[Lord Snooty]

October 18:

Another first for Huddersfield Town on this date. Sadly it's the first Football League player to be killed in the First World War. That was Larrett Roebuck and he died on this date in 1914. He was 25 years old.

Larrett was born in Jump, near Barnsley in 1889, but had a rotten childhood. His dad died when Larrett was only 13 and being the eldest of three siblings, he was forced to leave school and go work in the local mines. It is thought that he would be looking after the pit ponies.

When he was 15, he was sentenced to a month in prison, in Rotherham, for stealing a watch. For some odd reason, he'd lied about his age, saying he was 17. He lied again when he got out of nick and went to Pontefract and joined the Yorkshire & Lancashire Regiment, telling them he was 18. He was sent to India where he served for a couple of years. It was here though that he first got into playing football.

Back home in 1908, he got married to Frances, known as Fanny and they had a son named John. Larrett had done well in the army and worked his way up to Lance-Corporal. However he was busted back down to Private in 1910 for misconduct.

By 1912, the family had extended with John getting three sisters. They were in Limerick now, serving with the army reserve, but Larrett decided to leave and go back home to Yorkshire. The family returned to Rotherham and he got a job working at Silverwood Colliery, joining their football team as a pastime.

They were a good amateur side and had played in the qualifying rounds of the FA Cup, which is when the scouts of Huddersfield Town got to notice him. He signed for the Town in 1913 and the club went back and signed his team mate Harry Linley, who stayed with the club long enough to play in the promotion season and the subsequent First Division season.

Larrett made his Town debut in a home game against Fulham in January 1914, a 3-1 win, which came on the back of seven straight defeats. He kept his place in the side, playing at left back and kept that position for the rest of the season. Initially replacing Fred Bullock, who had to move to right back.

His last game for the club was the last game of that 13/14 season, a 1-0 win at Filbert Street against Leicester Fosse.

But then, as an army reservist, he was called back to his regiment in Pontefract as the First World War got underway. They traveled south where they were joined by the rest from Limerick and put on a boat to France.

Larrett had been reinstated as Lance-Corporal and arrived at the front on September the 20th. However, on October the 18th, whilst trying to capture Menin, he and 40 of his colleagues were reported missing presumed dead after coming across heavy machine gun fire. His body was never found.

Meanwhile, Huddersfield Town had been paying his wife, Fanny, a pound a week in his absence. The Football League season had continued for 1914/15, but on hearing the sad news, manager Arthur Fairclough was tasked with the job of informing her that the club could no longer honour this agreement due to itself being in a poor financial state.

She received ten shillings for the next four weeks before getting an army pension. She'd had to wait quite some time though before getting this. In the meantime, the Town players had had whip rounds to send money to her and the kids.

Larrett and his comrades are commemorated on the Ploegsteert Memorial to the Missing. One hundred years later, in 2014, fifteen bodies were found and were identified as men from Larrett's regiment. He wasn't one of them though and so he's still unaccounted for.

If you want to read more, click here https://www.westernfrontassociation.com/...t-roebuck/


On a happier note, 18 year old Denis Law of Huddersfield Town, made his international debut for Scotland in a British Championship match against Wales at Ninian Park, Cardiff on this date in 1958. He scored as well. Graham Leggat of Fulham scored the first, Denis got the second and then future Town manager Bobby Collins, got the third in a 3-0 win for the Scots.