BRITAIN’S GREATEST EVER SPORTSMAN?
Max Woosnam played football for England + Scored a century at Lord’s Won the doubles at Wimbledon + Played golf off scratch! Is he...
AS the arguments for Lewis Hamilton are made, it seems timely to call upon tales of another guy with a claim to being Britain’s greatest ever sports man. There’s a fair chance folk have neither heard of Max Woosnam, nor his butter knife.
It was with the latter that he caused quite a stir almost a century ago. This particular incident dates back to August 1921, shortly after the British Davis Cup squad of which he was captain had lost a quarter-final to Australasia in Pittsburgh, USA.
With time to kill before their ship returned home, Woosnam and his team-mates accepted pted an invitation to stay at the Californian mansion of Charlie Chaplin, who by then was as Hollywood’s wealthiest star.
Chaplin loved tennis and had a court in his garden, which became the opening scene f or a marvellous sequence of events when he challenged Woosnam to a game on arrival. He might have expected some deference as the host, but ut what followed was a merciless ess thrashing against a 28-year-r- old who had won the doubles at Wimbledon a few weeks earlier arlier and doubles gold at the Olympic Games of 1920.
Wounded but determined, legend has it that Chaplin then proposed table tennis. Woosnam accepted but, shortly before the first serve, he deployed his party piece and swapped his paddle for a butter knife. He proceeded to embarrass Chaplin again.
By that point, the actor’s mood had become quite dark, but still he lifted himself sufficiently to make a poolside speech to his guests that evening. Or at least he intended to, for Woosnam grabbed him from behind and hurled him into the water. He wasn’t invited back.
That story comes to mind now as Hamilton justifiably receives plaudits and recognition that will endure for as long as cars race for sport. Has no Brit so excelled in their given pursuit as Hamilton? Perhaps, but this is where Woosnam re-enters the conversation, because has the UK ever known someone head so far down so many sporting paths?
And how many people know the stories at all of one of the great polymaths? It is a matter of dusty record that this son of a Liverpool clergyman would, at various stages, play football for Chelsea, Manchester City and England (whose amateur and professional sides he captained), as well as scoring a century at Lord’s and golfing off a scratch handicap.
They stand in addition to his Wimbledon doubles title, his Olympic gold and silver medals and sketchier claims that he once scored a 147 at snooker.
Even the great CB Fry lacked that range. And yet, with the exception of one excellent book by Mick Collins, All- Round Genius: The Unknown Story of Britain’s Greatest Sportsman, published in 2006, precious little has been said or documented about Woosnam, who died aged 72 in 1965.
Time has a habit of minimising the past, yet Woosnam’s powers seem utterly inconceivable when viewed from the present.
A decent starting point is Winchester College, where a staff member confirmed he still features in a few faded pictures on the walls of Hawkins’ House. One shows him as a member of the Under-18s first XI football side in 1905, when he was just 13, while a logbook records that he was also captain of the golf team and part of the Public Schools cricket XI that faced MCC at Lord’s in 1911.
It was the match in which he played his way to a mention in Wisden, for he came into bat at 65 for five and scored 144 not out. He was unbeaten on 33 in the second innings of a draw and was named by the almanac as one of the school players of the year.
Woosnam went on to Cambridge University to r ead classics between 1911 and 1915, though there are no convincing claims he was much of a student.
As a sportsman he earned his Blue in five sports — football, tennis, real tennis, golf and cricket — and, in spring 1914, he played three games at centre half f or Chelsea i n the old First Division.
After r eturning f r om t he First World War — he fought on the Western Front and in the disastrous Gallipoli campaign — Woosnam started to gain greater attention. A Daily Mail report from 1919 spoke of him as ‘ the Admirable Crichton of sport. The epitome of physical energy’.
A piece from around the same period in The Times pressed him to choose between the two sports that had become his strongest suits — tennis and football.
‘Woosnam is a player of many games, and he could excel at tennis if he could devote enough time to the game,’ the report read. ‘Tennis is a mistress who must be constantly wooed.’
OvEr the coming years, his success in tennis and football did not seem to be affected by his relationships with one another. Woosnam would play 93 games for Manchester City between 1919 and 1925, all while remaining staunchly amateur.
It has been said he found the idea of professionalism ‘ vulgar’ and it became a measure of his ability that the professionals of the City side voted him as their captain. It was a similar scenario that saw him captain England in his only appearance for the ‘professional’ side in 1922.
That period coincided with a day job at the Manchester-based manufacturing company Crossley Brothers. For a time, work prevented him playing away games until City fans at the company threatened to strike if he was not permitted to travel.
Each summer, he would switch to tennis, where he won the men’s doubles at the 1920 Olympics with Noel Turnbull, the mixed silver with Kathleen McKane, and a year later won Wimbledon with randolph Lycett, shortly before his tangle with Chaplin.
It is a remarkable c.v. though the snooker claim, according to biographer Collins, is the one tale that feels a little tall. Mostly, it is all long forgotten, along with the breach of a strike in the 1920s that harmed Woosnam’s reputation around Manchester and his difficulties in juggling family life with that of a globetrotting, larger-than-life star of sport.
No statues or plaques are known to exist for him but there was once a passageway near the old Manchester City ground, Maine road, named Max Woosnam Walk. Manchester Council say it was closed in 2006.
Sad, in a way. And in some other realm, Chaplin is laughing manically.