WHAT HAPPENED TO WALES’ FIRST FOOTBALL CELEBRITY?
SPENCER VIGNES uncovers the amazing story of Welsh goalkeeper Leigh Roose and his untimely death in World War I
IT was, and remains, the most fascinating story that I’ve worked on in a journalism career spanning almost 25 years, not to mention by far the longest running.
In December 1999, I received a call from a contact of mine asking if I was interested in writing about a Welsh international goalkeeper who had played in one of the famous Christmas 1914 football matches between Allied and German soldiers on the western front.
Off I went to do some digging, only to discover I’d been led up a dead end; Leigh Roose, the goalkeeper in question, hadn’t been on the front line during 1914 and so couldn’t have taken part in any of the games.
At that point the story could easily have died a death. The reason it didn’t was because the truth was even more remarkable.
Leigh Roose had been football’s first true superstar, an extrovert admired by men and worshipped by women, including the music hall star Marie Lloyd, the pair having briefly been lovers.
Born in Holt, near Wrexham, and a graduate of Aberystwyth University, Leigh was that rarest of things – a middle class scholar participating in a working class sport.
Think Paul Gascoigne with a higher IQ, then throw in George Best’s playboy excesses for good measure.
In terms of goalkeeping, Leigh was top of the class, so good that the game’s lawmakers even changed the rules just to keep him in check.
Perhaps most tantalising of all was the ending, or rather the lack of one. At that stage nobody knew how or even where he had died.
It was as if one of the most recognisable sportsmen of his generation had disappeared into thin air.
The only certainty was that he had perished at some point during World War I, possibly at Gallipoli or maybe the Somme. After that, nothing.
And so I wrote a story about Leigh Roose which appeared in the Western Mail, on Christmas Eve 1999.
Afterwards I received as many as 50 phone calls and letters from people wanting to give me more information about Leigh, email still being in its infancy back then.
I met some who had known him, including his nephew, Dick Jenkins, a sprightly 96 at the time. I visited libraries – dozens of them – not to mention the battlefields of World War I.
Gradually, all the pieces of the jigsaw started coming together. It took 16 years, but at long last my biography on Leigh, Lost In France, has just been released.
Not only that, Friday will be the 100th anniversary of his death.
Among those marking the occasion will be BBC Radio Wales, which has made a programme about Leigh to be aired at 1.30pm on Saturday.
Taking the role of presenter will be Neville Southall who, like Leigh, also kept goal for Everton and Wales.
“He was a pioneer, self-taught, relying on his instinct to learn and get things right,” says Southall, who regards Leigh as a goalkeeping year-zero figure.
“Instead of being reactive, he was proactive, which I rather like.
“He had a decent set of morals, a love of football, and a love of life.