Horncastle Football Club Famous Players 1873-1900


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Horncastle Town Football Club Famous Players 1873-1900

Charlie Chapman

Charlie Chapman one of the heroes of the famous 1886/87 FA Cup run , played several times for England. Research suggests this must have been as an amateur, as his name fails to appear in several lists of England players for the national professional side.

Another researcher has told us he was a Welsh International . ( We will look it up .)

Ambrose Langley

The story of a once famous footballer born in Horncastle, who played for H. T. F.C.

by Douglas Lamming

Just over a century ago the future worldwide game of Association Football had firmly taken root in Britain . A developed railway system made it possible for Queen’s Park ( Glasgow ) to do battle with the likes of Blackburn Rovers and Notts County . The Football League and overt professionalism were some years ahead , but the F.A. Cup was already exercising its magical appeal and England and Scotland matches had been played from 1872 onwards. The Lincolnshire Association came into existence in 1881 , gathering under its umbrella the several clubs formed throughout the county the 70s. Clubs incidentally, whose playing strengths appear wildly improbable to modern eyes . For example , Spilsby, a place of around 1,500 inhabitant, boasted a side which won the Lincolnshire Senior Cup three times in that competition’s first three years, 1881 / 2 to 1883/ 4 inclusive.

And Horncastle , too, possessed a doughty team in the 80s, a flowering destined to be repeated in Edwardian times and the early 1920s heyday of two local clubs , Town and Athletic. However, fine though these later flowerings were , they did not encompass a pairing like the F.A. Cup clash with Aston Villa . That momentous event occurred in the spring of 1887 when Horncastle Town F.C. took a long trip to face the already famous side Birmingham side . Horncastle lost 5--0 but not disgraced .Their line up included a strapping 16 year old full back ,a Horncastle native, who had shown a great and precocious talent from a tender age. His name was Ambrose Langley .

As in later days , the promise of the youngster did not go unnoticed elsewhere. His first move up the football ladder took him to Grimsby Town , then emerging as a professional organisation although not yet a member of the Football League. In due time Grimsby passed him on to Middlesborough Ironopolis, a long defunct club which enjoyed but one league season-- 1893--4. With Ironopolis Langley maintained the momentum of his development . Aston Villa, perhaps with memories of that 1887 cup-tie, wished to sign him. However, Langley had not long before sustained a bad knee injury at South Bank and Villa wanted him to undergo an examination by their club doctor. This he obdurately refused to do.

Sheffield Wednesday, when they signed him in 1893, made no such stipulation . Thereupon the rumour spread throughout Sheffield that Wednesday had acquired “a crock”. But the crock was to represent Wednesday in 298 League matches over 11 seasons, 290 of them 10 seasons out of a possible 320 between 1893 and 1903. They were seasons that brought Langley the highest club honours the game then had to offer: an F.A. Cup winner’s and League Championship medals and a Second Division medal .

What Langley failed to win was an England cap. In this respect he was unfortunate in being a contemporary of full backs with the lustre of Corinthians, W.J. Oakley and L. V. Lodge and, later on, of Blackburn Rover’s legendary Bob Crompton . All the same , he did play for the Football League ( against the Scottish League in 1898 ) and Inter league selection has always been a coveted honour . Indeed in Scotland , Scottish League caps are interspersed with national in annuals’ and club publications ‘ alphabetical lists.

Ambrose Langley was a big man -- six feet tall and weighing 14 stone in his prime -- and, although agile for his size , he encountered problems of turn and balance when opposing a nippy winger. He freely admitted to invariably being bested by the celebrated West Bromwich Albion and England outside right , Billy Bassett , particularly when Bassett had the slippery McLeod as partner. This Bassett Hoodoo was never more in evidence than in a Cup Semi--Final in 1895 . Bassett and Langley went for the ball near a corner flag . Bassett slipped and Langley trod--accidentally Langley always maintained --on the winger’s foot. In those days the penalty line went right across the pitch and the referee Albion a penalty from which they scored . A dispirited Wednesday eventually lost 2-0 with Langley singled out as the biggest culprit

There are not many failures in first class soccer to equal losing a Cup Semi Final. Wednesday remembered the 1895 defeat when they reached the following season’s semi final .Bolton Wanderers provided the opposition. After a drawn game the re-play took place at Nottingham Forest’s ground . Before the game Crawshaw, Wednesday’s centre half, warned Langley he had heard Vail , the burly Bolton centre forward , was threatening to “put that big Langley through it”. In the event the two big men “dusted each other’s jackets pretty well” according to one reporter . But at a cost-- half an hour before time Langley was lamed and at the final whistle had a knee of balloon like proportions.

The Cup Final opponents three weeks later were Wolves . The Wednesday players left Sheffield on the previous day not knowing the composition of their team. It leaked out that Langley would play only if the pitch was on the light side . He subsequently related the story of how little sleep he enjoyed that night . Langley’s room mate was Fred Spiksley, the great Wednesday and England outside left . Spiksley was almost as keen as Langley that ‘he the big back should play, for Spiksley also hailed from Lincolnshire and accordingly wishful two Yellow--bellies should get the chance of a winner’s medal . Langley reckoned he nor Spiksley got two hours sleep . First one and then the other went to the window to discern weather portents. However , Langley did play and lack of sleep affected neither . Especially Spiksley , who scored both Wednesday’s goals and performed brilliantly in a 2--1 victory.

Over a dozen years a club’s fortunes can. and usually do , fluctuate. Certainly Wednesday’s did in Langley’s time . In his first season they finished a moderate 12th in a list of 16 First Division sides. Then they improved by one place each year in the next four only to finish rock bottom in 1898/ 99. Langley, now skipper, and his men rolled up their sleeves to make up for the humiliation of relegation . They succeeded triumphantly , becoming the 18991/1900 Second Division Champions by two clear points . There followed two seasons where comfortable mid- table positions were attained and then , in 1902/03 , Wednesday won their first League Championship. Langley appeared in all 34 games. Besides being an excellent captain he had developed into a never-- failing taker of penalties. At that time penalty taking was no easy matter . The goalkeeper could advance to the six yard line and all but cover his goal except for about three feet at either side. In that championship season Langley converted five which more than once gave his side points as well as goals.

Wednesday also won the League Championship in 1903/ 04 . Langley played in eight games only and this season turned out to be his last in top flight . In 1905 he secured the appointment of player/ manager to Hull City, who were about to commence their initial Football League season a year after the club’s foundation . Langley himself played Second Division football in that 1905/06 season though remaining as manager until 1913 .

In those eight years Ambrose Langley made for himself a fine managerial reputation . He built his side practically from scratch . It finished 5th in 1905/06 and only once fell below the halfway mark during his tenure. In 1909/ 10 City missed promotion to Division 1 only on goal average and, as I write in the autumn of 1977, it is a fact that in a long intervening 67 year span City have never bettered , nor even equalled , this placing. Langley also proved to be an expert judge of immature talent. Two of his discoveries , for instance, both destined to gain representative honours, were “Boy” Browell and Stanley Fazackerley, who were eventually transferred for £1,500 and £1,000 respectively--big money for pre 1914 days. Langley’s second managerial appointment -- and last full time post in football -- turned to be especially eventual because it covered the beginning of the romantic rise of Huddersfield Town. In 1919/20 the Town became the talk of the sporting world. The club, at an extremely low ebb, sought permission to move lock , stock and barrel to Leeds, whose club (Leeds City) had been banned. This threatened removal rallied the Huddersfield public wonderfully, so much so that the club remained . And the players played like men inspired. The result was they reached the Cup Final, losing to Aston Villa by a goal in extra time, and won promotion from the Second Division by finishing runners-up to Spurs, eight points clear of Birmingham who were third. It rivalled any soccer fiction from the pages of a boy’s weekly! And Langley had accomplished all this with a clutch of pre-war players plus a few sagacious signings of his own -- Tom Wilson for example signed in 1919 on a free transfer , playing over the next decade for Huddersfield in four F.A. Cup Finals and winning three League Championship medals in record breaking consecutive seasons in addition to playing for England. Huddersfield did win the Cup in 1922 fielding a team of which included eight members of the defeated 1920 Final side and also Sam Wadsworth , a Langley signing who went on to win eight England caps. Langley had left the club by then, his successor being the most celebrated manager of all time, Herbert Chapman . one is taking nothing away from Mr. Chapman in recording the opinion that Langley had laid foundations for Hudderfield’s Town’s undoubted right to be labelled ‘the Team of the Twenties’.

Ambrose Langley died in Sheffield in February 1937 aged 66. Perhaps his best ‘obituary’ had been published nearly 35 years before when he was the subject of an article in the “Sheffield Independent”: He is ......a man of character and substance ,feared on the football field and respected in private life .Playing football for a living , but loving it as a game, he strives his utmost, despite the passing years , to retain his proficiency.....scorning to notice harsh words from adherents of adverse factions, he goes on and does his duty to the best of his ability. Temperate and thrifty, a citizen sedate, he sets an example which many of his profession would do well to follow. As a relaxation and relief from the violent delights of the winter sport, he may, when the balmy days of summer come round, be found thoroughly happy fly-fishing for trout.”

This reads now as a passage somewhat high-flown ---- journalists in August 1902 had space to air vocabularies. And to be sure Langley was not always in the right in his several brushes with authority. But the essence is there, the man shines through as one of quality, a good man on and off the field.

I would like to have known him.

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