Brought his career to an end

1936. His most famous appearance in an England shirt came in November 1934 and a brutal clash with Italy at Highbury.

Despite having an early penalty saved, he scored twice inside the first 11 minutes with a header and what the great Stanley Matthews later described as ‘the best free-kick I’ve ever seen, a thunderbolt’. Afterwards, it emerged that he had played with a broken arm.

Brook was capped 18 times by England, scoring 10 goals. Many felt he should have played more but he was often overlooked for Arsenal’s Cliff Bastin.

Brook later ran a pub in Halifax and drove coaches in his native Yorkshire before returning to the Manchester area, where he worked as a crane operator. Brook died suddenly at the age of 57 at home on a Manchester council estate.

The two men are connected by a simple statistic but otherwise they are generations, and worlds, apart.

Soon, when his record falls, Eric Brook will slip back into history.