Steve Bloomer
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His father, Caleb, and mother, Merab, moved the family from Bloomer's birth place of Cradley to Derby as a child where he played for St. James' School in the Derbyshire Minor League (at one time, he scored 14 goals for them in one match), Derby Swifts F.C. (between 1888 and 1891) and, in April 1892, for Tutbury Hawthorn in a local Derby cup competition, the club falling foul of rules forbidding the use of players registered with other clubs (Bloomer had already signed forms with Derby County) and being the subject of a protest from fellow finalists Gresley Rovers F.C., after Bloomer featured in a 7-2 cup final victory, replete with crowd violence.
He was first employed, ironically, as a striker, at Ley's Malleable Castings, a foundry owned by Sir Francis Ley, in Derby. Ley, an industrialist with an interest in how recreation could improve morale and productivity was a disciple to the American inclination that sport should form an adjunct to work. As a result of a visit to the United States in 1889 Ley saw companies using baseball and, as a consequence, had the Baseball Ground built, a 12-acre park for the use of workers with cricket and baseball facilities. Bloomer played second base as a member of the highly successful Derby baseball side that won the English Cup in 1897 (Derby won 3 of the 4 national cups that were staged after 1894) and his team-mate and England international goalkeeper Jack Robinson (January 22 1870-October 28 1931) was third baseman. http://www.sabruk.org/examiner/05/lastgame.html
At the time Derby County played at the County Ground in Derby, a place Bloomer always regarded with affection ("It had fresh running water and was the finest turf in all-England" he said). In his first game for Derby County, he scored four times against Darley Dale but made his Football League debut on 3 September 1892 at Stoke City's Victoria Ground in which an untried Derby won 3-1 and scored his first goal on September 24, 1892 in a home fixture to West Bromwich Albion F.C.. Such was the impact of his arrival that the club also trialled his brother, Phillip, for one fixture. This proved unsuccessful and Phillip was to die of peritonitis in May 1896. http://www.derbycounty-mad.co.uk/news/loadroll.asp?cid=ED31&id=69693. Derby County would finally move to the Baseball Ground in 1895, Bloomer scoring both goals in the defeat of Sunderland F.C. in the first game there that September in front of 10 000.
It is arguable that he was first 'spotted' by Preston North End double-winner John Goodall since his talent for scoring brought him quickly to the attention of various figures in the game (one of those seeking fame as the 'discoverer' of Bloomer was the administrator Arthur Kingscott), but Bloomer did make his League debut at Goodall's insistence and was soon popular with the public and a target for opposition defences. The treatment meted out by Newton Heath F.C.'s Clements in 1893 received especial coverage. Derby County won the inaugural United Counties League in 1893-94 (http://www.btinternet.com/~a.drake/owls/early/ucl.htm) season but there were signs of discontent. One cause of this was Bloomer's attitude to authority and his team-mates, an attitude founded upon a justified sense of self-worth. No one could deny his place in the Derby side or, for that matter, the England side (for instance, there was quite an outcry when he was dropped in favour of an amateur XI for the Auld Enemy clash in 1896 following an international trial game), but there was a down side.
He was at times outspoken, being suspended by the Football Association following a match at Goodison Park in 1904 despite presenting his defence in the form of 4 foolscap pages and did not feel the need to involve himself with the nascent Players' Union (as a result of his notable absence from the movement, the first England v Scotland Players' Union game on April 28 1898 was badly attended).
Bloomer was a focused, sometimes frustrated, individualist whose playing philosophy was succinct "I try to get there first". At times his recalcitrance was felt keenly at the club. He was fined and suspended several times for insobriety and neglect of training. (pp. 80-81 European Heroes' (ed. Holt, et al.) London, 1996). Commentators remarked that his character note appeared to be of an indolent but his worth to the team (as is the gold standard in all matches) was his unerring ability at putting the ball. When he was a young boy Don Davies, the Guardian's 'Old International' (who perished in the Munich Air Disaster in 1958 saw Bloomer play and remarked on his pale complexion and the fact that toward the end of the match, Bloomer snapped at a chance and turned immediately having scored the winner. Other than that his impact had appeared negligible throughout the game. Later, fellow team-mate and writer, Ivan Sharpe would remark: "If after a breakdown in attack, one studied the crowd, the sky, or any other useful object out of line of Bloomer's glare - as was the rule in the Derby ranks of that day - he would stand stock still, in the centre of the pitch, strike an attitude by placing his hands on his hips, and fix the offender with a piercing eye. If the glare, as was the rule etc, was still ignored, he would toss up his head, as if beseeching the recording Angel to make a note of this most awful blunder, then stamp back to his position in a manner intended publicly to demonstrate his disapproval".
Whether this debatable behaviour was a partial cause of Derby's continual failure to convert their collective talents into trophies (or whether it was some old Gypsy curse, visited upon the club after supposedly moving on travellers from the Baseball Ground) is arguable, but what is indisputable is that Derby County remained a nearly club in the decade after 1895. The club were ill-starred in the Cup. John Goodall's brother went AWOL before the 1899 Final in order to sell his complimentary tickets, upsetting team morale somewhat and in the 1903 Final (a match in which Bloomer was absent) Jack Fryer, the County goalkeeper, was seriously injured in the first half. Twice a FA Cup runner-up in 1898 and 1899 (the first of which to Nottingham Forest, came after County had defeated them 5-0 in a League game a week shy of the Final (Bloomer scoring a hat-trick)), Bloomer went onto play in a further four semi-finals, but he never won either a First Division Championship or a FA Cup winners' medal.
It is possibly on account of his enduring frustration at not collecting silverware that Middlesbrough were able to sensationally prize Bloomer from Derby in a transfer deal worth £750 (a make-weight was included in the transaction) in March 1906 when he joined Alf Common, (the first £1,000 footballer) at Ayresome Park. It is not an unrelated fact that Derby County were relegated in 1907 but for Middlesbrough his transfer represented a considerable coup. In 1906 Andy Atkins men survived relegation on goal average (they finished level on points with relegated Nottingham Forest F.C.). The following year, when Bloomer topped scored for the club (19 in League and Cup), they were 9 points safe. In 1907-08 season 'Boro finished just 2 points shy of 2nd placed Aston Villa F.C.. Bloomer again top-scoring with 14.
Not that it was all plain sailing. A January 1907 F.A. Cup defeat at Brentford F.C. was a precursor to an embarrassing moment outside Griffin Park when 'Boro's fully loaded charabanc lost a wheel. In 1909 Bloomer developed pneumonia and was listed as 'critical' but made a full recovery and it appeared in light of his final England appearance in 1907 that ill-health would trigger a decline. However, Bloomer rejoined Derby County in 1910 (by which stage they were playing in League Division Two) and the fortunes occasioned by his return became self-evident. Not only did he score 2 goals in a triumphal home coming against Lincoln City F.C. but Derby County won the Division Two Championship the following season and this remained Bloomer's only club silverware. His form and presence was such that, in 1914, he missed out on an unlikely international recall versus Ireland by a single vote. His last League goal was against Sheffield United F.C. on September 6, 1913 and his last match was against Burnley F.C. on 31 January 1914.
In total, Bloomer scored 352 League goals in 598 games during his playing career, and was Derby's leading scorer for 14 seasons, scoring 291 goals in 473 appearances for the club. He is still the record career goalscorer for the Rams. He is currently the second highest goalscorer of all-time in England's top division and lies in fourth place in the rankings for goals in all English league divisions. Bloomer was the First Division's top-scorer 5 times, in 1896 (joint with another player), 1897, 1899, 1901 and 1904. In 1896-7 he scored 31 goals in 33 League and F.A. Cup games hitting 5 hat-tricks. He scored 6 goals for the Rams against Sheffield Wednesday F.C. on January 2, 1899 (still the highest single game tally in County's history) and, in the period from 14 November 1896 to the 5 April 1897, scored 21 goals in 20 games. In total he scored 17 hat-tricks in the League for Derby and 1 for Middlesbrough (4 against Woolwich Arsenal on January 5, 1907). In the F.A. Cup competition proper Bloomer scored 41 goals (38 for Derby County), and scored 1 Test match goal in the 1 Test match in which he played in 1895. http://www.derby.org/jeff/derby/play/bloomer.html
He won 23 England caps over the course of his career, the first being on March 9, 1895, when he scored twice in a 9-0 win against Ireland at the Baseball Ground, in Derby. On March 16, 1896 Bloomer was credited with scoring 5 goals for England against Wales (recorded by renown journalist J.A.H. Catton (Old International)) (which is still a national record), and on March 18, 1901 he scored 4 goals against the same opposition. Hence Bloomer became the first player to score two hat-tricks for England, was also the first to score at least 4 goals in a game twice. That record has never been surpassed.
In the first 10 matches of his international career he scored 19 times. Bloomer scored 28 goals in all England games, still leaving him as one of the 10 highest scorers for his country; his goals:game ratio (1:1.2) betters that of Jimmy Greaves, Gary Lineker or Bobby Charlton. His peace-time record of 8 goals against Scotland's national football team is still a national record. He was a member of the England national team that drew with Scotland on the occasion of the Ibrox disaster, April 5, 1902. In 1905 he was the first international to be presented with an FA authorised portrait to mark the occasion of him breaking the international appearance and goalscoring record. His last goal for 'King and Country' at St. James' Park against Scotland, in 1907 (where he picked up an Alex Raisbeck clearance and drilled it into the net from 35 yards) figured highly in the recollections of past internationals in the Association Football (Caxton, 1960) and was the probably the best of the lot.
Yet the wonder of his feats is to be found in the way in which the game was played during his career. Two instances illustrate this, first the Law relating to offside. When Bloomer was playing, a player was offside if he was closer to the opposition goal-line than the third last defender. This was only changed to two defenders in 1925. It was irrelevant what half of the field the player receiving the ball was in when the offside decision was made, a situation that only changed in 1907 when offside was limited to the opponent's half of the field. In December 1910 the FA Council issued an edict that the awarding of offside must not be conferred simply because a player was in an offside position. Second, the Law relating to goalkeepers. Between 1891 and 1905 goalkeepers could move up to six yards from their goal-line when a penalty kick was being taken and until 1913 they were able to handle the ball anywhere in their own half of the field.
Little wonder that it was not until the offside Law had been altered in favour of attacking play that any inroads were made into Bloomer's League total. Indeed of the 7 footballers who have gone on to score 350 League goals in England and Scotland, Bloomer is the only one whose career finished before the change in the offside law came about. There can be no reasonable comparison made with his contemporaries in terms of goalscoring - the likes of Harold Fleming at Swindon Town F.C. and Harry 'Hurricane' Hampton at Aston Villa simply did not score with his frequency for such a long period - after all, Bloomer's League career lasted over 21 years.
In 1936 William 'Dixie' Dean overtook Bloomer's League record, a week before which Bloomer had visited Goodison Park to see the record fall only to be sent away, disappointed, but with a bottle of Scotch from an affectionate Dean and the historic meeting pictured in the Liverpool Echo. Bloomer's international record took even longer to be overhauled, a surprising fact considering the increase in international fixtures that occurred shortly after his retirement from the game. Nat Lofthouse eventually recording his 29th goal for England in 1956 against Finland.
Such was Bloomer's fame that a one time visitor to Derby was the anglophile Vittorio Pozzo, later the Italian national coach during the period in which the Italians became World (1934 and 1938) and Olympic champions (1936). Pozzo, ostensibly, was in Derby in 1910 to teach language but his interest in English football was immense and sought out both Charlie Roberts, Manchester United's half-back and Bloomer for advice on the game during his stay. This may have inspired Bloomer to pursue a more international outlook. It is certainly the case that when his playing career ended in 1914, he went to coach in Germany, provisionally to coach the Britannia club of Berlin, but was interned in a civilian detention camp in Lager Ruhleben bei Spandau, 10 km west of Berlin in Eastern Germany for the duration of World War I. There were other footballers interned there (Fred Pentland, Sam Wolstenholme and John Cameron, a Scotland international and goalscorer of the goal that won Tottenham Hotspur F.C. the 1901 FA Cup) and they set up a League competition between teams of inmates, Bloomer's evidently winning of them. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/11nov2005.pdf. Immediately after the War Bloomer coached in Rotterdam and while in Amsterdam, Bloomer wrote a letter to Francis Middleton, a club colleague which stated:
"My dear Frank, It is with the greatest of pleasure I have in writing you a few lines and I hope and trust that they will find you and wife and family in good health. Well old sport, I have been in some queer places since I left good old England, and one place I was at I shall live the longest day I live. But I will tell you about it some day. I left Ruhleben in March and, after being at the Hague for a few weeks, I am here in Amsterdam. I arrived on May 1 and I am very glad to tell you, I have got a good situation coaching and training a team and I'm doing all right. "I have some good players, but they want tuning up a bit and I think I can do that for them- what do you say, eh? "But I have one drawback, there is none of them what can speak English. But we get by fairly well together so far. They are a very nice lot of young men. Most of my directors can speak English very well, so this is a great help to me. "Well Frank, when I arrived from that sh*t-hole and got amongst a crowd of people and traffic I was a bit nervous at first. But now I am quite used to it, for after having all that time penned up, you can only imagine my feelings for what we went through. Only ourselves know. I had three and a half years of it and still there are some there. They have my deepest sympathy. I hope they all will soon be free. "I am comfortable here now but I am anxious to get home, for since I have been a prisoner, I have lost one of my dear girls, the second one of the girls, she was 17. You know what a blow that would be to me. She died in April 1917 but I am trying to bear up as best I can. They tried to break my spirit somewhere else for three and a half years--but they could not. I only wish I had the chance to break some of theirs. I would do it gladly." (http://www.derby.org/jeff/derby/play/bloomer.html)
After World War I, he played for and then coached Derby reserves. After that, he went to coach abroad, again, in northern Spain, and, later, in Canada but came back to become a general assistant at Derby during the managerial era of George Joeby and alongside Harry Storer (a later important, influence of Brian Clough and Peter Taylor), and maintained a healthy interest in the game, attending the famous Austrian international at Stamford Bridge in 1936 (England beat the fabled Wunderteam 4-3) and turning his hand to writing about the game for local newspapers in Derby. It was while as a member of the groundstaff at the Baseball Ground in the mid 1930s that one of the famous stories of Bloomer was recorded by Storer. "A group of players were training and a ball was miss-hit and the call of 'duck' went out. I did but Bloomer spotting the falling ball, and perfectly balanced volleyed it first time straight back into the goal. We were 40 yards from goal."
He died three weeks after returning home from a cruise in April 1938. His grave can been seen in Nottingham Road Cemetery, Derby.
He is remembered today in Derby County's anthem, in the opening line "Steve Bloomer's watching, helping the fight, guiding our heroes in the black and the white".
Career Statistics
{|class=prettytable !Season !Division (Derby County unless stated) !League Apps !League Goals !FA Cup Apps !FA Cup Goals !Other Apps !Other Goals !Total Apps !Total Goals |- | 1892–93 | First | 28 | 11 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 28 | 11 |- |- | 1893–94 | First | 25 | 18 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 27 | 18 |- |- | 1894–95 | First | 29 | 9 | 1 | 0 | 3* | 4* | 33 | 13 |- |- | 1895–96 | First | 25 | 22 | 5 | 5 | 2* | 6* | 32 | 33 |- |- | 1896–97 | First | 29 | 24 | 4 | 7 | 3* | 4* | 36 | 35 |- |- | 1897–98 | First | 23 | 15 | 3 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 27 | 22 |- |- | 1898–99 | First | 28 | 24 | 5 | 6 | 4* | 5* | 37 | 35 |- |- | 1899–1900 | First | 28 | 19 | 2 | 0 | 2* | 3* | 32 | 22 |- |- | 1900–01 | First | 27 | 24 | 1 | 0 | 3** | 6** | 31 | 30 |- |- | 1901–02 | First | 28 | 15 | 7 | 3 | 4* | 2* | 39 | 20 |- |- | 1902–03 | First | 24 | 12 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 26 | 13 |- |- | 1903–04 | First | 29 | 20 | 6 | 5 | 2* | 2* | 37 | 27 |- |- | 1904–05 | First | 29 | 13 | 1 | 0 | 4* | 2* | 34 | 15 |- |- | 1905–06 | First (Middlesbrough) | 23 (9) | 12 (6) | 3 (0) | 0 (0) | 0 (0) | 0 (0) | 35 | 18 |- |- | 1906–07 | First Middlesbrough | 34 | 17 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 38 | 20 |- |- | 1907–08 | First Middlesbrough | 34 | 14 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 35 | 14 |- |- | 1908–09 | First Middlesbrough | 28 | 16 | 0 | 0 | ? | ? | 28 | 16 |- |- | 1909–10 | First Middlesbrough | 20 | 8 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 22 | 9 |- |- | 1910–11 | Second | 28 | 20 | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 32 | 24 |- |- | 1911–12 | Second | 36 | 18 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 38 | 19 |- |- | 1912–13 | First | 29 | 13 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 14 |- |- | 1913–14 | First | 5 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 2 |- |- | Total | Derby County F.C. | 473 | 291 | 50 | 38 | 28 | 36 | 551 | 365 |- |- | Total | Middlesbrough F.C. | 125 | 61 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 132 | 65 |- |- | Total | First Division | 534 | 314 | 49 | 36 | 30 | 37 | 614 | 387 |- |- | Total | Second Division | 64 | 38 | 6 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 70 | 43 |- |- | Total | | 598 | 352 | 55 | 41 | 30 | 37 | 684 | 430
(Bloomer scored 16 penalties in League matches for Derby County F.C.) (* Includes Football League representative matches: http://www.londonhearts.com/SFL/tea/englishfootballleague.html; **includes both FL representative matches and the English professionals v Germany 'international' played in 1901 (Bloomer scored 2 goals) italics indicate seasons in which Bloomer was the highest goalscorer in the League. bold indicates top scorer at club). Statistics supplied by the Association of Football Statisticians and IFFHS.
Steve Bloomer is still famous at the club to this day, the opening game theme tune rings to the sound of his name. To this day, Derby's club anthem is '[Steve Bloomer's Watching]' and is played before every home game.
Outside football
Bloomer was also a very successful baseball player, winning the English Baseball Cup 3 times with Derby in the 1890s.As well as being a top-class footballer and baseball player, Bloomer was a talented cricketer and scored a number of centuries in amateur games.
Outside sport, Bloomer was also a top celebrity of the time and was used to sell products such as 'Bloomer's Lucky Strikers' football boots and 'Phosferine Tonic,' which was also endorsed by C. B. Fry.
When the Queen Mary made its maiden voyage, Bloomer's image was used in a mural in one of the public rooms, 22 years after he had retired from playing.
Steve Bloomer married Sarah in 1896 and they had 4 daughters; two of whom died before they reached the age of 18, one died in 1917 while he was still in Germany, one married Alf Quantrill, the Indian-born Derby County F.C. outside-left and England international football (capped twice in 1920, scoring 1 goal in the 5-4 defeat of Scotland) on June 16, 1921; Bloomer lived with another of his daughters, Doris Richards, toward the end of his life, after the death of his wife in 1936. Mrs Richards' son, Steve Richards, is a Political columnist for The Independent newspaper in London.
Bloomer's nephew, Ted Measures, signed for Arsenal F.C. in 1932.
Quotes
- On how he was so effective: "I try to get there first."
External link
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