War stopped Eric scoring even more!
WERE it not for the outbreak of World War Two and the fractured skull that brought a premature end to Eric Brook’s playing career, Sergio Aguero would have to wait a little longer to become Manchester City’s all-time top goalscorer.
As it is, Aguero needs just two more goals to match Brook’s record of 177 for City that has stood unequalled for the last 78 years, having played 235 fewer games for the club.
There aren’t many other comparisons between the Yorkshireman and the Argentine, besides both being no taller than 5ft 7in and having a natural instinct for goal.
When Brook, who also acted as City’s emergency goalkeeper despite his size, was forced to quit in 1940 because injuries he suffered in a car crash meant he could no longer head the ball, he retired to his native Yorkshire where he became a coach driver and ran a pub in Halifax.
He later returned to Manchester and operated cranes before passing away at the relatively young age of 57 in 1965.
Born in Mexborough, the oldest of five children, Brook would have ended up down the mines like his father had it not been for football.
He became one of the finest players of his generation and among the best in City’s history.
He was spotted in amateur football by scouts from Barnsley who were quick to snap up the blond-haired 18-year-old.
Two years later, Barnsley banked a combined fee of £6,000 when Brook and his team-mate Fred Tilson moved to City. The Yorkshiremen would go on to score 310 goals between them in 726 games.
Brook was an outside left in name only, preferring to drift in from the wing and score goals from a central position. In a 12-year career at Maine Road, Brook helped the club win promotion from the old Second Division in his first season and become champions for the first time in 1937.
City had lifted the FA Cup three years earlier after Brook scored a stunning winner in the sixth-round tie against Stanley Matthews’s Stoke City in front of 84,569 fans — a record attendance for a club match in England until Tottenham met Bayer Leverkusen at Wembley last November.
Of Brook’s 494 appearances for City, he got to play in goal on three occasions in the days before substitutes were allowed.
Former City keeper Frank Swift described how Brook once took his jersey off him, ‘about two sizes too big for him’, before he had even been carried off the pitch on a stretcher during a game against Chelsea. ‘I really believe Brookie used to pray for me to be knocked out,’ recalled Swift.
‘I wasn’t long off the field and Eric was very annoyed because he had had no shots to save! Eric was perhaps one of the most amazing characters I have ever played with. There wasn’t very much of him, but what there was, was all dynamite.’
Brook was capped 18 times by England, scoring 10 goals. It was while travelling to a wartime international against Scotland at St James’ Park in late 1939 that Brook suffered the injury that ended his career at the age of 32. Having missed their train in Leeds, Brook and his City team-mate Sam Barkas drove north instead and were involved in an accident near Ripon.
The war led to the suspension of First Division football and Brook’s 178th and final goal for City being wiped from the records.
His record of 177 has stood for nearly eight decades, but now Aguero is ready to succeed Brook as City’s goal king.