Boro’s Blood Sacrifice And An Historic Opportunity Lost

THE CATACLYSM of the First World War wiped out an entire generation and left much of mainland Europe devastated.
It also destroyed Boro’s first and best chance to launch a serious assault on the title. A promising team that was fast evolving into a potent unit was wiped out and an ambitious club gathering upward momentum was stopped in its tracks.

As the FootballLeague was suspended for the duration, many of the players lost their best years of their careers. More poignantly, four of them – young men with glory on the horizon – lost their lives after answering the call to arms. Three former stars also died in action along with one of the club’s directors. Boro were left broken and traumatised.

Of course the fortunes of a mere football club pale into insignificance against the mechanised slaughter of millions. And the deaths of a handful of players has to be put into context. A total of 3,765 Teessiders were killed in action and almost 6,000 from the wider area of North Yorkshire and South Durham we now think of being part of our Greater Gazetteshire hinterland , each death having a tragic lasting impact on families and friends and collectively on communities for decades to come.

And Boro were far from unique in having players on their books killed. Hundreds of professionals volunteered – almost the entire squads of Clapton Orient and Hearts enlisted en masse – with many joining the ‘Football Battalions,’ fronted by England international Frank Buckley, later to manage Wolves and Leeds among others.
Encouraged by the government and the army, there were publics meeting in major cities in which household names pledged themselves to the war effort and exhorted their team-mates and supporters of their clubs to follow suit amid much cheering.