THE DESTROYING ANGEL
He had commercial boot deals more than 100 years ago and his goals put him up with Ronaldo and Greaves. Steve Bloomer was a prisoner of war who became known as . . .
More than a century has passed since Steve Bloomer last hit the target but when Cristiano ronaldo sets a glittering new record and the all-time goal charts are reproduced, he is never far away.
The first of ronaldo’s two goals at Celta Vigo last month eased the real Madrid striker clear of Jimmy Greaves at the top of the list for league goals scored in europe’s top five leagues.
Next came Gerd Muller and Lionel Messi. Then Bloomer. Still fifth and in elite company nearly 80 years after his death.
His Derby County record of 332 goals in all competitions may stand for ever. It is a staggering 131 clear of Kevin Hector in second and 271 clear of Chris Martin, the current player with the most goals for the rams.
Although his legend is proudly preserved at Pride Park thanks to the efforts of various people over the last 25 years, Bloomer’s achievements are worthy of national acclaim.
He was born in Cradley in Worcestershire in 1874, the youngest of six children, and moved with his family across the Midlands to Derby at the age of five.
His father Caleb found work at Ley’s Malleable Castings foundry, owned by Sir Francis Ley, who also owned the adjacent plot of land where they first played baseball and later football.
Some foundry buildings still stand but the Baseball Ground, home to Derby County for 102 years, is no more; replaced by 149 houses and a 15ft sculpture in stone and steel, vandalised by marker-pen scrawl around the base and surrounded by overgrown grass verges.
Bloomer turned professional at the age of 18 and reluctantly retired at the age of 40.
Two spells with the rams were split by four years at Middlesbrough, where the inside right also boasted a decent strike-rate of 62 goals in 130 games.
He was the england captain, capped 23 times in an era of three international games a year, and scored 28 goals for his country which survived in the all-time top 10 until 2013 when he was nudged out by Frank Lampard’s goal in a friendly against the republic of Ireland.
Bloomer was a genuine celebrity at the dawn of the 20th century. With boyish looks and a pasty complexion combined with his deadly finishing ability, he was known as the ‘Destroying Angel’.
off the pitch, he pioneered commercial endorsements such as his ‘Lucky’ boots and Perfegrippe, ‘the boot that took the football world by storm’ with its moulded studs.
A tan- coloured pair can be found in the display cabinet in the reception at Pride Park alongside assorted cups and medals from Derby’s heritage as well as manager Brian Clough’s telegram to Sam Longson in 1971 informing his chairman, who was on holiday, that he had signed Colin Todd for a British record of £175,000 and was ‘running short of cash’. To commemorate his england goal record, Bloomer was photographed by the FA in 1905 wearing his international kit, complete with a resplendent pair of white leather boots.
In it he strikes a pose ronaldo might approve of, with hand on hip, eyes fixed in the middle distance. TroPHIeS, however, eluded Bloomer. By the time he hung up his Luckys and Perfegrippes, he had only a Division Two title to his name, having been on the losing side in three FA Cup finals and finished as a runner- up in Division one in 1896. He went on to coach abroad and led the Basques of real Union to victory in Spain’s Copa del rey in 1924 when his team beat real Madrid in the final.
Ten years earlier, he had been coaching in Berlin when war broke out. He was held for more than three years at the ruhleben prison camp and was there when a letter arrived from his wife Sarah with news of the death of Violet, the second of their four daughters, at the age of 17.
To keep depression at bay Bloomer was encouraged to start playing football once again inside the camp. He would later acknowledge the game saved his life. ‘He was
football’s equivalent of WG Grace,’ said Peter Seddon, who wrote the first biography of Bloomer,
entitled Destroying Angel: Steve Bloomer, England’s First Football Hero.
‘Probably because of cricket’s more scholarly approach, he did not survive the test of time as well.
‘Steve Bloomer had been forgotten and a lot of keen football people might still say “Steve who?” but this great personality who went off the radar has been resurrected and brought back into focus.’
Seddon’s book was published in 1999 and became a key to the modern revival of the Bloomer legend.
Kalwinder Singh Dhindsa is a Derby supporter who was entranced by the story after learning the ancient footballer once walked the same terraced streets where he lived in the Pear Tree area of Derby.
Dhindsa was in the process of writing a book on his father’s suicide and the more he researched the heritage of his family, Sikhs who moved to Pear Tree in 1967, the closer he felt to the ancient footballer.
He is now writing the sequel which tells how his own life became enriched by the purpose of preserving Bloomer’s legacy when he became involved in the project to create a statue for Pride Park. It was sculpted by Andrew Edwards and Dhindsa, a science technician at a Derby school, fixed a pear shape below Bloomer’s left elbow to signify the Pear Tree connections.
The bronze figure was installed beside the home dug-out, mounted on red bricks from the Baseball Ground and featuring a replica of the original plaque once fixed to the wall beside the directors’ entrance at the old stadium.
Its unique position by the pitch was inspired by the song Steve
Bloomer’s Watching written by Derby fans Mark Tewson and Martyn Miller in 1996 and adopted as the club anthem as the Rams moved home.
The statue catches the eye when the TV cameras pan past the stressed-out features of different managers longing for a striker of Bloomer’s calibre to satisfy the demands of the club’s current owner, Mel Morris. IT was unveiled in 2009 by two of Bloomer’s grandchildren: Steve Richards, a sports reporter who once ghosted Leeds and England striker Allan Clarke’s autobiography Goals Are
My Business, and Alan Quantrill. Bloomer’s eldest daughter Hetty married England international Alf Quantrill, who played for Derby, Preston, Bradford Park Avenue and Nottingham Forest.
Steve and Alan have since died, leaving great grandchildren as the closest living relatives to Bloomer. There is a branch of lineage in Norway. They all cherish his memory and tend his grave in Derby’s Nottingham Road cemetery but there is no family trove of memorabilia.
They sold off the 19 caps they owned at an auction in 1994. They were bought for little more than £8,000 by Michael Knighton, a Derbyshire- born businessman who was then chairman of Carlisle after his failed takeover at Manchester United.
This money was put towards creating Derby’s first permanent memorial to Bloomer, a short marble pillar, curiously located in the LockUp Yard near the city-centre fish market where it stands today.
Those international caps later turned up as part of a collection of Bloomer artefacts, also including portraits and photographs, which sold at auction in December 2016 for £320,000.
Dhindsa is still on the case, fighting for a blue plaque to be fixed to one of his old houses or the old school building, now Wallis Fashions, at the junction of Pear Tree Street and Portland Road, where Bloomer would have emerged as a boy, within sight of the Baseball Ground.
No longer forgotten. The Bloomer legend is strong and getting stronger.
Maybe one day there will be a bust to welcome visitors at East Midlands Airport to rival Ronaldo’s in Madeira.