Wednesday, 29 March 1905 heralded the dawn of a black day in the history of Everton Football Club, namely, our first ever defeat in an FA Cup semi-final replay. Everton’s opponents that day, Aston Villa, had held the Blues to a 1:1 draw in the first match at the Victoria Ground, Stoke, on Saturday, 25 March 1905 in front of a crowd of 35,000, with Jack Sharp, an England international at both football and cricket, netting for Everton. The replay was staged at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, and, depressingly for the Toffees, Aston Villa carried the day, winning 2:1 in front of 25,000 spectators, with Sharp again on the mark for Everton. The Everton eleven in both these matches also featured one Leigh Richmond Roose who, in contrast to Jack Sharp, is very much a forgotten ex-Everton man.

Born in Holt, North Wales, in April 1878, Welsh international Leigh Roose joined Everton as an amateur goalkeeper from Stoke City in November 1904. He promptly ousted Belfast-born Billy Scott, a close-season signing from Linfield who had conceded seventeen goals in the first twelve games of the season, making his debut in a 1:0 home defeat to Sunderland on 19 November 1904. He retained his place between the sticks for the next three matches, a 0:0 home draw versus Derby County, a 4:1 home win over Stoke City and a 2:1 away success at Small Heath, but alternated with Billy Scott over the Christmas period, during which he featured in Everton’s 3:0 triumph at Wolverhampton Wanderers on Boxing Day 1904, with Billy Scott doing the honours on 24 and 27 December.

In addition to the FA Cup semi-final and semi-final replay against Aston Villa, in which the superstitious Leigh Roose sported the same unwashed jersey which he had worn in all the previous rounds of the competition, the most memorable Everton matches in which he featured include the 1:1 draw at our old Anfield stamping ground in an FA Cup first round tie versus Second Division Liverpool on 2 February 1905 and the replay six days later at Goodison Park, which saw Everton emerge victorious 2:1, their first-ever FA Cup triumph over their cross-park enemies, and a famous 2:1 victory over fellow League Championship contenders Newcastle United at Goodison Park on 14 January 1905, in which, according to a letter from one Kenneth Ferguson printed in the Everton versus West Bromwich Albion programme dating from Saturday, 22 January 1972, it was his prowess between the sticks alone which had kept Everton in the match in the first half. I quote: “[...] In a thrilling second half after Newcastle had led by a single goal at half-time, [Bruce] Rankin scored a brilliant equaliser, and later, just before the finish, centred the ball for Jimmy Settle, the inside left, to head the winning goal. It should be recorded that Everton’s revival was made possible only by the first-half superb goalkeeping of an amateur, the legendary Dr. L.R. Rouse (sic).”

All in all, Leigh Roose appeared in a total of eighteen First Division and six FA Cup encounters for Everton during this season, of which the Toffees won fifteen, lost six and drew three, conceding eighteen league and five FA Cup goals in the process, a record of which Leigh Roose, who kept six clean sheets in First Division and two in FA Cup fixtures and never conceded more than two goals in a match, could be justifiably proud in a season which saw Everton finish in second place, just a solitary point behind League Champions Newcastle United. Still an amateur, Leigh Roose rejoined Stoke City in August 1905, having, the slight of his omission by pioneering Everton historian Thomas Keates from the list of Everton's Welsh internationals included on page 154 of the 1998 facsimile reprint of his 1929 book History of the Everton Football Club 1878-1928 notwithstanding, also made two full international appearances for Wales whilst on Everton’s books, one of which in a 3:1 defeat versus England on 27 March 1905 at, of all places, Anfield.

In addition to Everton, Stoke City and an assortment of clubs in his native North Wales, Leigh Roose, who held a doctorate in bacteriology besides being feted as a legendary crowd-pleasing showboater whose ‘daring gymnastics in goal’, contemporary records testify, made him a ‘hero to every boy in the land’, featured between the sticks for Sunderland, Huddersfield Town, Aston Villa, Arsenal, Port Vale and Celtic, making one loan appearance for the Glasgow club in March 1910. He also enjoyed the distinction of captaining the first Welsh side to win the Home Championship in 1907. However, this distinction notwithstanding, his most lasting achievement materialized in the form of a change in the rules of the game necessitated by his eccentricity. Until Leigh Roose appeared on the scene goalkeepers had been permitted to handle the ball outside the eighteen-yard box. However, he interpreted this rule somewhat more liberally than his counterparts, frequently carrying the ball from one end of the pitch to the other, a practice which the Football Association duly proceeded to outlaw by banning goalkeepers from handling the ball outside their area.

Upon the outbreak of the Great War Leigh Roose, given his extremely high standard of education, considerable personal wealth and experience of captaining the Welsh football side, perfect officer material, chose instead to enlist as a private in 9th (Service) Battalion, Royal Welsh Fusiliers, a New Army battalion formed at Wrexham in September 1914 and attached to 19th (Western) Division which was posted to France during the period 11 to 21 July 1915. While serving on the trench-locked Western Front, 10898 Private Leigh Roose was awarded the Military Medal for bravery after having deployed hand-grenades to help thwart a German counterattack during the 1916 Somme offensive. This feat, which also resulted in his subsequent appointment to the rank of Lance-Corporal, probably occurred during what, in 1921, the Battles Nomenclature Committee termed the Battle of Pozières, the third phase of the Somme offensive lasting from 23 July to 3 September 1916 and in which, as part of 19th (Western) Division attached to III Corps, Fourth Army, Leigh Roose’s battalion was embroiled. This award was gazetted, i.e. recorded in the London Gazette, the official organ of the British Government, on Thursday, 21 September 1916.

I quote:
His Majesty the KING has been graciously pleased to award the Military Medal for bravery in the field to the undermentioned Non-commissioned Officers and Men: —
[…]
10898 Pte. L. Rouse (sic), R. Fus.

However, just sixteen days later, fate decreed that, at the age of thirty-eight, he should meet his maker while participating in a futile British infantry assault on German positions on the Somme on Saturday, 7 October 1916, on the afternoon of which, poignantly enough, Everton vanquished Blackpool 3:1 at Goodison Park in the Lancashire Section Principal Tournament, one of the regional competitions which replaced the Football League during seasons 1915/16 to 1918/19.

In his article entitled Celtic Football Club and the Great War, which appears on the Hellfire Corner Web site (http://www.hellfire-corner.demon.co.uk/celtic.htm), Robert Hoskins provides the following depiction of the circumstances surrounding the death in action of Leigh Roose:
“Leigh’s battalion was caught up in fierce fighting in the battle for Montauban. At 1:45 p.m. Leigh's regiment led the attack on enemy lines, encountering heavy machine-gun fire on the way. On reaching the top of the nearby ridge, the attacking battalions were practically decimated by heavy shelling and machine-gun fire. Like many attacking manoeuvres throughout the First World War, the objectives of this attack were never reached. That one day's attack highlighted the human tragedy that was the First World War, costing the lives of twenty-five men with an additional 165 missing presumed dead and 132 wounded for no material gain.”

In matter of fact, this depiction is problematic due to the circumstance that the fortified village of Montauban was actually stormed and taken not by battalions of 19th (Western) Division, to which Leigh Roose’s unit, 9th (Service) Battalion, Royal Welsh Fusiliers, was attached from its formation in September 1914 until the demobilization of the “Butterfly Division”, as it was nicknamed, in March 1919, but by Manchester and Liverpool battalions of the British 30th Division, and this on the morning of Saturday, 1 July 1916, the first day of the Somme offensive. By 7 October 1916, the day upon which Lance-Corporal Leigh Roose MM was killed in action, Montauban lay some five miles behind the British front lines.

The alternative place name proffered by the official Wrexham Web site, the twin hamlet of Ligny-Thilloy (see http://www.wrexham.gov.uk/english/leisure_tourism/welsh_wizards/midfield.htm), is equally implausible as the scene of the abortive attack in which Leigh Roose went missing due to the simple fact that when the British discontinued offensive operations along the Somme front during the evening of Saturday, 18 November 1916, Ligny-Thilloy, which is located some two miles south-west of Bapaume, still lay approximately one-and-a-half miles behind the German front-line positions. It had not witnessed any Anglo-German skirmishes since 26 August 1914 when straggling remnants of the Old Contemptibles were attacked in the village during the Retreat from Mons by advance units of the million-strong, pillage- and arson-besotted Teutonic hordes cascading down from the north.
Given that, as part of 19th (Western) Division, Leigh Roose’s battalion was involved in the Battle of the Ancre Heights, the ninth and penultimate phase of the Somme offensive which lasted from 1 October to 11 November 1916 and whose objective was, inter alia, the seizure of the German strongholds of Schwaben Redoubt, Zollern Redoubt and Stuff Redoubt straddling the infamous Thiepval Ridge, in my view it is most likely that it was in the vicinity of Thiepval, a fortified village fronting the German-held high ground beyond, that he was actually killed in action on the seventh day of this series of British infantry assaults.

Be that as it may, it is beyond doubt that Leigh Roose sacrificed his life in the service of king and country during the 1916 Somme campaign and that his mortal remains occupy an unmarked plot of land in a foreign field which shall forever be North Wales. As a fallen British soldier of the 1916 Somme offensive with no known grave, he is, under the incorrectly spelt surname of Rouse, commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing, pier and face 8C, 9A and 16A, Department of the Somme, France (for more information on this magnificent memorial visit http://www.thiepval.org.uk/).

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, let us remember this courageous Great War volunteer, a long forgotten former Evertonian and one of the first goalkeeping greats to emerge from the game of Association Football whose name does not deserve to languish in the Everton obscurity into which it has fallen.

This excellently researched and moving article was kindly submitted to The Long, Long Trail by Anthony Williams. In addition, the following information is provided by Chris Baker:

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