BOOK REVIEW
Lost in France By Spencer Vignes Sportsbookofthemonth.com price: £8.99 WHEN picking sides at school, the boys chosen to keep goal were almost always amongst the last to be selected. They remained against the wall usually because their peers considered them less competent footballers, though this wasn’t always the case.
Had an amendment to the game’s laws not been introduced in June 1912 on the suggestion of football’s Rules Review Committee, it seems likely that the goalkeeper’s importance would have been considerably more apparent. That the amendment to stop goalkeepers bouncing the ball outside the penalty area was approved was due in no small part to Leigh Roose.
Great praise is due to author Spencer Vignes for bringing Roose’s story to life and for persisting after an unexpected setback that prolonged the book’s gestation period by nine years.
Football fans will consider the wait worthwhile for Lost in France is a genuinely compelling tale of Roose, an innovative goalkeeper who rose to fame initially at Aberystwyth University before his ability was spotted – and coveted – by clubs such as Everton, Sunderland and Arsenal, as well as the Wales selectors.
In pre-First World War days, football was a rough-and-tumble sport, one in which centre forwards were encouraged to crash into the goalkeeper. Roose prefered to ‘get his revenge in first’ by smashing into any forwards foolish enough to get in his way. Fans loved this new way of playing; the ladies were particularly keen on watching Roose – and he them. His reputation and antics as a womaniser could have filled another book.
Like millions of others, Roose’s life was swamped by the Great War and he went off to fight for King and Country. At Gallipoli in 1915, he was listed as ‘missing, presumed dead’, but he lieved to be awarded theMilitary Medal in the Battle of the Somme more than a year later. He would fall at the Somme, however.
Leigh Roose is one of that rare breed: a man who was partly responsible for effecting a change to football’s rules. But he was also someone unlikely to put up with being left against the wall when his schoolmates picked their lunchtime teams.
We’ve teamed up with www. sportsbookofthemonth.com and have a copy of Lost in France to give away. To win this prize, visit the www.sportsbookofthemonth. com website and answer the following question:
In which year did Wales first play against England in a football match?