"Willie Watson" by Frank Garrick

This is "a biography of England's most successful double international" who won 4 caps for England's Soccer team and 23 caps for England's cricket team and who must be the only person ever to have been to a soccer World Cup finals (although he never played because England were sent home after the first round) and on an Ashes tour of Australia.

I found the endless sporting statistics a little mind-numbing (I am not a great fan of sports) but I was intrigued by the picture Garrick built up of the life of a professional sportsman before the era of big money. Willie Watson combined professional soccer (mostly for Sunderland) in the winter with professional cricket (mostly for Yorkshire) in the summer; both clubs were very understanding when seasons overlapped and when international duties called. But he also ran a sports' outfitters business with his brother and a chicken farm with his wife. He was miffed when his World Cup tour netted him only £60 when a season playing cricket for Yorkshire would have earned him £300. His biggest source of income was a Yorkshire benefit season.

It was also interesting to learn about life at the bottom. Willie Watson rarely brought luck to his teams. Sunderland tended to bumble around the lower half of the First Division (now the Premiership) and Yorkshire around the lower half of the County Championship. When he moved to Leicestershire they had a spell at the bottom of the Championship; when he became a football manager of Halifax Town they had to apply for re-election to the league. Whilst he played soccer for England the team suffered its most humiliating 1-0 defeat to USA in Rio and his test cricket career was mostly draws and losses. His greatest achievements were gritty defences of losing positions, scoring incredibly slowly but staying at the wicket. Moreover, the clubs he played for had repeated financial crises. There was little glamour in this sporting superstar's career.

The book is well written and, despite the parade of depressing results, mostly held my interest. I would have liked to know a little it more about his life away from the pitch but I imagine that sporting fans would not. Although I had never heard of Willie Watson before, there are a huge number of sporting giants in this book from Stanley Matthews to Ian Botham. So, if you are interested in the history of soccer or cricket, I recommend this book.

June 2014; 229 pages