at Rovers to such an extent that he took part in the prestigious international trial match of 1909. It was Peplow who opened the scoring when Rovers recorded a shock 2-0 win away to Grimsby Town in the FA Cup in January 1910 and his cross seven minutes from time was turned into the net for the decisive second goal when Rovers beat First Division Notts County 2-0 at Eastville in the same competition in January 1913. In one Southern League game at Eastville in October 1908, Peplow was one of two Rovers players to miss a first-half penalty and he was sent off after half-time for reacting to a foul from Norwich City’s Walter Rayner (1882-1958). Five feet nine inches in height and weighing in at twelve stone, he was the club’s top scorer in 1910-11 and added a brace as Merthyr Town were defeated 7-1 at Eastville on Boxing Day 1912 lodging at that time with his wife Louisa Winkless, whom he married in 1909, and daughter Felicia at Albert and Margaret Jenkins’ home in 6 Wood Street, Eastville. After 234 matches and 45 goals for Rovers in all competitions, he was awarded a benefit game against Coventry City in February 1915, before serving in the Grenadier Guards, regimental number 27477. By 1920 he was living at 71 Grove Lane, Handsworth, where his second daughter Edna May Peplow was born in February 1912; in 1939 he was working as a school caretaker in Jockey Road, Sutton Coldfield. |
George Phillips.
Born, 1881/82, Bristol. Died? Début: 5.12.08 v Brighton. Career: Greenbank; 4.1.08 Bristol Rovers (professional, 3.4.08); 1909 Treharris; 8.9.10 Aberdare Athletic (to 1914). Three goals in a 6-1 win against Weymouth on his début for Rovers reserves set a benchmark for George Phillips. He is believed to have been the older brother of the Rovers player, Harry Phillips and was therefore the son of Edward Colston Phillips and his wife Clara, but should not be confused with AJ Phillips, formerly with Rotherham County, who was with Rovers from September 1907 until January 1908. Despite making his début in a 5-0 defeat, he appeared in six Southern League games for Rovers, scoring in the 1-1 draw at home to Watford in February 1909. That same month, he scored three of Rovers reserves’ four second-half goals as Staple Hill were defeated 4-0 in the Bristol Charity League and he scored five times the following month, as the reserves defeated Welton Rovers 8-0 in the Western League. He returned to help out Rovers’ second string side for a series of games during the 1915-16 wartime season, scoring with a left-foot screw shot from distance in the 4-2 home victory over Southampton reserves in October 1915 and adding a brace in the 3-0 victory over ASC Remount in May 1916. |
(Harry) Henry Phillips.
Born, Bristol. Died, 2.10.1917, France. Début: 3.9.10 v Norwich City. Career: Greenbank; 5.9.08 Bristol Rovers; 1913 Troedyrhiw Stars; 5.6.14 Bargoed Town. Harry Phillips, apparently the younger brother of George Phillips but unrelated to the contemporary goalkeeper of a similar name [this goalkeeper was in goal in September 1907 when Rovers crashed to a 10-0 Western League defeat to Spurs at White Hart Lane], made his début for Rovers reserves in September 1908 and went on to play for the club in 63 Southern League goals, scoring twice. A left-half, he scored a consolation goal in a defeat at Northampton in December 1910 and the final goal as QPR were defeated comfortably 3-0 at Eastville in October 1912. In addition, he was in the Rovers side which defeated First Division Notts County in an emotional FA Cup-tie at Eastville in January 1913. The son of Edward Colston Phillips and his wife Clara of 40 Freeland Buildings, Eastville, Harry married in 1912 Blanch Edith Parslow (who re-married John Truscott in 1918) and they were living at 24 Herbert Street, Eastville at the time of his death. By 1917 his father, who was baptised in Bristol on 16th May 1847, the son of Edward Phillips and Priscilla Barratt, had passed away. He died during hostilities in the First World War, whilst serving in the 12th Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment, and is commemorated on the Memorial to the Missing at Tyne Cot. |
John Warbrick Pierce.
Born, 1873, Preston. Died, 18.12.1908, Preston. Début: 7.9.01 v West Ham United. Career: 1894 Preston North End [74,16]; April 1899 Bristol Rovers (trial); 14.6.01 Bristol Rovers; 1902 Chorley (trial). Versatile forward Jackie Pierce appeared in twelve Southern League games for Rovers and scored from Bobby Muir’s cross against QPR on the final day of the 1901-02 season, as Jack Jones’ hat-trick eased Rovers to a 4-1 victory. He also shot narrowly wide early on in the 2-1 defeat at Wellingborough in October 1901. It is known that he scored three goals for Rovers’ reserves that campaign, one in the 5-2 victory at Swindon Town reserves in February 1902 and a brace in the 5-1 victory over Weston-super-Mare later the same month. He had previously played and scored against Hereford Thistle in April 1899 and may be the “Pearce” who played several games for Eastville Wanderers during the autumn of 1901 and had a trial with Frencliff in Eastville Park in October 1902. Five feet six inches tall, he weighed eleven stone. The son of a cabinet maker, James Pierce (1849-1920) and Margaret Warbrick (1848-91), who had married in Preston in 1871, he and his sister were baptised at St Luke’s, Preston and brought up at 25 Sussex Street, Preston. Jackie Pierce married Eliza Woodhouse (1874-1914) in Preston in 1897 and their two sons James and William were both born in Preston prior to the move to Bristol, the family then living at 64 James Street, Preston. Pierce died of consumption in his native Preston, aged just thirty-five, and his wife died not long afterwards. |
Arthur Wallace Powell.
Born, 23.7.1895, Bedminster. Died, 1973, Westmorland. Début: 26.4.13 v Coventry City. Career: Mangotsfield United; 1912 Bristol Rovers (to 1915). This player, who scored in a 3-2 win at Coventry on the final day of the season in his only Southern League appearance, could be the man who married Amy Whiteley in Cheshire on 23rd July 1922, the couple having three children, Clara, Roger and Jean. A regular for the reserves in 1912-13, he scored a first-half hat-trick at weymouth that April in a 4-2 win and added three more goals in a 6-1 victory over WJ Rogers Ltd on Eatser Monday. He scored eleven goals for Rovers reserves during the 1913-14 season, including a hat-trick against Trowbridge Town that February, and returned to appear in wartime football for Rovers, contributing goals in the home fixtures with Southampton in October 1915 and the Highland Light Infantry the following calendar month, the latter being a tap-in after Harry Roe’s initial effort had been saved. One A Powell also played at right-half for Portsmouth in a 3-1 victory over No1 SARB in a wartime friendly in February 1919. He is buried at Bowness-in-Windermere Cemetery. |
(Dick) Albert Ernest Pudan.
Born, 28.6.1881, East Ham. Died, 22.12.1956, City of London. Début: 6.9.02 v Northampton Town. Career: Clapton; April 1900 West Ham United; 12.7.02 Bristol Rovers; 29.6.07 Newcastle United [24,0]; 14.5.09 Leicester Fosse [46,7]; 26.11.10 Huddersfield Town (manager); November 1912 Leicester Fosse (coach, to 1914; director, 1919-40 and chairman, 1929-31). “Dick” Pudan, the fourth son of a Somerset-born engine fitter Thomas Pudan and his wife Martha Wiggins (1849-1921) of 75 Caistor Road, West Ham, married Mabel Louise Sheermur in West Ham in 1903. A hosiery manufacturer by profession, he was also a highly talented and well-respected full-back, described by contemporaries as “thoughtful and constructive”. A West Ham début against Bristol City in January 1901 was the first of seven Southern League matches for the Hammers and he then gave Rovers sterling service, his 116 Southern League games including helping the side secure the championship of that league in 1904-05. Pudan did, though, leave Rovers somewhat under a cloud, after captaining the side in his final season. A cricket professional with Penarth, he was not given permission by Rovers to attend cricket training and left anyway, invoking a suspension which was only overturned by his sale to top-flight Newcastle United. His career took off with the Magpies, for whom he played alongside Jimmy Howie in the 1908 FA Cup Final. Contemporary reports, though, hold him to blame for both the second and third goals in the final, as the Magpies lost 3-1. He then spent two spells at Leicester, which included playing in a 9-1 Second Division victory over Gainsborough Trinity in December 1909, either side of managing Huddersfield Town in their first two seasons in the Football League, with former Rovers players Archie Taylor, Sandy McCubbin and Jimmy Howie in his side, the last named being his first signing. At the time of the 1911 census, Dick and Mabel, who died in 1981, plus their young daughter Edna (1905-96), are shown at 2 Norman Avenue, Birtley; he worked in a garage in later life, living at 235 Glenfield Road, Leicester. Edna married Leonard Juniper (1901-88) in Leicester in 1928 and had two sons. An effective club cricketer, who once took four wickets for one run when playing for Penarth against Briton Ferry in 1907, Dick Pudan was later a director and briefly chairman at Leicester City, as that club was known from 1919. |
(Barnes) John Rankin.
Born Blantyre. Died? Début: 1.10.10 v Watford. Career: Earnock Rovers; Blantyre Victoria; 1.10.10 Bristol Rovers (trial); 4.10.1910 Bristol Rovers; 1912 Burnbank Athletic; July 1916 Parkhead. Under the pseudonym of Barnes on his arrival at Eastville from Blantyre Victoria, outside-left John Rankin scored six times in 47 Southern League matches for Rovers. Lodging with two Jameses, team-mates Brogan and Jones, he scored in the large victories over Southampton and New Brompton, but his tour-de-force was contributing both goals as Rovers won 2-1 away to Coventry City on Christmas Day 1911. Despite being a regular in the Blantyre Victoria side, he had been forced to miss the game at Ponfeigh in August 1910, after being caught up in traffic flocking to an aviation meeting at Lanark. It is possible that he is the John Rankin, who was born in Hartsfield, Lanarkshire in 1881, the second son of Robert Rankin (1860-1902) and Helen Russell. |
Edward J Rawlings.
Born, 1886/87, St Anne’s, Bristol. Died,1936, Bristol. Début: 30.8.19 v Queen’s Park Rangers. Career: RNVR; 13.5.19 Bristol Rovers; September 1920 Bridgend Town (to 1927). Whilst serving at Groningen as a German prisoner-of-war, local forward Ted Rawlings scored a hat-trick against Bristol Dockers in September 1917, in his first appearance for Rovers; this match at Stapleton Road was watched by a crowd of 500, Rovers winning 5-0. Overall, he contributed 45 goals in two unofficial seasons. This tally included four-goal hauls against ASC Remounts, Military XI, Great Western Railway and RAVC, as well as two other hat-tricks. The “Sports Times” of 7th December 1918 informs us that the Rovers side included Rawlings, whose internment at Groningen had been concluded. Peacetime football proved a greater sporting challenge, but Rawlings’ seven goals in 24 Southern League matches in Rovers’ final season prior to Football League entry included a hat-trick as Southend United were defeated 4-1 in October 1919 and he played in the FA Cup-tie against Spurs. He subsequently played for Bridgend Town for seven seasons, including a friendly in October 1920, during his first season away to Southampton, and died at the age of fifty-eight. |
George Richards.
Born? Died? Début: 21.10.11 v Exeter City. Career: Worked in Bristol Docks; 1911 Bristol Rovers (professional, 27.4.12; to 1913). Ten goals in 28 Southern League appearances for Rovers included a début goal against Exeter City. George Richards’ proudest moment, though, was scoring a hat-trick as Rovers defeated Stoke 4-0 at Eastville in March 1913. In one game, against Crystal Palace, the local reporter described his performance as “clumsy”, although it was his shot which, when saved, set up Harry Roe for a goal; two goals ahead, Rovers drew 2-2. One G Richards, which could have been him, joined Stoke in December 1913. |
Frederick William Riddell.
Born, 11.7.1887, Newhall, Derbyshire. Died, 1959, Nottingham. Début: 25.10.09 v West Ham United. Career: Newhall Swifts; 8.5.07 Derby County [6,1]; 12.5.09 Bristol Rovers; 16.9.10 Newhall Swifts; 21.10.10 Wrexham; 11.11.10 Newhall Swifts; September 1914 Pinxton Colliery. Six League appearances over two seasons and a goal at Chesterfield in January 1908 preceded inside-right Fred Riddell’s sole Southern League match for Rovers, a 1-0 victory. His Derby début, against Hull City, had been the club’s fifth game in a week over Christmas 1907, before subsequently appearing for Newhall alongside his cousin, George Riddell. He appeared in two Birmingham and District League fixture with Wrexham in the autumn of 1910. Fred Riddell weighed eleven stone and stood five feet nine inches tall and was, by 1939, working as a nightwatchman and living at 19 Betts Street, Hucknall. Baptised in Newhall on 2nd October 1887, he appears to have been the son of Frederick Edmund Riddell (1860-1915) and Annie Greaves (1866-1940), his father later re-marrying in 1900 to Harriett Pickering (1861-1930). He should not be confused with Fred Riddell of Watford and Norwich City, who was playing during the same era; both men were simultaneously on the books of Derby County during the spring of 1908. |
Archibald Ritchie.
Born, 21.10.1868, Alloa. Died, 18.1.1932, Nottingham. Début: 23.9.99 v Bedminster Career: Grahamstown; November 1886 East Stirlingshire; July 1891 Nottingham Forest [157,0]; 5.5.99 Bristol Rovers; 3.8.00 Swindon Town (to 1901). Lord Rosebery (1847-1929), the former Prime Minister, presented the FA Cup to Nottingham Forest in April 1898 at Crystal Palace, after two Arthur Capes (1875-1945) goals and one from Scottish international John McPherson (1867-1957) had earned the side a 3-1 victory over Derby County in the final. Archie Ritchie, who shot narrowly wide from a direct free-kick ten minutes before half-time, added his winner’s medal to an international cap gained in March 1891, when Scotland defeated Wales 4-3 at Wrexham. At the peak of his footballing career, in August 1897, he was sentenced to twenty-one days in prison for intimidating a strike-breaker in Notingham. Arriving at Eastville in 1899, the veteran Ritchie must have felt bemused as Rovers conceded eleven goals in his first two Southern League matches, following a 3-0 home defeat against Bedminster with an 8-2 drubbing at Portsmouth, but he stuck with the club and played at full-back in 22 Southern League matches that campaign; he also conceded an own goal as Rovers won 5-2 at Bedminster in January 1900. He played in 26 Southern League games for Swindon the following season, appearing in the two 1-0 defeats against Rovers in the Southern League and playing at Eastville when Rovers won an FA Cup-tie 5-1 in December 1900. Born at Kellie Bank, Alloa in 1868, his parents were Archibald and Helen Ritchieson, his name was recorded (perhaps erroneously) as Richardson and the family gradually becam known through the 1970s as Ritchie. Five feet six inches in height and weighing eleven stone six pounds, his first game for East Stirling’s third side was a friendly against Blythwood Swifts in November 1886 and his first-team début came thirteen months later at his home-town club Alloa Athletic at the age of fifteen. Short in stature, moustachioed, red-haired and versatile, he scored once in 118 games in all competitions for East Stirling, a tally composed predominantly of friendlies, but which included seventeen Scottish Cup matches. “A fine tackler and a good safe kick” (Nottingham Evening Post, 15 August 1891), he was a member of the side which won the Stirlingshire Cup and Falkirk and District Cup twice each, as well as securing the Falkirk Cottage Hospitals Shield of 1889-90. A noted bowls player, he won several pairs competitions alongside Bob Norris (1875-1940), another former Forest player. Ritchie, who died at Greyfriar Gate and is buried in Church Cemetery in Nottingham, married in 1904 Emily Dodson (1875-1965); they had no children and she re-married after his early death. |
(Jack) John Henry Roberts.
Born, 1881, Cannock, Staffordshire. Died? Début: 4.9.07 v New Brompton. Career: April 1899 Cannock Town; 21.5.02 Stafford Rangers; 10.12.02 Bloxwich Strollers; May 1905 Darlaston; 23.4.06 Wolverhampton Wanderers [24,14]; 16.5.07 Bristol Rovers; July 1910 Wrexham; 18.10.12 Flint Alliance. Scoring off a post fifteen minutes into his début, as Rovers began the 1907-08 Southern League campaign in style by putting nine goals past New Brompton, Jack Roberts formed an excellent left-wing partnership with Harry Buckle and later with James Dargue. However, that season was cut short after he dislocated a shoulder shortly after West Ham United had taken a very early lead in a Western League encounter in December 1907 which Rovers eventually won 4-3. He added two further strikes on the opening day of 1908-09 at Exeter and ended up with 28 goals for Rovers in 82 Southern League appearances to add to his Football League experience at Molineux. In February 1910, Roberts scored a first-half hat-trick, and four goals in all, past goalkeeper Gilbert Sawyer (1888-1975), as Rovers’ reserve side won a Western League match 7-1 at Radstock Town. Back in September 1903, he had scored a Second Division hat-trick, as Wolves won 3-2 away to Bradford City. Five feet nine inches in height and weighing eleven stone six pounds, he may also have played later in his career at Stourbridge and at Walsall Phoenix. |
William Robertson.
Born, 8.4.1874, Dumbarton. Died? Début: 2.9.99 v Reading. Career: Renfrew Victoria; June 1894 Abercorn; 18.2.96 Small Heath [91,14]; 11.5.99 Bristol Rovers; 26.4.02 Small Heath; 1903 Bristol Rovers; April 1905 Workington. Having made his Rovers début in the club’s first Southern League fixture, Welsh-born Bill Robertson gave dependable service in two spells as a wing-half, racking up 65 Southern League appearances and scoring in successive home games as captain in March 1901 as well as one of the seven Rovers put past Wellingborough Town over Christmas 1903. Robertson was certainly in the Abercorn side which lost 5-1 at Underwood Park against Leith Athletic in the Scottish Cup in November 1894 and he will have gained some satisfaction in scoring the third goal as Abercorn defeated the same opposition 4-0 in the Scottish Second Division thirteen months later. Five feet eight inches in height and weighing in at eleven stone eight pounds, he also scored on his League début for Small Heath against Blackburn Rovers in Division One in February 1896 and added a hat-trick against Luton Town in November 1898, although he did not make their first-team in 1902-03. Despite suffering relegation from the top flight, his reputation earned a call-up, based on his earlier career north of the border, for the Anglo-Scots against Scotland in a trial game in March 1900. The son of John Robertson and Jane Dingwall, he married Martha McClung and they had two children, Agnes and John. The family lived at the time of the 1901 census at 23 Church Avenue, Easton and was in Kelvin, Glasgow a decade later. |
David James Robson
Born, 1881, Willington Quay. Died, 1958, Newcastle. Début: 5.9.03 v Swindon Town. Career: Willington Athletic; 1903 Bristol Rovers; 5.9.04 Bristol East; 19.7.05 Orient (to May 1906). Geordie James Robson played in an opening day 2-0 home win in the Southern League but, losing his place at outside-right to Daniel Wilson, never appeared for Rovers again. One reporter in the local press criticised his playing style, claiming he “hung on to the ball when it would have paid his side for him to have centred” (Bristol Evening News, 12.9.1903). However, a different reporter suggested that “Robson delighted the home crowd with several tastes of speed that necessitated the full activity of [Septimus] Atterbury [1880-1964] to check” and had one dipping shot just before half-time which just cleared the crossbar. Married to Mary Jane Drew, a Dover girl four years his senior, they were living, childless, at 46 Eugene Street, Bristol by the time of the 1911 census and working in local factories. |
Albert Victor Rodgers.
Born, 1886, Birmingham. Died, 4.4.1918, (killed in action) Début: 6.11.09 v Plymouth Argyle. Career: Aston Waverley; 11.1.07 Aston Villa; 1.5.08 Queen’s Park Rangers; 4.5.09 Aston Villa; 5.11.09 Bristol Rovers; 28.4.11 Walsall; 19.8.12 Shrewsbury Town (to May 1915). In January 1910, Rovers were drawn away to Second Division Grimsby Town in the FA Cup and pulled off an unlikely shock win, Billy Peplow and Albert Rodgers scoring in a 2-0 win. It was the only goal Rodgers scored for the club, for his 28 Southern League matches at inside-forward proved scoreless, 24 games that season and four more in 1910-11. He did not make the first-team at Villa or Walsall, but made two Southern League Division Two appearances for the latter, claiming a goal against Croydon Common. A wartime fatality whilst serving his country, initially enlisting at Aldershot for the Middlesex Regiment but later in the East Surrey Regiment, Rodgers had earlier contributed nine goals in 27 Southern League games for QPR, including a brace in the 2-2 draw with Millwall in December 1908 and the opening goal as Rovers were defeated 4-2 in January 1909. His ten Birmingham League goals with Shrewsbury included a hat-trick in the April 1915 7-0 thrashing of Wednesbury Athletic. |
Henry Richard Roe.
Born, 1890, Bristol. Died, 1957, Bristol. Début: 26.10.12 v Brentford. Career: Greenbank Rovers; 26.10.12 Bristol Rovers; May 1920 Llanelli; 12.2.21 Douglas. With twelve goals in 62 Southern League games to his name, Harry Roe played a major role in the Bristol Rovers story either side of World War One. Scoring the only goal of the game on his club début, he made an even bigger name for himself in January 1913 when, with a low shot after just twenty-five minutes, he put Rovers ahead against First Division Notts County in the FA Cup at Eastville, a tie Rovers won 2-0. Sixteen goals in wartime football for Rovers, plus a broken ankle suffered just after half-time of the wartime game against Bristol City in November 1917, preceded five more Southern League games in the 1919-20 season, the final one before Rovers gained admission to the Football League, and he was in the side which played Spurs in the FA Cup that season. One of a large family to Richard Roe and Clara Harvey (1851-1940), he was brought up very close to the Eastville ground and married Emily Lucas (1889-1970), the couple apparently having several children. They lived at 16 King Street, off Pennywell Road. |
Peter Roney.
Born, 15.1.1886, Knightswood Hospital, Glasgow. Died, 25.8.1930, Scotstoun, Clydebank. Début: 4.9.09 v Portsmouth. Career: Petershill; Strathclyde; Celtic (trial); 1905 Cambuslang Hibernian; 11.10.06 Ayr FC; 8.5.07 Norwich City; 3.5.09 Bristol Rovers; January 1915 17th Middlesex Regiment (Footballers’ Battalion); July 1919 Albion Rovers [10,0]; September 1920 Ayr United; 14.4.21 Ashington. Undeniably one in a long line of great goalkeepers who have represented Rovers, Peter Roney is the only one to have scored for the club. In 178 Southern League appearances over six seasons, his goal came on the final day of the season in April 1910, when Rovers were awarded a dubious penalty ten minutes from time for a trip on Adam McCall in a 2-1 defeat at QPR. Five feet nine inches and twelve stone seven pounds, he was not a particularly tall goalkeeper, but he was a brave one. Roney made his Ayr FC début before a 2,000 crowd at Logie Green two days after signing and lost to a first-half penalty to Leith Athletic, the club’s fifth goalkeeper in consecutive fixtures; he became a regular for the Scottish Second Division side, “fine saving by Roney” being a feature of the game against Dumbarton. Travelling south of the border, he had the misfortune to be in Norwich’s goal in September 1908 when, 6-1 down by half-time, they lost 10-2 at Swindon Town. Nonetheless, fifty-three Southern League games in goal for Norwich City, including four appearances against Rovers, brought him to Rovers’ attention and his signing in 1909 heralded the start of a strong defensive line at Eastville. He was a member of the Rovers side which shocked the footballing world by defeating Football League side Grimsby Town 2-0 away from home in the FA Cup in January 1910; in addition, he was in the Rovers side which defeated First Division Notts County in an emotional FA Cup-tie at Eastville in January 1913. He and his wife Violet, whom he had married in Scotland, settled at 7 Cottrell Road, Eastville. With the Machine Gun Corps as F/306 and, sensitive by nature, “a broken man” after his experiences in the trenches, he developed severe rheumatism on his return from the war. He had suffered psychologically in wartime when “all you could hear were cries of agony; I have nearly turned grey listening to the groans of the wounded”, as he wrote in March 1917, and he was reported to have undergone “such experiences during the war that he is unlikely to be heard of again in professional football”. In November 1919 he was reported to be seriously ill at home in Ashington and, whilst Rovers’ directors sent him ten guineas, a collection was taken when Rovers played his former club, Norwich City; he moved back to Scotland but was dead before his forty-fifth birthday, poignantly still listed on his death certificate as “professional footballer”. |
William Henry Rowlands.
Born, 1883, Bristol. Died, 1948, Bristol. Début: 20.12.02 v Northampton Town. Career: Dominicans; July 1902 Bristol Rovers; 1903 Dominicans. Harry Rowlands scored in each of his first three Southern League appearances for Rovers, but his total of five matches all came in a four-week period straddled across New Year. A son of Edwin Rowlands (1851-1915) and Kate Fowler (1852-1930), he was a prolific goal-scorer for the reserve side, scoring all three goals as Bristol East were defeated 3-0 in April 1903, whilst he and his brother Jack Rowlands scored twice each in the 7-0 defeat of Cotham in September 1902. Jack scored twice and Bill claimed another hat-trick as Rovers reserves defeated Cotham again by the same score-line in March 1903 and Bill had scored three goals as the reserves defeated Trowbridge Town 12-2 in October 1902 Later reverting to Bristol and District League football, he also played against Rovers reserves in April 1908, as part of a Downs League XI which drew 1-1 at Stapleton Road. Harry Rowlands married Irene Kate Watts (1888-1965) in Bristol in 1913, lived at 5 Southfield Road, Westbury-on-Trym (phone number 67111) and they had three sons and three daughters. |
Arthur Rowley.
Born, 1870, Stone, Staffordshire. Died? Début: 2.9.99 v Reading. Career: Leek; Distillery; 27.8.95 Stoke [57,0]; 18.5.99 Bristol Rovers; November 1899 North Staffordshire Regiment; 22.9.02 Port Vale [57,4] (to 1904). Just two matches into his Southern League career with Rovers, left-back Arthur Rowley left the club to conscript and fight in the Boer War. He later achieved an astonishing claim to fame as the first player to score direct from a free-kick in the Football League. Following a summer rule change, Rowley achieved this feat when he opened the scoring in Vale’s 3-2 defeat at the hands of Bolton Wanderers at Vale Park in September 1903. Five feet eight inches in height and weighing twelve stone six pounds, Arthur Rowley, the son of Thomas Rowley and Mary Warrilow, had been baptised in the Staffordshire town of Stone on 21st August 1870. |
Frank Victor Saunders.
Born, 24.5.1888, Dudley. Died, 1946, Birmingham. Début: 27.4.10 v New Brompton, Career: Cradley Heath St Luke’s; Stafford Rangers; September 1909 Bristol Rovers; 5.5.10 Coventry City; January 1911 Wednesbury Old Athletic; 25.6.11 Nottingham Forest [28,7]; 21.4.12 Wellington Town; 29.6.12 Huddersfield Town; 19.9.13 Kidderminster Harriers. As the 1909-10 season drew to a close, Rovers gave inside-right Frank Saunders an outing in the final home fixture of the season and he scored the second goal in a 3-1 win in his sole Southern League appearance. He struggled to find regular football, never appearing for Coventry or Huddersfield and only playing twice at Kidderminster, although he had scored twice as Forest won 4-1 at Grimsby Town in Division Two in March 1912. It is possible that he is the son of Frank Saunders and Caroline Dean baptised at Tipton on 22nd November 1888. Frank Saunders married Mary Farmer in Aston in 1910 and they had a daughter Winifred and a son Mick, living at 90 Nichols Street, Coventry. |
(Wattie) Walter Henry Savage.
Born, 8.6.1884, Mangotsfield. Died, 27.5.1964, Kincardine, Ontario, Canada. Début: 15.10.06 v West Ham United. Career: February 1905 Staple Hill; January 1906 Eastville FC; 4.10.06 Bristol Rovers; 8.3.10 Merthyr Town; August 1911 Treharris; November 1911 Mardy; 11.6.12 Merthyr Town (player and groundsman, to December 1913). Watford bore the brunt of Walter Savage’s attacking force, as he scored against them two seasons running in a Rovers career total of three goals in forty Southern League appearances. In addition, he scored a hat-trick in February 1909, as Radstock Town were defeated 5-0 by Rovers’ reserve side at Stapleton Road in the Bristol Charity League. He was to go on to play three times for Merthyr Town in the same division. Savage and Bill Darke had scored twice each when Staple Hill defeated Salisbury City 6-0 in the Western League Second Division in April 1906. Baptised at Mangotsfield on 6th July 1884, Savage was the eldest child, with four younger sisters and one younger brother, to coal-miner Henry Thomas Savage (1858-1922) and Elizabeth Ritchie (1856-1945). He married Emily Sully (1885-1964) on 16th March 1910, the daughter of John (1855-1931) and Caroline Lewis (1861-1914), and they lived at 11 Alexandra Terrace, Merthyr. On New Year’s Eve 1913, he sailed alone from Bristol on the “Royal George”, joining his father-in-law who had sailed two months earlier. His wife and eldest child, John (“Jack”), followed in July 1915 and the 1921 census finds Walter and Emily in Princess Street, Kincardine, Ontario with four young children, Jack, Jean, Walter and Evelyn. These four children produced eight grandchildren and Walter Savage worked as a shipper for a knitting company in Kincardine until 1957. |
Albert Edward Scothern.
Born, 12.9.1882, Lambley, Nottinghamshire. Died, 20.3.1970, Redditch. Début: 29.2.08 v Plymouth Argyle. Career: South Nottingham; Oxford University; 1903 Oxford City; 19.8.07 Bristol Rovers; 1908-09 Oxford City (retired, 1909). Brought up in Radford, Nottinghamshire, the fourth child to a framework knitter John Scothern and his wife Elizabeth Henshaw, Albert Scothern married in Mansfield in 1900 Sarah Ellen Slaney (1878-1926) and was widowed for over forty years. His father had been the second of seven children to John Scothern and Ann Richards and could trace his lineage back to Joseph Scothern, baptised on 9th February 1723, who married Elizabeth Alvey. Scothern studied natural science at St John’s College, Oxford and won football Blues in 1904 and 1905, playing in the Oxford University side which defeated Bristol City 3-0 at The Parks on a rain-swept afternoon in February 1904. As a footballer, he had played 71 times for Oxford City prior to his arrival at Eastville, scoring in a friendly against Woking over Christmas 1904 and against Civil Service in September 1905. Highlights had been an FA Cup-tie against Football League Bury in 1906 and an appearance at right-back in the Amateur Cup Final at Stockton in March 1906, in which City defeated Bishop Auckland 3-0. They had “succeeded in securing the blue ribbon of amateur football” (Jackson’s Oxford Journal) and their next home game drew a 2,000 crowd as they were played onto the pitch by a Hungarian brass band. Scothern was selected for the Great Britain football squad ahead of the 1908 Olympics in London; he did not feature in any of the matches, as the host nation secured the gold medal. He represented the England amateur side on four occasions, his first game coming against Netherlands, France, Sweden and Ireland between 1907 and 1909 and, having made his Southern League début on 29th February, appeared in three Southern League games for Rovers in 1907-08 and at full-back against Coventry City in October 1908. This being the amateur era, a week after his first Rovers game, Scothern was turning out for Oxford City away to Atherstone Town in fourth round of the FA Amateur Cup. The 1908-09 season, by which time Oxford City were in the Isthmian League, saw Scothern play ten further times without scoring. On the outbreak of war, he volunteered for service with the 9th Sherwood Foresters through the Nottingham University Officer Training Corps. Military service in Gallipoli in 1915, followed by Egypt, France and Belgium, saw him awarded the Victory Medal, the British Medal and the Distinguished service Order, as well as being mentioned six times in dispatches. Even before signing for Rovers, he was a science teacher at Bristol Grammar School and he later became Headmaster of Redditch Secondary school; he married Joyce Pilling (1897-1997, weeks after her hundredth birthday) in 1919 and they had one daughter, Nannette (1929-2003), who married Geoffrey Herbert. Albert Scothern lived at 64 Easmore Road, Redditch and was president of the Redditch British Legion. A fine cricketer with Notts Waverley and Reigate Priory, he was buried, six days after his death, at St Stephen’s Church in Redditch. |
James Arthur Shapcott.
Born, 11.10.1881, Bedminster. Died? Début: 6.4.07 v Millwall. Career: November 1902 Arlington Rovers; 1904 Green Waves; 1905 St Phillips United; 4.9.06 Bristol Rovers; October 1908 Treharris. With Harold Hutchison unavailable, Rovers reshuffled for the trip to Millwall and Shapcott played at left-back in a 2-1 defeat, his sole Southern League exposure. The eighth of ten children to James Shapcott (1852-1908), the son of Matthew Shapcott (1813-91) and Ann Burgham (1818-91), and his wife Sarah Jane Graves (1855-1901), James Shapcott married Louisa Jane Baker in 1904 and they had four children, Mabel, Elizabeth, James and Arthur; they are in the 1911 census at 143 Pasley Street, Devonport, James working at the docks as a boiler maker. He served in World War One as M11723 in the Royal Navy |
William McMiller Gilmore Shaw.
Born, 1885/86, Sorn, Ayrshire. Died? Début: 25.9.09 v Brentford. Career: Kilmarnock Academy; Kilmarnock Oak Vale; May 1905 Kilmarnock [79,3]; 6.5.09 Bristol Rovers (professional, 9.10.09); July 1912 Dumbarton Harp; August 1913 Cowdenbeath; June 1914 Girvan. After a childhood in Muirkirk, the second of four sons to James Shaw, a draper, and his wife Christine, Bill Shaw worked as an insurance broker’s clerk in Main Street, Muirkirk prior to his footballing career. Whilst at Kilmarnock, he had been one of only seven players available for a particular game in January 1908 at Port Glasgow Athletic and played in goal until half-time, when Killie trailed just 2-1; they ended up losing 4-1. His Rovers career encompassed 103 Southern League appearances and six goals, the goals tally including strikes in the two large wins in the spring of 1911, 5-1 at Southampton and 6-2 at home to New Brompton. Five feet nine inches tall and weighing eleven stone six pounds, he was a member of the Rovers side which shocked the footballing world by defeating Football League side Grimsby Town 2-0 away from home in the FA Cup in January 1910. Cowdenbeath were Scottish Second Division champions in 1913-14, the title secured with a 7-0 victory over Dundee Hibernian on the final day of the season. |
James Cousins Shervey.
Born, 1882, Merthyr Tydfil. Died, 29.6.1956, Weston-super-Mare. Début: 6.4.07 v Millwall. Career: 18.10.02 Eastville Athletic; 1903 Eastville Freemantle; August 1904 Bristol Rovers (professional, 1.5.05) (to 1914). Welsh amateur international Jimmy Shervey gave sterling service to Rovers for a decade. In addition to sixteen goals in 51 Southern League matches, he it was who scored the decisive second goal, seven minutes from time, as Rovers knocked First Division Notts County out of the FA Cup 2-0 at Eastville on an emotional afternoon at Eastville in January 1913. He scored freely too for the reserve side, notching a hat-trick against Welton Rovers in September 1906 and six goals a fortnight later, including five after half-time, as 121st Battery Trowbridge were defeated 7-0. Prior to joining Rovers, his first recorded appearance for Eastville Athletic came in the game against Burnham in October 1902 and, a regular that campaign, he certainly scored against St Francis the following month. As late as November 1913 he scored a hat-trick for Rovers’ reserve side against Street. Previously a Gloucestershire representative at bowls, he had also played for Canford Park, Eastville Park and the Bristol side and retained a season ticket to watch Rovers. Having served in the RAF, he married Ethel Doddrell (1884-1967) in Bristol on 18th October 1918 and they lived at 290 Fishponds Road and later in Parry’s Lane, Westbury-on-Trym. Jimmy Shervey died after being taken ill at the 1956 Weston bowls tournament. |
Edward Silvester.
Born, 1886, Worcester. Died? Début: 19.11.10 v Queen’s Park Rangers. Career: St Paul’s Excelsior; St Paul’s Standard; Worcester Cinderella Works; St John’s Waverley; Malvern Link; January 1908 Worcester City; August 1908 Kidderminster Harriers (professional, 5.10.08); 4.5.09 Worcester City; May 1910 Bristol Rovers; 15.12.19 Stourbridge. Goalkeeper Edward Silvester, who conceded eighteen goals in his nine Southern League matches for Rovers, otherwise enjoyed a long career in the Worcestershire area. His first game saw Rovers win in west London and a run of nine consecutive appearances, replacing regular custodian Peter Roney, ended with a 3-3 draw with Crystal Palace. He should not be confused with the Orient right-half Bertie Silvester (1890-1974), who was his contemporary. |
Edward Thomas Skuse.
Born, 1900, Bristol. Died, 1951, Cardiff. Début: 20.9.19 v Brighton. Career: Whitehall Old Boys; 2.6.19 Bristol Rovers; October 1920 Welton Rovers. The second child of baker Edward Skuse (1875-1937) of 3 Station Avenue, Fishponds, and his Somerset-born wife Olive Hambleton (1875-1950), who married at Holy Trinity, Stapleton on 18th January 1898, Ted Skuse was baptised at St Mary’s, Fishponds on 21st February 1900 and married Hilda Morgan (1904-80) in Cardiff in the spring of 1923. Having scored 33 goals for Rovers in wartime between 1917 and 1919, including four in one game against Bristol Dockers and hat-tricks against Bristol City, in a 5-1 victory at Ashton Gate, and Bristol YMCA, he played at centre-forward in Rovers’ 3-1 Southern League defeat at Brighton. |
(Jack) Henry John Smart.
Born, 8.12.1882, Bristol. Died, 19.2.1960, Bristol. Début: 14.4.06 v West Ham United. Career: Filwood; September 1899 Bristol Rovers; September 1901 Aberaman Athletic; 22.7.02 Bristol East; 23.3.06 Bristol Rovers; 13.8.10 Reading; August 1913 Newport County (to 1914). As the eldest of six children to Bob Smart and Annie Palmer of 8 Cheese Lane, St Philip and Jacob, Jack Smart was expected to follow his father’s profession and he indeed trained as a bottle-maker. However, football proved an escape from this work and he played in 29 Southern League games for Reading as well as enjoying a long career in his second spell at Eastville, before working in the shoe industry. In his 105 Southern League matches for Rovers, he scored three times, in the home fixtures with Portsmouth and New Brompton as well as the only goal when Rovers defeated West Ham 1-0 away from home in October 1906. Awarded a benefit game against Exeter City in January 1911, Adam McCall’s second-half equaliser earning a 1-1 draw, Jack Smart settled in Buchells Road. Five feet nine-and-a-half inches tall and weighing ten stone eleven pounds, he had been baptised at St Philip and Jacob on 8th May 1887; his younger brother was killed in action in October 1915. Jack Smart, by then resident at 3 Kingsmead Road, Speedwell, died of bronchiopneumonia at Cossham Memorial Hospital in Bristol, aged seventy-seven. |
Andrew Wilbour Smith.
Born, 30.11.1877, Slamannan, Stirlingshire. Died, 1953, Wolverhampton. Début: 5.9.03 v Swindon Town. Career: Vale of Carran; 6.11.96 East Stirlingshire; 9.6.97 Stenhousemuir; 15.6.97 Stoke; 15.9.99 Small Heath; 25.9.00 West Bromwich Albion [23,8]; May 1903 Bristol Rovers; 23.3.06 Millwall Athletic; 4.8.06 Swindon Town; 6.5.07 Leyton; 18.2.08 Bristol Rovers; August 1909 Treharris; 8.9.10 Wednesbury Old Athletic; October 1910 East Stirlingshire; 1912 Brierley Hill Alliance (retired, 1914). With 35 goals in 70 Southern League games for Rovers, during his first spell at the club only, Andy Smith had a highly impressive track record at Eastville. When Brentford visited Eastville in October 1903, he had scored twice in the opening nine minutes. Easter hat-tricks away to both Wellingborough and Watford eased him to nineteen goals during the 1904-05 season, the leading scorer in the whole division as the club secured the Southern League championship for the only time in their history. Needing a point to secure the title, Rovers defeated Brentford 3-0 in the final home fixture in April 1905, Smioth opening the scoring in the first minute and adding a second for good measure. If that were not enough, he was on the score-sheet again on the opening day of the following campaign, as Northampton Town were demolished 6-0 at Eastville. He also missed a penalty, against Southampton in November 1903 and, having already claimed two goals, a missed penalty against Millwall in December 1905 prevented him claiming a first-half hat-trick in a 3-2 win. Smith had played for East Stirling in nine Combination matches, scoring twice, his début coming away to Wishaw Thistle in October 1896. A Stirlingshire Cup-winner in 1896-97, he represented East Stirling in nineteen games in all competitions, his eleven goals including four penalties. He went on to score consistently wherever his travels took him, although West Brom offered him his only Football League appearances. One game for Millwall, a 1-0 defeat at home to Plymouth Argyle, preceded 28 Southern League matches and eleven goals at Swindon, where he scored a brace against each of Luton Town, Brentford and Northampton Town and appeared in both Southern League fixtures against Rovers, before he scored once in four games at Leyton. He later worked as a cast iron moulder and lived at 19 Earl Street, West Bromwich. |
Harry Smith.
Born, 21.5.1891, Fishponds, Bristol. Died, 1937. Début: 23.11.12 v Portsmouth. Career: Bath City; 1912 Bristol Rovers; April 1913 Bath City (trial); 29.4.13 Bolton Wanderers [8,1]. Southern League games against Pompey and at Millwall, a 4-0 defeat in March 1913, constituted Harry Smith’s Rovers career, but he later appeared for Bolton Wanderers in the Football League. |
John Smith.
Born, 1882, Wednesfield. Died, 1916, Walsall. Début: 4.9.07 v New Brompton. Career: 20.4.97 Wolverhampton Wanderers; July 1897 Bilston United; 19.1.98 Wolverhampton Wanderers; 1898 Willenhall Pickwick; August 1900 Cannock Town; 2.9.01 Stafford Rangers; 5.5.02 Wolverhampton Wanderers [104,38]; 20.4.06 Birmingham [6,1]; 4.5.07 Bristol Rovers; 2.5.08 Norwich City; 5.8.09 Luton Town; March 1911 Millwall Athletic; May 1912 Coventry City; 13.8.13 Dudley Town; 1914 Willenhall Swifts. Having enjoyed success in Football League circles, scoring on his début alongside the former Rovers striker Billy Beats for Wolves against Derby County in September 1902, John Smith was a welcome acquisition to Rovers’ side and scored four goals on his début as Rovers opened the 1907-08 season with a 9-1 home win. Having earlier missed a penalty, he headed his first goal on the stroke of half-time and added three more in twenty minutes during the second-half, the final goal coming from a solo run which started in his own half. He was still in the side when Rovers were to lose 4-1 at Bradford Park Avenue over Easter 1908, the only goal being an own goal by Smith’s former Wolves team-mate, Park Avenue’s former England goalkeeper Tom Baddeley (1874-1946). His eleven goals in 31 Southern League matches were merely the start of an odyssey through that league, accumulating 29 games and twelve goals at Norwich (including a first-half hat-trick against Queen’s Park Rangers in April 1909), 34 in 64 matches for Luton (one of these being a consolation goal at Eastville over Christmas 1909), six in 23 outings at Millwall and four in seventeen fixtures whilst with Coventry (including a brace on his début in September 1912 against Swindon Town), before leaving the Southern League circuit in 1913. His first goal for Millwall had been sufficient to defeat Rovers 1-0 in March 1911 and he appeared again against his former side that November. He also scored four times in an FA Cup-tie when Luton thrashed non-league Cambridge United 9-1 in November 1910. Smith was described by a contemporary as having “good pace, (being) dexterous in placing and possessing sound judgment”. |
Ernest Splevens.
Born, 23.2.1885, Witton Park, Co Durham. Died, 10.4.1951, Scunthorpe. Début: 3.9.10 v Norwich City. Career: Cambridge House; Saltburn; Darlington; 2.10.08 Gainsborough Trinity [39,15]; February 1910 Ilkeston Town; May 1910 Bristol Rovers (to 1911); 25.9.12 Scunthorpe United; 25.8.13 Frodingham and Brumby; 10.9.19 Scunthorpe United; January 1920 Scunthorpe Liberal Club. Born at home at 6 Queen Street, Witton Park, Ernie Splevens was the third of four children of an ironworks labourer John Splevens (1852-1912) and Mary-Ann Fordham (1852-1899). He joined Rovers after a Football League career with Trinity had brought fifteen goals, five of them from the penalty-spot, but all three of his Southern League appearances in the autumn of 1910 were lost without Rovers scoring. After leaving Rovers he moved to Middlesbrough, where he and his younger sister Florrie (1891-1969) cared for their elderly widowed father at 30 Manor Street. After his father’s death, he joined Scunthorpe United as they were beginning their inaugural season in the Midland League, his six goals including a brace as Worksop Town were defeated 3-1 in February 1913. Ernie married Joyce Walker (1893-1957) in 1915 and she, who was to survive him by six years, bore him a daughter Florence (1916-93), who married Walter Beacroft (1914-95), and a son Ernest (1924-1993), who married Margaret Tomczack. A labourer at the Appleby steel works engineering department from 1912, and living at 10 Leslie Terrace, Scunthorpe, Ernie Splevens died at the Scunthorpe Memorial Hospital at the age of sixty-six. |
Arthur Squires.
Born, 1886, Redbourn, Hertfordshire. Died, 27.5.1953, West Clandon, Surrey. Début: 1.9.13 v Cardiff City. Career: Redbourn; February 1909 Watford; 31.5.13 Bristol Rovers; 1915 Watford. Arthur Squires played in just one Southern League game for Rovers. The second of four sons to an engine driver, Fred Squires (1857-1891) and his wife Emma Tennant (1857-1940), a silk spinstress, Arthur Squires was brought up by his widowed mother at Lamb Lane, Redbourn. He joined Rovers having scored an impressive 22 goals in 104 Southern League matches for Watford and, after eight goals in 57 matches in the same league at Eastville, he returned to Cassio Road but could not regain his place in Watford’s first-team, soon joining the Army. He had earlier scored twice when Watford defeated Rovers 4-0 in February 1910, although the FA Cup had produced greater achievements, Squires scoring two penalties against Custom House in November 1911 and claiming a hat-trick as Brentford were defeated 5-1 thirteen months later. Arthur Squires married Annie Elizabeth Seygrove (1890-1974) in 1909 and they had a son Donald (1911-38). |
Frederick Stone.
Born, 1875, Cardiff. Died, 1954, Bristol. Début: 28.4.06 v Queen’s Park Rangers. Career: Hafod; December 1900 Aberdare; March 1901 Porth; May 1902 Aberaman; 1905 Bristol Rovers; 1906 Staple Hill; 1909 Aberdare; 1919 Caerau. The 7-0 defeat at QPR was the lowest point in Rovers’ 1905-06 season, but also marked the first of two Southern League appearances for this local player. Fred Stone is likely to be the man who married, in Bristol in 1900, Fanny Webley (1875-1929); he retired from playing football to become a referee. His relative, Owen Fitz (1922-94), the son of Frederick Fitz (1889-1974) and Elsie Cleevely (1892-1968), appeared for Bristol City in wartime football during World War Two. |
William Arthur Stone.
Born, 1870, Neath. Died, 1936, Bournemouth. Début: 23.9.99 v Bedminster. Career: Aberdare Athletic; 1893 Bristol Rovers (professional, 18.6.97); July 1898 Porth; 1898 Aberdare Athletic; 10.7.99 Bristol Rovers; 5.12.00 Aberdare Athletic; May 1901 Bristol City; 17.5.02 Aberaman; 8.9.02 Bristol St George; 6.10.02 Porth. Eleven goals were conceded in Bill Stone’s two Southern League matches for Rovers, a 3-0 home defeat being swiftly followed by an 8-2 thumping at Portsmouth. The first professional goalkeeper on Rovers' books and the only player to appear under the club's three names (Eastville Rovers, Bristol Eastville Rovers, Bristol Rovers), he was on the club’s books from 1893, numbering 27 Birmingham and District League matches amongst his 93 first-team appearances, and won a South Wales League championship medal with Aberdare. He was also in goal when Gloucestershire lost 2-1 at home to Devon in March 1894. For the reserves against West Brom’s second string over Easter 1900, “Stone averted disasters, being deservedly applauded”. Five feet eight-and-a-half inches in height and weighing eleven stone, he played at outside-left over New Year 1897, as Rovers, with two men sent off before half-time, swept into a two-goal lead, Stone himself scoring on the stroke of half-time, before clinging on for an astonishing 2-1 victory at Bedminster. Bill Stone was described as being "good on his day, but inclined to be a bit erratic". It appears that he also played in goal for Eastville Wanderers on occasions during the 1898-99 season, including the day in September 1898 when they were knocked out of the FA Cup by Oxford City. He was groundsman for Dings Crusaders rugby club when they were based in Downend in the 1930s. |
Thomas Robert Strang.
Born, 12.10.1881, West Calder, Midlothian. Died, 17.8.1947, Edinburgh. Début: 4.9.07 v New Brompton. Career: Plains FC; 24.5.02 Celtic; 10.11.02 Bolton Wanderers [3,0]; 9.6.03 Aberdeen [71,1]; 21.5.07 Bristol Rovers; 11.6.09 New Brompton (to 1912). A tall, strong centre-half, weighing twelve stone six and standing five-feet nine-and-a-half inches, Bob Strang had been captain at Aberdeen from 1905 to 1907 and added twenty games and a goal in the Northern League to his impressive Scottish League tally. He was the son of William Strang (1850-c.1900), the son of Thomas Strang (1818-1900) and Margaret Forsyth (1818-1905), and of Lillias Forsyth (1841-c.1900), his mother’s parents being David Forsyth and Martha McColloch Dobie. Having made his Northern League début against Stenhousemuir in August 1903, he was to appear in the Dons’ first Scottish League game too. His solitary League strike was a penalty shortly before half-time, the first of the Dons’ two equalisers in a 2-2 draw at Morton in February 1906, a week after he had scored in a 3-0 Scottish Cup victory over Dunfermline Athletic. “He is a robust player”, purred the Aberdeen Evening Gazette in November 1904, “who never tires and who has lately been at the top of his form”. Rovers opened the 1907-08 season in style, defeating New Brompton 9-1 and, having waited almost two years to score, Strang hit the net in successive fixture in March 1909. He also added two more goals as Swansea United were defeated 8-1 in an exhibition match in April 1909. Two goals in 59 Southern League games preceded one in 71 with New Brompton, turning to the previously demoralised opposition; his goal came against Crystal Palace came in March 1911 and he had been in their side in four Southern League fixtures against Rovers. Bob Strang married in 1916 Isabell Cochrane (1884-1950) and they had a son, Thomas (1920-71). From 1912 he worked as a miner in Penicuik, before setting up Strang’s Football Pools in 1922, a business he later moved to Edinburgh, where he died at the age of sixty-six. |
Albert Henry Sweet.
Born, 1881, Bristol. Died, 1932, Bath. Début: 8.12.06 v Fulham. Career: 8.11.01 Bristol St George (amateur); 24.8.05 Bristol East; August 1906 Bristol Rovers (to 1909). With Arthur Cartlidge ruled out through injury, Albert Sweet was Rovers’ keeper in the 4-0 Southern League defeat at Fulham in December 1906. He had earlier played twice for Bristol East in Western League Second Division fixtures against Rovers’ reserve side, Rovers winning 3-1 at The Chequers in January 1906 and 3-0 at Stapleton Road the following month. Married in Keynsham in 1913 to Edith Drusilla Williams (1888-1969), Albert Sweet died aged just fifty. |
Thomas Somerville Tait.
Born, 13.9.1879, Carluke, Lanarkshire. Died, 2.10.1942, Cleland, Lanarkshire. Début: 5.9.03 v Swindon Town. Career: Cambuslang Rangers; May 1900 Airdrieonians; May 1903 Bristol Rovers; 30.5.06 Sunderland [181,3]; 6.5.12 Dundee [22,0]; July 1913 Jarrow; September 1913 Wishaw Athletic; 21.11.13 Armadale; 10.7.14 Jarrow; 25.9.14 Armadale (coach, 1915). Scotland had not won on Welsh soil for eight years and the side the Scots put out at Ninian Park in May 1911 included a new cap in Tommy Tait. During the second-half, Tait’s firm shot was pushed round the post for a corner by Ted Vizard (1889-1973) and the game finished 2-2; it proved to be his only international match. Tait appeared in top-flight football both north and south of the border and enjoyed a long career with Sunderland, between stints in his motherland, playing for Rovers in 96 Southern League games and scoring his solitary goal in the 2-1 victory at Brentford in January 1904. Whilst with Rovers, “he did a tremendous lot of effective work” (Bristol Evening News, 12.9.03); he weighed in at eleven stone and stood five feet eight inches tall. Armadale were Central League champions in both 1913-14 and 1914-15, with Tait captain of the side. The son of Thomas Welsh Tait, who died in 1915, and Agnes Bell (1842-1919) and the grandson of Adam Tait (1802-85) and Janet Thomson, who died in 1847, he died at his home in Cleland shortly after his sixty-third birthday. His son, Tommy Tait (1908-76) played against Rovers for all three of Luton Town, Bournemouth and Reading in the late 1930s. |
Archibald Taylor.
Born, 28.11.1879, Dundee. Died, 14.3.1966, Craignish, Argyllshire. Début: 21.10.05 v Brentford. Career: East Craigie; 12.6.00 Dundee; 15.8.02 Raith Rovers [21,0]; 3.8.03 Dundee (loan) [1,0]; May 1904 Bolton Wanderers [3,0]; 10.5.05 Bristol Rovers; 5.5.06 Brentford; 7.5.07 West Ham United; 4.5.09 Falkirk; May 1910 Huddersfield Town (professional, 10.8.10) [29,0]; 15.7.11 Barnsley [53,0]; 26.5.14 York City (player, later coach). Given as “ten months old” in the census of early April 1881, Archie Taylor was the younger son of shipyard labourer James Taylor and his wife Margaret of St David’s Lane, Dundee and later of 117 Princes Street in the same city. An FA Cup Final winning captain he made just a few appearances in the Rovers side. Having been in the Raith Rovers side which finished bottom of the East of Scotland League in 1902-03, and playing for that club in 34 matches in all competitions, his solitary Scottish First Division match for Dundee was the 3-1 home victory over Port Glasgow Athletic in September 1903. The Southern League then proved his home for a few years, appearing in nine games for Rovers, 28 for Brentford and 61 for the Hammers, including three matches against Rovers, before a return to the Football League in 1910. Favouring “the hefty clearance over any dainty passing” (Paul Moon), Taylor played under the former Rovers full-back Dick Pudan at Huddersfield, alongside Rovers forwards in Sandy McCubbin and Jimmy Howie. During the 1911-12 season, Taylor played in all twelve FA Cup-ties as Barnsley reached the Crystal Palace final against West Brom and, after a goalless draw, captained the side as they defeated the Baggies 1-0 in a replay at Bramall Lane; the following season he lost his place to Jock Bethune. In 1909 he had been living in Watson Street, Falkirk, but he later returned to his native Dundee. |
David William Taylor.
Born, 1889, Atcham, Shropshire. Died? Début: 5.9.14 v Crystal Palace. Career: 12.2.08 Newcastle West End; 24.4.09 Hull City; 18.6.10 Darlington; 3.5.11 Heart of Midlothian [79,0]; 28.5.14 Bristol Rovers; 1919 Darlington; July 1921 Blyth Spartans. Aged just eighteen months, David Taylor moved with his family from the Shropshire town named after St Eata, Bishop of Hexham (who died on 26th October 686), to 61 Walker Road, Walker, Northumberland, where his father David, whose wife Eliza had given birth to two sons and two daughters, found employment as a gas stocker. Unable to make the first-team at any English Football League club, although he appeared in three first-team friendlies whilst with Hull, Taylor played 26 times in Rovers’ final pre-war Southern League season, although tellingly he was missing for the heaviest defeat, a 7-0 debacle at Cardiff City. Having appeared in wartime football with Walker Celtic, he remained with Darlington until they gained Football League status in 1921, scoring North-Eastern League goals for them against Hebburn Argyle in January 1911 and Spennymoor in April 1920. |
Robert Taylor.
Born, 1886, Sharpness. Died, 1968, Chipping Sodbury. Début: 14.2.10 v Brentford. Career: Sharpness; 13.2.10 Bristol Rovers (to 1910). Bob Taylor appeared in just two Southern League fixtures with Rovers, both in February 1910, a 1-0 defeat at Brentford and a 1-0 home victory over Reading which was secured through a Bill Shaw penalty. He had joined the club as an amateur after Rovers’ manager Alf Homer had watched him score six goals in a match for Sharpness against Thornbury. It is quite possible he was the Bob Taylor who married Elsie Knight (1887-1964) in 1917. |
Albert Edwin Thomas.
Born, 5.8.1885, Bristol. Died, 1972, Bristol. Début: 1.9.19 v Cardiff City. Career: Fishponds City; Frenchay; 8.5.19 Bristol Rovers (to 1920); September 1921 Frenchay. Under the assumed name of Albert Buckle, Thomas joined Rovers at the relatively advanced age of thirty-four, scored on his début in a 4-4 draw with Cardiff City, added a second goal in the home win over Northampton Town and left Rovers after twelve Southern League appearances. He had been baptised at St Philip and Jacob on 18th October 1885, the son of Joshua William George Thomas and his wife Jane “Jennett” Gallop, who married in 1874; he married Mary Matthews in 1910 and their son Gordon, who won Rovers’ “Best Match Report” for the 2-0 win against Southend United in 1951, when aged thirteen, played for Clifton St Vincent’s. |
Robert Atkinson Thompson.
Born, 5.9.1890, Coundon Grange, Co Durham. Died, 1.6.1969, Ferryhill, Co Durham. Début: 24.1.14 v Southampton. Career: Wingate Albion; April 1911 Preston North End [17,2]; July 1913 Goole Town; 16.1.14 Bristol Rovers; 2.7.14 Rotherham Town; 1916 Barnsley; 13.12.18 Hartlepool United; 11.6.19 Leadgate Park; 1919 Evenwood; 18.8.19 Durham City; 8.5.20 Leeds United [23,11]; 29.3.21 Ashington (free) [17,2]; July 1922 Luton Town (free) [17,7]; July 1923 Pontypridd; July 1924 Accrington Stanley [33,17]; May 1925 Bury (free) [1,0]; August 1926 Tranmere Rovers (trial) [1,0]; January 1927 Goole Town (trial); January 1927 York City. Goals in the 3-2 home win against Coventry City and the 1-1 draw at Exeter City were the highlights of Bob Thompson’s ten Southern League appearances in a Rovers shirt. A long, meandering career took in many clubs, although the sharp-shooting north-easterner never appeared against Rovers in League action. “A dead shot when in front of goal”, as a contemporary reporter announced, he arrived at Preston from North-Eastern League football and made his first Football League appearance in April 1911, as FA Cup holders Bradford City were defeated 2-0. Having scored four first-half goals for Preston’s reserve side against Glossop, he scored against Bolton Wanderers when recalled to the League side. During World War One, he won the 1916 Powderhall Sprint and scored four goals against Chesterfield, including a nine-minute hat-trick in one match with Barnsley in February 1917, before top-scoring for Durham City in 1919-20 with twenty-five North-Eastern League goals. Nine goals in ten Northern Victory League games during a stint at Hartlepool had included scoring the final six goals of a 7-1 win against Darlington Forge Albion in January 1919 and he totalled nine goals in 26 War League Midland Section fixtures for Barnsley. Six feet tall, weighing twelve stone and deceptively quick, he contributed all the goals when Leeds defeated Notts County 3-0 before a crowd of 12,000 in a Second Division fixture in December 1920, the first Football League hat-trick by a Leeds player and, as a team-mate of Jimmy Walton, was top scorer that campaign at Elland Road. “A tall, raw-boned player”, the Yorkshire Post declared, he “proves himself an energetic opportunist”. At his next club, he scored for Ashington in a 6-1 defeat at Grimsby Town and a 2-2 draw at home to Wrexham, both games being in Division Three (North) in September 1921. He was to add an alleged 51 goals in 1923-24 for Pontypridd in the Southern League and Welsh League, including four in one 12-1 victory and played for the Welsh League XI against their Irish Free State counterparts. Having scored a brace against both Brentford and Aberdare Athletic with the Hatters, he later top-scored as Stanley finished seventeenth in the Third Division (North) in 1924-25, adding a hat-trick as his former club Durham City were mauled 6-0 that February at Peel Park; he appeared for Bury when they won the opening game of the 1925-26 campaign 2-1 at Blackburn, before losing his place to Jack Ball, and his solitary Tranmere appearance came in a 3-1 victory at Southport in September 1926. At Stanley he was described as “a skilful and brainy leader, his ball distribution being unusually good” (Sheffield Daily Telegraph). He added seven goals in ten Midland League games with York City, this tally including a hat-trick in a fixture against Frickley Colliery. The younger son of a mason, Thomas Thompson and his wife Isabella Embleton, he was brought up at Hutton Henry, where he worked from a young age in a stone quarry. Married to Sarah Pratt and with three children, he played largely for northern section sides and returned to County Durham when his playing days were over. He should not be confused with a Robert Thompson who was at Glossop North End around 1910, another who was at Barnsley in 1919-20, nor one who scored three goals for Hartlepool in four League matches in 1926-27. |
(Jack) John L Thomson.
Born, 1895, South Bank, Co Durham. Died? Début: 17.1.20 v Swindon Town. Career: Cumnock Juniors; 12.12.11 Rangers; 5.12.13 Arbroath (loan); 26.5.14 Falkirk; Royal Navy; 15.1.20 Bristol Rovers; 9.12.20 Falkirk (to 1921) [5,2]. After World War One, a large number of débutants appeared in Rovers’ Southern League side, Jack Thomson featuring in the side on twelve occasions. Amongst his four goals for the club came a brace against Gillingham in May 1920. Thomson made his Falkirk début belatedly in his second spell at the club, opening the scoring from Alex Hamilton’s cross in the away First Division 1-1 draw at Clyde in October 1920, only for the home side to equalise before half-time. |
William Edwin Brown Tout.
Born, 24.4.1884, St George, Bristol. Died, 19.5.1960, Bath. Début: 19.9.03 v Portsmouth. Career: Russell Town School; Moorfield Albion; Redfield Rovers; September 1903 Bristol Rovers; 5.9.04 Bristol East; 10.5.05 Swindon Town [4,0]; November 1920 Bath City (player-manager). Although Hereford-born, Billy Tout was brought up in Bristol and there is some uncertainty as to whether he may have been adopted and originally called Brown. What is clear is that, having played for Rovers in two 2-1 defeats in the Southern League, Billy Tout gave extraordinary service to Swindon Town, where his 64 goals in 433 matches in all competitions remains an incredible figure in any era of football. This tally included 53 goals, 39 of them penalties, in 373 Southern League matches over a fifteen-year period and he was still at the club to enjoy a few games after Football League status was achieved in 1920. He was to play in eighteen Southern League matches against Rovers, his four goals including one in each fixture of the 1919-20 season. Tout had previously shown promise at Rovers, one report indicating that he scored all four late goals as the reserves rallied to defeat Bristol City reserves 5-3 in January 1904. Five feet eight-and-a-half inches in height and weighing eleven stone ten pounds, Billy Tout married Florence Sweet (1880-1942) in 1908 and, initially living at her brother’s house at 226 Ferndale Road, Swindon, they ran a pub together in Bath for many years. |
Isaiah Samuel Turner.
Born, 10.4.1883, West Bromwich. Died 1951, Wednesbury, Début: 4.9.07 v New Brompton. Career: Soho Villa; 25.7.02 Darlaston; September 1904 West Bromwich Albion [1,0]; 13.9.06 Brierley Hill Alliance; 4.5.07 Bristol Rovers; 16.6.08 Coventry City; 17.8.10 Dudley Town; 21.9.11 Darlaston. What better way to open the new campaign than a 9-1 victory at home? Rovers’ thrashing of New Brompton provided Isaiah Turner with a début goal, a close-range effort two minutes before half-time, and his eventual haul of nine in 30 Southern League appearances at Eastville included braces against Watford twice and at Portsmouth. He had earlier played for the Baggies in their 1-0 home defeat to Port Vale in Division Two on Boxing Day 1904. In April 1908 he scored three times as Rovers’ reserve side drew 3-3 with Bristol City reserves in the Bristol Charity Cup. After Rovers, he scored eight goals in 32 Southern League appearances with Coventry City, many alongside his former Rovers team-mate Harry Buckle and was in their side which drew 2-2 with Rovers at Highfield Road in February 1909. The sixth of nine children, and the fifth son, to a mill worker Samuel Turner and his wife Clara Satterthwaite, Isaiah was brought up in St George Street, Harborne, Smethwick; by 1939 he was living at 102 Oxford Street, Wednesbury and working as a motor frame inspector. He stood five feet eight inches in height and weighed twelve stone. |
Thomas Nasmyth Vail.
Born, 18.11.1873, Auchterderran. Died, 3.7.1940, Buckhaven, Fife. Début: 2.9.99 v Reading. Career: March 1890 Lochgelly Athletic; 2.10.95 Dundee [9,4]; 19.2.96 Bolton Wanderers [3,1]; 4.5.96 Lochgelly United (re-instated as amateur, August 1896); 26.6.96 Chatham (trial); 28.4.97 Chatham (trial); 16.8.98 Walsall [30,16]; 6.5.99 Bristol Rovers; 29.11.99 Gainsborough Trinity (£15) [22,13]; 16.7.00 Doncaster Rovers (player-coach); 12.6.01 Lochgelly United; March 1903 Dunfermline Athletic. A perusal of the 1881 census shows Tom Vail as the sixth of eight children of Michael Vail (1828-83) and Ann Nasmyth, then resident at 23 Granger Road, Lochgelly. His father, a coalminer originally from Ireland, moved his family to 28 Hall Street, Lochgelly and it was there that Tom spent his teenage years. Young Tom, between spells in the Football League, played in Rovers’ first two Southern League matches of all, but never reappeared in a Rovers shirt. He did, though, contribute a brace of goals as the reserves lost 3-2 to Wolves’ reserve side in November 1899. Vail’s career had begun at his home-town club, where his “aggressive tactics” were noted as Cowdenbeath were defeated 2-1 in the East of Scotland Consolation Cup Final at East End Park in 1894-95. Having scored an early goal on his Dundee début, a 4-0 win against St Bernard’s in October 1895, he added two more the following week as Hearts were defeated 5-0 and played alongside Rovers’ Bill Sawers. His Walsall appearances included a hat-trick as Blackpool were defeated 6-0 in Division Two in January 1899 as well as two goals in a 10-0 thrashing of Darwen two months later and he also scored at home to Bolton Wanderers on his Gainsborough Trinity League début in December 1899. His 21 Midland League goals with Doncaster included a hat-trick in the 8-1 victory over Wellingborough in November 1900. Seen as “possessing great speed and strength”, he measured five feet nine-and-a-half inches and weighed in at eleven stone six pounds. His return to Lochgelly in 1901 saw him captain the side to victory in the King Cup Final, 4-3 against Dunfermline Athletic, and the Wemyss Cup Final, where his brace of goals contributed to a 3-2 win against Raith Rovers at North End Park, although the following campaign ended in a fine of 2/6- and a five-month ban for punching a committee member in the Bay Horse Tavern after being dropped for a game against Cowdenbeath. His Dunfermline début against Celtic in August 1903, to commemorate the opening of a new ground, was abandoned in heavy rain with The Pars 5-1 down, and he added nine Northern League games plus a goal in a 3-2 victory over Forfar Athletic. His brother, Peter (1878-1930), was a professional on Lochgelly United’s books during the 1897-98 season and his brother Sandy (1868-1925) was also with the club. Tom Vail married Betsy Watson in Auchterderran on 26th October 1898 and the couple appears in Doncaster in the 1901 census, where he was combining his footballing career with work as a railway labourer. |
Arthur John Veysey.
Born, 6.2.1881, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester. Died, 5.6.1930, Paris, Ontario, Canada. Début: 20.12.02 v Northampton Town. Career: Winchester College; Winchester Old Boys; Glendale; 1902 Bristol Rovers; November 1904 Wolverhampton Wanderers [2,2]. Bill Rowlands’ goal earned Rovers a 1-1 draw with Northampton Town in Arthur Veysey’s sole Southern League appearance for the club. He played regularly for the reserve side, though, and “really showed an extraordinary turn of speed” (Bristol Evening News, 1st November 1902) in scoring twice in each half during a 7-0 victory over Cotham Amateurs. He had scored his first goal for the reserves the previous month, one of twelve Rovers put past Trowbridge Town at Stapleton Road. The only son of Reverend John Shapland Veysey (1844-1910), the Headmaster of Dudley Grammar School, and Catherine “Kate” Branwell Edmonds (1845-1924), the daughter of Walter Edmonds and Ann Courtenay Harry, Arthur Veysey was born at home at 6 Moss Terrace, baptised at St Paul’s in Hulme on 9th March 1881 and primarily brought up in Tiverton. A student at Winchester College, his family home was at 3 Rock Avenue, Barnstaple and he was working as a schoolmaster and resident at 102 Redland Road when he joined Rovers from Bristol and District League football. At Wolves, where he was only on the edge of the side, but scored against Middlesbrough and Stoke in Division One in successive weeks in the autumn of 1904, he was described as a “grammar school master”. Arthur’s elder sister Alda Kate Veysey (1879-1954) married Edward Holyoak Langley Marriott (1877-1963), the elder son of the Rural Dean of Dudley, in Barnstaple over Easter 1914. Arthur Veysey emigrated to Canada and married Helen Beatrice Stuart-Jones (1881-1959), a noted croquet player, on 28th March 1910 at Paris, Ontario, having a son Arthur Stuart Veysey (1911-62), who won the Montreal Cup for tennis doubles in 1935 and married Gwenneth Margaret Sawyers. Helen Stuart-Jones was the daughter of Edward Stuart-Jones (1848-90) and Mary Cornelia Capron (1847-1932), her family having emigrated to Massachusetts from Devon in the late seventeenth-century. Arthur Veysey died in his late fifties and is buried at the Mount Royal Cemetery in Montreal. |
(Davie) David Walker.
Born, 1884, Oakdene, Walsall. Died, 30.10.1935, Walsall. Début: 9.9.05 v New Brompton. Career: Walsall White Star; Birchfield Villa; April 1904 Wolverhampton Wanderers [2,0]; 2.5.05 Bristol Rovers; 4.7.07 West Bromwich Albion [36,15]; 22.5.08 Leicester Fosse (joint deal with Arthur Randle for £700) [73,26]; 18.6.11 Bristol Rovers; 13.5.12 Willenhall Swifts; 24.12.13 Walsall. From his début for Wolves against Preston North End, Davie Walker was a prominent footballer of his day, representing three different sides in the Football League and scoring four times in Fosse’s 9-1 victory over Gainsborough Trinity over Christmas 1909. Twenty-eight goals in 78 Southern League matches at Eastville included a hat-trick in the win over Northampton Town in March 1907. Having scored on his West Brom début in a local derby against his former side, Wolves, he formed a lethal striking partnership at The Hawthorns with Fred Shinton (1883-1923) and was Fosse’s top scorer in 1910-11 but was sent off after scoring in the game against Orient that January. He scored a brace in the Division Two home matches that season against Stockport County, Lincoln City, Chesterfield and Blackpool. His fourteen goals in 50 Birmingham League matches with Walsall included braces against Kidderminster Harriers twice, Stourbridge and Wednesbury Old Athletic. Davie Walker was the fifth of nine children to a coalpit engineer, or “paddler” as the profession was known, David Walker senior and his wife Hannah Bickley of 10 Green Lane, Walsall and later 12 Church Street, Kingswinford, Staffordshire. |
(Bobbie) Robert Henry Walker.
Born, 5.1.1884, Northallerton. Died, 22.12.1944, Cleveland, Ohio. Début: 7.9.12 v Plymouth Argyle. Career: 6.1.06 Middlesbrough [9,2]; 3.5.06 Tottenham Hotspur [25,3]; 27.3.07 New Brompton; 31.8.08 Northampton Town; January 1911 Millwall; 28.4.11 Luton Town; 17.6.12 Bristol Rovers; 1915 Middlesbrough. Towards the end of a long footballing career, Bobbie Walker arrived at Eastville. He had enjoyed two years with Spurs after scoring in Middlesbrough’s colours against Newcastle United and Preston North End in March 1906. In addition to his Football League experience, he appeared without scoring in eight Southern League games for New Brompton alongside Walter Marriott and Bill Floyd, 22 times in 67 matches for Northampton and added fifteen goalless games for Millwall, 28 games and eight goals for Luton and eleven strikes in 108 Southern League fixtures with Rovers. Initially a centre-forward, during which time his forceful performance helped Rovers defeat Merthyr Town 7-1 on Boxing Day 1912, although he himself did not score that day, he was later converted into a tall, dependable centre-half, from which position he scored in the 3-1 home victory over Croydon Common on Easter Tuesday 1915. He had earlier scored the opening goal as Rovers were defeated 3-0 at Northampton in January 1909 and was in the Luton side defeated 2-1 at Eastville in November 1911. Having retired during the war, Walker emigrated to Ohio and continued to play football there. The son of George Henry Walker and Mary Smith, he married Susie Simpson in Ohio and was buried on Boxing Day 1944. |
Joseph Wallace.
Born, 1885, Johnstone, Renfrewshire. Died? Début: 23.10.09 v Southend United. Career: August 1909 Johnstone FC; 22.10.09 Bristol Rovers (to 1910). Five feet seven inches in height, Joe Wallace arrived at Eastville from Scottish football, Johnstone playing at this time in the Football Union, a division below the Scottish League. During his first appearance he “was always hard at work”, according to the contemporary local press. However, after two Southern League games, the second being a 6-0 defeat at Leyton, for whom German-born centre-forward Max Seeburg (1884-1972) scored the opening goal when Jack Kirwan’s (1872-1959) cross was knocked down by Bill Renneville (1884-1943), he left Rovers. He could be the J Wallace who joined Partick Thistle in September 1910. |
(Harry) Harold Wassell.
Born, 21.9.1878, Stourbridge. Died, March 1953, Sedgley, Staffordshire. Début: 10.9.04 v Portsmouth. Career: Mount Pleasant FC; August 1898 Brierley Hill Alliance; January 1902 Small Heath (professional, 26.4.02) [56,0]; 13.5.04 Bristol Rovers; 13.5.05 Queen’s Park Rangers; 16.8.06 Brierley Hill Alliance. Once Fred Wilcox, another player with a Rovers connection, arrived in Birmingham at the tail end of the 1902-03 season, Small Heath, the modern Birmingham City, were able to seal promotion to the top flight of English football. Harry Wassell had made his League début at Wolves in January 1902, suffered relegation and then enjoyed promotion at St Andrew’s and even scored a rare goal at Old Trafford in the FA Cup in December 1903. He was to play in thirteen Southern League games without scoring for Rovers and was never on the losing side in his three matches in that league with QPR, his final game being Rangers’ 7-0 thrashing of Rovers in April 1906. |
Arthur Henry Wear.
Born, 1896, Bristol. Died, 1941, Bristol. Début: 1.5.20 v Gillingham. Career: 1919 Bristol Rovers (to 1920). Jack Thomson’s two goals earned Rovers a 2-2 draw at Gillingham in Arthur Wear’s sole Southern League game, the final one Rovers played prior to acceptance into the Football League. He had previously appeared for Rovers in the unofficial 1916-17 wartime season. The fifth of seven children to a Somerset-born mason Tom Evans Wear (1856-1920) and his wife Mary Ann Susannah Milsom (1858-1928) of 4 Tower Street, Redcliff, Bristol, Arthur Wear married Vera Cavill (1894-1988) over Christmas 1914 and they had a son, Arthur, and two daughters, Gladys and Doris. |
Christopher Welsh.
Born, 12.3.1877, Hebburn, Co Durham. Died, 1922, Doncaster. Début: 7.10.99 v Portsmouth. Career: Hebburn Argyle; 17.7.99 Bristol Rovers; 4.9.00 Hebburn Argyle; July 1901 Barnsley [57,0]; 1.6.04 Denaby United. As befits a player who spent two spells with his home-town club, Chris Welsh was brought up at 82 Rose Street in Hebburn, the second of nine children to an Irish-born couple, Patrick and Jane Welsh. His father’s work as a furnace-man also took the family to Jarrow and they lived for a while at 40 Shields Road, Jarrow. Five feet ten-and-a-half inches in height and weighing twelve stone seven pounds, Welsh’s sole Southern League game was not Rovers’ best, as they crashed 8-2 at Portsmouth, Danny Cunliffe scoring four times. Whilst at Barnsley, he managed to score a goal in an FA Cup-tie in February 1903, the Tykes defeating Lincoln City 2-0 at Oakwell. Later working as a coal miner in Denaby, Welsh married Lily Edith Coy (1878-1958) and they had three children, Sarah Jane, Lewis and William. |
(Willie) William Henry Thomas Weston.
Born, 25.1.1900, Bristol. Died, 1970, Bristol. Début: 22.11.19 v Plymouth Argyle. Career: 13.5.19 Bristol Rovers; 27.1.21 Bristol City. Baptised in Horfield on 25th March 1900, Bill Weston would appear to be, despite some records claiming alternative families, the third child of a Welsh couple living at 1 Rosebank, Ashley Down Road, estate agent Frederick Augustus Weston (1859-1946) and Dora Catherine Jenking (1870-1935). Prior to his Southern League début, Weston had scored an astonishing eighty wartime goals for Rovers, this tally including nine goals in a 13-0 victory over GWR Carriage in December 1917, four goals against RFC Filton and RAVC, plus four further hat-tricks in the unofficial 1918-19 season alone. His two goals in twelve Southern League matches came on Boxing Day 1919 against Swansea Town and Good Friday 1920 against Exeter City, whilst he also replaced the injured Harry Stansfield in goal in the Southern League fixture at home to Southampton in December 1919. He married Dorothy Febry (1907-1975) in the summer of 1927 in Chipping Sodbury and their daughter Pamela was born in Hampshire in 1931. |
(Jack) Joseph William Westwood.
Born, 14.7.1891, Jump, Yorkshire. Died, 1958, Rother Valley. Début: 13.9.13 v West Ham United. Career: 14.5.08 Denaby United; 1912 Rotherham Town; 27.6.13 Bristol Rovers; 28.11.14 Merthyr Town; 1919 Maltby Main (to 1920). Five feet seven-and-a-half inches in height, Jack Westwood’s identity is uncertain. For instance, one J Westwood, a full-back measuring five feet nine inches and weighing twelve stone, had also apparently joined Rovers in 1909 from Mexborough Town; a Jack Westwood was Denaby United captain in 1912-13; and there were three Westwood brothers, John at Gainsborough in 1904-05, Enoch at Rotherham Town from 1906 and Joseph, born in Treeton in 1890. He was in all certainty, though, the man who appeared in eighteen Southern League fixtures for Rovers and opposed the mighty Preston North End in Rovers’ FA Cup-tie of January 1914. In all likelihood, he is the Joe Westwood whose dates are given here, who was living at Wood Lea Cottage, Blyth Road, Maltby in 1939. |
William Howell Powell Westwood.
Born, 4.6.1881, Langley Green, Worcestershire. Died, 3.5.1917, Bullecourt, France. Début: 4.9.09 v Portsmouth Career: Thornhill United; Denaby United; 19.8.04 Mexborough Town; 4.7.05 Rotherham County; 17.8.06 Denaby United; 1908 Mexborough Town; 4.5.09 Bristol Rovers; 25.5.14 Mexborough Town (to May 1915). Apparently unrelated to his namesake at Eastville, Bill Westwood had worked as a coal mine pony driver at Denaby and Conisborough before moving to Bristol. Having enjoyed Midland League football at Denaby and having represented the Rest of the League against Midlands League champions Lincoln City in April 1909, he appeared in 98 Southern League fixtures for Rovers, without scoring, becoming a fixed name on the team-sheet after recovering from a broken leg, before returning north. “A full-back of the light and dashing order” (South Yorkshire Times), he lodged with David Harvie at Ernest and Rhoda Miller’s house, 38 Colston Road, Easton and was in the Rovers side which shocked the footballing world by defeating Football League side Grimsby Town 2-0 away from home in the FA Cup in January 1910, as well as the side which beat League champions Aston Villa 2-1 in as friendly in April of that year. Slight of build but with notable speed, he was considered, according to local contemporary reporters, “resolute and speedy, one of most good-natured players in the game abnd a favourite of the crowd”. Married in 1909 to Annie Eliza Denham (1883-1914) of 3 Orchard Street, Mexborough, he fathered four children, Elizabeth, Rose, Emily and Willie. Along with most of his team-mates, he enlisted at the end of Mexborough’s final game of the 1914-15 season at Gainsborough, into the 2/5th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry as 241454, rising to the rank of Corporal. He was killed in action during the Second Battle of Bullecourt and is commemorated on Bay 7 of the Arras Memorial. Being a widower, his eldest child subsequently lived in Maltby with his mother and the other three stayed in Mexborough with his mother-in-law; his grandson Dennis Priestley (married with four children and a grand-daughter) became Darts World Champion in 1991 and 1994, Elizabeth having married Maurice Priestley (1915-77) in 1940. |
Percival Albert Whitton.
Born, 14.1.1892, Creech St Michael, Somerset. Died, 9.10.1974, Bristol. Début: 30.8.19 v Queen’s Park Rangers. Career: Taunton Town; 1918 Brentford (trial); 1918 Bristol Rovers (professional, 8.5.19); August 1920 Bridgend Town; June 1921 Aberaman Athletic; July 1922 Newport County [80,6]; July 1925 Brentford [25,5] (to 1927). The sixth of seven children, and the fourth son, to a sanitary labourer Thomas Whitton (1850-1930) and his wife Sarah Bryant (1854-1924), Percy Whitton was baptised at Creech St Michael on 6th March 1892 and brought up at 58 Penfield Road, St Werburgh’s. He married Florence Mortimer (1893-1978) in Bristol in the autumn of 1916 and they had four children, Victor, Eileen, Kenneth and Doreen; Victor Thomas Whitton later lived at 6 Lake Road, Henleaze. Having scored once for Rovers in the 1918-19 wartime season during the 20-0 demolition of Great Western Railway in February 1919, Whitton played in 29 Southern League matches for Rovers during 1919-20 and scored in the 1-1 draw at Luton Town in the penultimate game. Unable to make the grade at Griffin Park first time round, he was to play in two Football League games against Rovers and scored the winning goal after 65 minutes at Eastville in a Third Division (South) fixture in October 1925. He had also played in six League games for County against Rovers, scoring in the first at Eastville in August 1922 and in his final match against Rovers at Somerton Park in February 1925. In 1926 he was playing regular cricket with St Werburgh’s and by 1939 was a labourer in a flour mill, living at 23 Dursley Road. |
(Freddie) Frederick James Wilcox.
Born, 7.7.1880, St Werburgh’s, Bristol. Died, 1959, Smethwick, Birmingham. Début: 19.10.01 v Portsmouth. Career: Glendale; August 1901 Bristol Rovers (professional, 20.12.01); 20.3.03 Birmingham (£150) [78,32]; 23.3.06 Middlesbrough [106,22]; 22.10.10 Wellington Town; January 1911 Birmingham; 20.11.11 Redditch Town. Having made some name for himself as a young striker at Eastville, Fred Wilcox went on to star in Division One of the Football League. Four goals against Wellingborough in February 1902 and a hat-trick against Watford the following September were amongst the eighteen goals he scored in 48 Southern League matches for Rovers. During the Watford game, his “success was received with hysterical delight” by the Rovers’ supporters” (Bristol Evening News, 13th September 1902). He scored a hat-trick for the reserves against Trowbridge Town in October 1902 and was also sent off in the February 1903 Southern League fixture against Spurs. Liking what they saw, Birmingham signed him up for a sizeable fee, plus a benefit game at Eastville which Rovers won 3-2, and Wilcox repaid the sum with a two-goal début at Blackpool and, two weeks later, four more against Doncaster Rovers, as he and the future Rovers Harold Wassell eased Birmingham into top-flight football. Joint top scorer for his club in 1903-04, he added First Division hat-tricks against Wolves and Nottingham Forest before teaming up with the legendary Steve Bloomer (1874-1938) at Ayresome Park. However, shortly after a move to centre-half, he was injured in a collision with a goal-post and returned to Bristol to set up a business. Fred Wilcox was the sixth of nine children to gasworks labourer Sam Wilcox (1849-1924) and Annie Long (1850-1912) of 7 Penfield Road, St Werburgh’s. |
Albert Williams.
Born? Died? Début: 15.11.02 v Reading. Career: 11.9.99 Bristol Rovers; January 1904 Staple Hill. Goalkeeper Albert Williams replaced the injured Arthur Cartlidge for a 2-0 defeat at Reading in the Southern League. Although his identity remains clouded in obscurity, he could be the Albert Williams, son of house decorator Bill Williams and his wife Mary, who was living in 10 Kingsley Road, Easton at the time of the 1901 census and working as a trainee teacher. |
Louis Williams.
Born, 21.8.1888, Longton, Staffordshire. Died, 1965, Bullingdon, Oxfordshire. Début: 4.9.09 v Portsmouth. Career: Penkhall Road School; North Staffordshire Nomads; 21.8.07 Worcester City; September 1907 Stoke [33,1]; May 1908 Bradford City [10,0]; 12.5.09 Bristol Rovers; 30.9.12 Port Vale (£100) (to 1913). “Loo” Williams, a popular figure at Eastville, was an orphan raised at Stoke-upon-Trent Union, who made his name in the footballing world. He was initially brought up at 3 Shaws Yard, Stafford Street, Longton, the son of general labourer Edward Williams (1850-97) and potter’s warehousewoman Ellen Eliza Williams (1855-94), and was an inmate at the Stoke-upon-Trent Union Workhouse by the time of the 1901 census. Five feet ten inches tall and weighing eleven stone, his Eastville record of 109 Southern League games and one goal speaks of consistency and reliability and he was a member of the Rovers side which shocked the footballing world by defeating Football League side Grimsby Town 2-0 away from home in the FA Cup in January 1910. A crowd of 6,000 at Eastville saw his solitary Rovers goal, the winner in a 2-1 victory over Exeter City in October 1911. Married in 1908 to Mabel Ashford, almost four years his senior, he lived at 4 Camelford Road, Easton. Earlier, he had appeared in Division One at Bradford City alongside another Rovers name in Willie Gould. Subsequently, the first of four Central League appearances for Port Vale was the 2-1 defeat at home to Stalybridge Celtic in February 1913. Loo and Mabel later worked at Pineley House, Harnborough, Oxfordshire, where he was Master of Public Assistance and she worked as a matron. |
Samuel M Williams.
Born, July 1891, Longton, Staffordshire. Died, 1934, Nuneaton. Début: 10.9.10 v Crystal Palace. Career: Greenbank; August 1909 Bristol Rovers; 1.9.11 Bath City. Baptised at St John’s, Longton on 13th July 1891, Sam Williams appeared in just one Southern League game, Rovers’ 1-0 defeat away to Crystal Palace. He was one of many siblings born to the Staffordshire couple, John Williams and Elisa Lucas. |
(Bill) William Williams.
Born, 1.1.1874, Liverpool. Died? Début: 1.9.00 v Queen’s Park Rangers. Career: 1894 Everton [23,4]; 1898 Blackburn Rovers [31,1]; 13.8.00 Bristol Rovers; 15.8.01 Newton Heath [4,0] (to June 1902). In November 1900, Rovers defeated Weymouth 15-1 at Eastville in the FA Cup, centre-forward Bill Williams contributing two of the five first-half goals and later completing his hat-trick. By the time he joined Rovers, he had twice represented the Football League, scoring from a scrimmage ten minutes after half-time at Stoke in November 1895, as the League clawed back a two-goal half-time deficit to draw 2-2, and playing in the 5-1 win against the same opposition at Grosvenor Park, Belfast in November 1898. He first played for Blackburn in their 1-0 defeat to Everton at Goodison Park in September 1898 and he scored in a 3-2 loss at Bury on Valentine’s Day 1899. Following sixteen Southern League games for Rovers and just two goals – one on his début and one against Bristol City in the spring of 1901 – Williams moved to the future Manchester United, where he made his Second Division début in a 3-0 victory over Gainsborough Trinity at Bank Street. He should not be confused with Billy Williams (1875-1929), the holder of six England caps, who played at left-back for West Bromwich Albion between 1894 and 1901. |
Daniel Wilson.
Born, 1880, Woodstone, Hampshire. Died? Début: 12.9.03 v Brighton. Career: East Benhar Heatherbell; May 1899 Liverpool; 26.7.00 Airdrieonians; 30.6.02 Northampton Town; 1903 Bristol Rovers (to 1905); October 1906 Hamilton Academical (free) [1,0]; 1907 Albion Rovers (free). Although born in Hampshire, Daniel Wilson’s family moved to Northamptonshire at some stage after 1895. Settling at 18 Crowthorne Road, Peterborough, deal porter Dan Wilson and his wife Betsy Harris brought up Daniel along with two younger sisters, Ethel and Maria. “A player who, it is stated, has a splendid reputation” (The Scottish Referee, 27.7.00), he made his Scottish League bow in a 3-2 victory over East Stirling in August 1900 and scored a hat-trick against Ayr that December, opening the scoring early on with “a fine straight shot” before adding two late goals to convert a 4-3 deficit into a 5-4 win, the winner being from “another strong and long shot”. His late strike in a 3-0 victory over Arthurlie in the Scottish Second Division, the final goal of the game, was recognised in the press as a “fine shot”. Wilson played in fifteen Southern League games for Northampton Town, scoring twice, the first coming against Rovers on the opening day of the 1902-03 campaign, before arriving at Eastville. His Rovers career included twelve goals in 35 Southern League fixtures, this tally including two in a game against both Brighton and Wellingborough and one of Rovers’ five first-half goals against Brentford at Eastville in October 1903. The 1904-05 season did not bring as much success, Wilson appearing in just three games, although he did score against Luton Town in February 1905. In addition, he missed a penalty on Boxing Day 1904 in a friendly fixture against Bristol City. His only appearance for Hamilton Academical came in a Scottish First Division match in front of a 4,000 crowd at Tynecastle in October 1906, which Hearts won 3-1. He may be the Daniel Wilson who died in Peterborough in 1950. |
Frank Woodhall.
Born, 1884, Bedminster. Died, 1.7.1961, Hamilton, Waikato, New Zealand. Début: 1.10.10 v Watford. Career: Bristol City Wednesday; 22.7.10 Darlington (trial); 29.9.10 Bristol Rovers; 1911 to New Zealand. Mercy Evans (1847-1916) married Birmingham-born butcher Bill Woodhall (1848-1908) in 1868 and they brought up their eight surviving children at 66 Bedminster Parade; the seventh child, or eleventh from thirteen pregnancies, Frank, married Bristol-born Minnie Halse (1884-1973) in 1904, had a daughter Nellie and a son Lewis and worked as a butcher at 238 North Street, Ashton Road, before emigrating to New Zealand. He was also a competent inside-forward, who scored Rovers’ winning goal in a 2-1 victory at Plymouth Argyle in the second of his three Southern League appearances. He had previously scored the opening goal as Darlington won 2-0 at Shildon Athletic in the North-Eastern League in September 1910. Prior to that he had spent several years with Bristol City’s midweek side; in one game in November 1908 he is recorded as scoring twice at Ashton Gate, as Licensed Trade were defeated 2-0 in the Gloucestershire Junior Cup. Frank and Minnie, together with their two children, sailed from London to Wellington on board the SS Athenic on 15th September 1911 to begin the next chapter of their lives together. He is buried in Hamilton Park Cemetery in New Zealand, Minnie being also buried there after her death on 16th October 1973. |
(Sunny Jim) James Gilbert Young.
Born, 10.1.1882, Kilmarnock. Died, 4.9.1922, Kilmarnock. Début: 6.9.02 v Northampton Town. Career: Lilliemount Juveniles; Kilmarnock Deanpark; Kilmarnock Rugby XI; 1901 Kilmarnock (trial); 1901 Stewarton; 1901 Shawbank; 5.3.02 Barrow; 8.7.02 Bristol Rovers; 23.4.03 Celtic [392,15] (retired, 12.5.17). Barely credible after just nineteen Southern League games at Eastville though it may seem, “Sunny Jim” Young left Rovers to play in almost 400 Scottish League games with Celtic, win nine championship medals and six Scottish Cup finals, six Glasgow Cups and eight Glasgow Charity Cups; he also won a Scottish international cap. “Immensely hard-working and tough-tackling”, his astonishing career began by jumping clubs until he turned twenty-one; thereafter he was a proud one-club man, serving the green-and-white hoops with distinction. “Amiable, genial and garrulous”, as he was described in David Potter’s 2013 biography, “Sunny Jim Young”, he appeared in six Lancashire League games for Barrow, as well as two friendlies, scoring twice as Black Diamonds were defeated 5-0 in April 1902, and slotted into Rovers’ half-back line. A defender “who did a lot of effective spoiling work” (Bristol evening News, 13th September 1902), he managed to score a hat-trick from centre-half when the reserves defeated St George 7-0 in November 1902, his first deflecting home off a defender and the other two with second-half shots. Young apparently marked the great Billy Meredith (1874-1958) out of the game as a trialist, when Celtic played Manchester City, appearing under the pseudonym “Smith”, and promptly signed professional forms at Celtic Park, scoring his first senior goal in a 2-2 draw at Ayr in a friendly in May 1903. The first time Celtic wore their now famous hooped shirts was the 2-1 victory over Partick Thistle that August, Young’s Scottish League début. Celtic were Scottish Cup winners in 1904, when they defeated Rangers 3-2, in 1907, when Young was booked for a foul on Richard Wombwell (1877-1943) in the 3-0 victory over Hearts, in 1908 when St Mirren were put to the sword 5-1, and in successive 2-0 victories over Hamilton in 1911 and Clyde the following year, before Hibernian were defeated 4-1 in 1914 in a replayed tie, Young’s fierce drive having hit the base of a post a minute from time in the original goalless draw. His “faithful and valuable service” (The Observer) led to the Glaswegian giants recording six successive Scottish League titles between 1905 and 1910. From 1911 onwards, “Celtic’s lanky Ayrshire middleman” (Kilmarnock Herald) captained his side, including during this time a sixty-six-game unbeaten run from November 1915 to April 1917, by which time a knee injury had curtailed his playing career. Hot-headed at times, he was sent off in the 2-2 draw with Partick Thistle in December 1904 and at St Mirren in January 1910, suspended on both occasions for a month, and missed a penalty against Hibernian in March 1908. “A hardy stong fellow who never admits defeat” (Glasgow Observer), his international recognition came in the form of a single cap in Scotland’s 1-0 victory at Dalymount Park, Dublin on St Patrick’s Day 1906; playing “pretty and effective football”, Scotland won through a goal from Arsenal’s Tommy Fitchie (1881-1947) after 57 minutes before a crowd estimated at 8,000. In May 1914 he hit the crossbar after just three minutes of the Glasgow Charity Cup Final, as Third Lanark were defeated 6-0 and, in May 1915 a fixture pile-up meant Celtic won two League games on the same day to secure their third consecutive League title. A thirty-yard strike after half-an-hour was the opening goal of the 2-0 victory over Partick Thistle in the Glasgow Charity Cup Final of May 1916 at Hampden Park and he accompanied the Celts on tours to Germany, Austro-Hungary, Switzerland, France, Denmark and Czechoslovakia. “A great favourite with the football public”, as the Kilmarnock Herald reported, “his name, in fact, was known throughout the entire length of the country at the height of his football career, [and] the very boys in the streets could be heard repeating the nickname given to him by an adoring public”. Upon the death of his erstwhile Celtic team-mate, Bobby Templeton (1880-1919), Young, by now walking with the aid of a stick following a leg injury sustained against St Mirren in August 1916, took over the running of the Royal Bar in Duke Street, Kilmarnock and was living in Hill Street when at the time of his premature death. Together with friends Joseph Deans and Andrew Shearer, he had set out on a motorcycle for a Monday afternoon’s shooting at Darvel, when the bike collided with a Kilmarnock Corporation tramcar at Wellington Bridge between Kilmarnock and Hurlford; Sunny Jim was flung from the cycle and died two hours later in Kilmarnock Infirmary, aged just forty; he was buried in an oak coffin at the Grassyards cemetery in the town, an extra carriage having to be ordered because of the overwhelming quantity of wreaths. Born at 15 Kirktonhiolme Street, Kilmarnock, the seventh of eight children to a railway goods porter William Young, who died in May 1915 aged 73, and his wife Anne Gilmour, who died in August 1910, Jimmy Young had married Bristol-born Florence Kate Coombs (1883-1931) at St Paul’s Church in Bristol on 20th June 1903 before returning north of the border to live at 45 Fitchfield Street, Kilmarnock, and they had two daughters and a son, Alice Maud (1903-36), who married John Callaghan, Irene Beatrice (1908-83), who married Robert Cochrane, and James (1911-90), who married Elizabeth Beaton; he was also a relative through marriage to Rangers and Scotland’s Alick Smith (1875-1954). Florence re-married to Crighton Burns after Young’s early demise. It had been “Sunny Jim” Young, whose nickname derived from an advertisement for a cereal product, who recommended David Harvie to Rovers’ manager Alf Homer in 1910; a hero in one half of Glasgow, he was, as the Weekly News faithfully reported, “the best-known Celtic player on any provincial ground during the long period of his connection with the Green and Whites”. |
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(Jack) John Bell Young.
Born, 2.11.1883. Hurlford, Ayrshire. Died, 20.7.1957. Kilmarnock. Début: 1.9.06 v New Brompton. Career: Kilmarnock Shawbank; Hurlford; May 1904 Newcastle United; July 1905 Kilmarnock; March 1906 Hurlford; 26.5.06 Bristol Rovers; April 1907 Notts County (trial); 18.5.07 Norwich City; 20.2.08 Kilmarnock [32,13]; October 1908 Hurlford; 1.11.09 Crystal Palace; 29.8.10 Hurlford (to 1920). An attacking player with a penchant for returning to his home-town club, Jack Young added seven goals in fifteen Southern League games for Palace and six in 24 for Norwich City to his Eastville tally. He was in the Canaries’ side for both fixtures against Rovers during the 1907-08 campaign. An impressive return of fourteen goals in 33 Southern League matches with Rovers indicated his propensity for forward-thinking play, this tally including a hat-trick when the Eastville club defeated Southampton 5-0 at home in December 1906, Davie Walker claiming the other two goals. Prior to joining Rovers, “Jock” Young had been Kilmarnock’s top scorer in 1905-06, his twelve top-flight goals including a hat-trick in the 7-0 mauling of Queen’s Park in November 1905. He was selected as a reserve for Scotland’s international against Wales in 1906. |