NFR How many modern day footballers can you see doing this?

[colossus]

New films coming out called wartime wanders. A true story set in 1939, members of the Bolton Wanderers, an English football team, enlist to active duty en masse, inspired by a speech by their captain, Harry Goslin.


]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Goslin]


Thought it may be of interest to a few of you on here

[colossus]

The years of the Second World War saw most of the Wanderers' playing staff see action on the front, a rare occurrence within elite football, as top sportsmen were generally assigned to physical training assignments, away from enemy fire. As it is, no less than 15 Bolton professionals, led by their captain Harry Goslin, volunteered for active service in 1939, and were enlisted in the 53rd Bolton Artillery regiment. By the end of the war, 32 of the 35 pre-war professionals saw action in the British forces. The sole fatality was Goslin, who had by then risen to the rank of Lieutenant and was killed by shrapnel on the Italian front shortly before Christmas 1943.

[LBNo11]

...a stirring tale and as you say one unlikely ever to be replicated, not least because few major British clubs could find enough British players to enlist to form a squad, let alone a battalion: if individual teams ever did try encourage a complete enlistment their proposed foes may well be in the same team!

A special mention should also go here to the 'Pals' regiments in the first world war. Three Battalions of footballers were formed, the 17th and 23rd Battalions of the Middlesex regiment and, bearing in mind they have been in the news of late Hearts FC joined almost en-masse the 16th Bn (2nd Edinburgh) they included the entire first team, the reserves, back-room staff and even some of the board..!

[finnster01]

Not many. But I can see the formation of the 1St FoF Battalion quite easily should it be needed...  :028:

[sipwell]

Thanks for informing me of this. Interesting times in the UK. The economic/financial crisis hit hard, politicians are pleading for radical overhauls of NHS and education (plus the emphasis on "society" to do things the government does today)... and one after the other movie is about the strong English/British character, first with the King's Speech and now this. Good research topic :)

[HatterDon]

In those days, given the maximum wage, there probably wasn't much of a dropoff in salary for the player's families as their would be now.

I see a lot of these things about ... with either the undercurrent or the explicit purpose of implying, "Compare these spoiled, rich, pampered athletes/musicians/actors with our brave men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan" as a way to needle the former. You also see it with teachers: "Why do athletes get multi-million dollar salaries for hitting a ball when teachers get next to nothing for educating our children?" [Note: this was before it was discovered that teachers were responsible for our economic meltdown].

As I used to tell my fellow educators: Once 55,000 people are willing to pay upwards of $50 a ticket to watch you conjugate verbs in Yankee Stadium, you can get all that money as well.

As for the military, I never met ANYBODY in uniform in Vietnam who wouldn't have preferred playing in the NFL, making out with a Hollywood starlet on screen, or playing lead guitar with the Rolling Stones to being "in country." And I'll bet that the same is true of our current military in combat zones today. That doesn't make them unpatriotic, any more than it makes the athletes/entertainers unpatriotic because they weren't/aren't in uniform getting shot at.

[ImperialWhite]

[Note: this was before it was discovered that teachers were responsible for our economic meltdown].

:032:

[finnster01]

As for the military, I never met ANYBODY in uniform in Vietnam who wouldn't have preferred playing in the NFL, making out with a Hollywood starlet on screen, or playing lead guitar with the Rolling Stones to being "in country." And I'll bet that the same is true of our current military in combat zones today. That doesn't make them unpatriotic, any more than it makes the athletes/entertainers unpatriotic because they weren't/aren't in uniform getting shot at.

Agree 90% with what you say about the military but there are exceptions such as that Arizona Cardinals NFL guy (forget his name) who signed up and went to Afghanistan instead of signing his new multi million dollar NFL contract already on the table and ended up getting killed in friendly fire. I never met anyone either who didn't want to swap roles but I actually believe there are a few out there. My nephew is one of them.

For me it was all about getting a job as I didn't have one, but to be fair I also knew very well what I had signed up for should crap happen, which it did.