Our first clue card was this one, of T. (Thomas) Cooper of Liverpool, whose club nickname is “The Reds” – that was how we got the starter clue word.
He was born in 1904.
Hill`s “Popular Footballers – Season 1934-5 Series B No.35 tells us that he was a right back, and had recently transferred from Derby County who secured his services from Port Vale in 1926. He is also described there as “one of England`s most stylish and reliable defenders”.
Carreras “Famous Footballers” (1936) 24/48 tells us that “Last season was transferred from Derby County at a fee said to exceed £6,000". He played in almost four hundred and fifty games and represented England fifteen times; the first of the Internationals was against Ireland in 1928-9.
Like many footballers, the Second World War saw him moving to fields of war not play, and sadly he was killed in June 1940 aged just thirty-six, when his motorcycle was involved in a collision with a lorry. England Football Online has this slightly differently, saying it was “a double decker”, which seems to suggest a bus, not a lorry, and they also have him as aged only thirty-five not thirty-six.
The incident happened in Suffolk, whilst he was serving as a despatch rider for the Royal Military Police, and as a result of his death there was an inquiry at which a ruling was made that military despatch riders were no longer to be allowed to ride their motorcycles without a crash helmet.
This set almost certainly was recorded as a new issue in one of our magazines, but I have not found it yet. So at the moment it first appears in our original Ogdens reference book, (RB.15, issued in 1949). The text there is :
84. FOOTBALL CLUB CAPTAINS. Fronts printed by letterpress in colour. Backs in grey, with descriptive text, adhesive. Cards advertise special album for mounting. Home issue, 1935. Similar series issued by Hignett.
It next appears in our original World Tobacco Indexes, catalogued as :
FOOTBALL CLUB CAPTAINS. Sm. Nd. (50). See Ha.571.9. Special album issued ... O/2-150
That Ha reference leads us to the Handbook, where it simply tells us it was also issued by Hignett.
Oddly, though most of the text is repeated, this handbook code is omitted in our updated World Tobacco Issues Index.