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Ambrose Langley
Ambrose Langley
Born: 10 March 1870 (Horncastle, Lincolnshire)
Died: 29 January 1937 (Sheffield, South Yorkshire)
Introduction
Introduction
If you were asked to sit back and imagine the archetypal defender from the late 1800’s you would probably have visions of a 6ft+ uncompromising brute of a human. A fearless block of lean muscle who would dish out more than he would ever receive from his opponents. A player who most likely had a big personality on the pitch as well as off it. Loved by their own supporters but hated by everyone else!
Sound about right?
Well, you have just been imagining our hero, Ambrose Langley, the Sheffield Wednesday captain who epitomised the tough no-nonsense defenders of the late victorian era.
However, to reach the pinnacle of club football, even when professional football was in it’s infancy, a defender such as Langley had to be much more than the caricature described above.
Langley's strength was also combined with a great understanding of the game which meant that more often than not he was in the right place at the right time. Langley is the second most decorated player in Sheffield Wednesday’s history (behind Tommy Crawshaw).
He won two first division Football League titles (1902-03 & 1903-04), a second division title (1899-1900) and one FA Cup winners medal (1896). He was a Northern League winner with Middlesborough Ironopolis and a successful manager at Hull City and Huddersfield. With the latter he guided them to promotion to the first division for the first time in the club’s history and in the following season took the Terriers to the FA Cup Final where they eventually lost to Aston Villa.
Langley was selected for the English League International team in 1898 and it was often speculated by contemporary newspapers that Langley would have played for England if it was not for his overly physical play which was unpopular with the selection committee. At the time the committee was mostly made up of ‘old guard’ amateurs who aspired to recapture a purer version of the game that they feared was being lost to the working class professional game that had become the dominant force since the creation of the Football League in 1888.
Langley's Achievements
FA Cup Winner 1896
Twice Football League Winner 1902-02 & 1903-04
English Football League International 1898
Sheffield Wednesday Captain 1899-1903
The first true captain of Hillsborough
Captained Wednesday to the Second Division title in his first year of captaincy and became the first captain to guide the Owls to become Champions of England.
Early life in Horncastle
Early life in Horncastle
When Ambrose Langley was born, in 1870, football as we know it was in it’s infancy. Various playing codes existed and the game was very much enjoyed by the wealthy upper classes who had the time and finances available to enjoy various leisure activities such as partaking in a variety of sporting activities at their local sports members club. It was the year that the notion of international football was first experimented with, when the first of five unofficial England vs Scotland matches took place on the outfield of a London cricket ground. A spectacle witnessed by around 500 spectators. The first official international would take place north of the border just two years later.
Ambrose Langley's birth place
The Coach and Horses (Harpar's Bar), Horncastle.
This was certainly not a sport that a young working class Lincolnshire boy would dream about playing and making a career from, but by the time Ambrose Langley had reached the age of 15 football had been embraced by the northern working classes, football grounds had been enclosed, entrance fees were being charged and professionalism had been legalised!
This opened up the opportunity for players such as Langley to shift their career aspirations away from the factories, forgeries, farmlands and pits and onto the football fields, at least in the short term anyway.
By the age of 15 Ambrose was already the size of a fully grown man and was already deemed strong enough and good enough to play for Horncastle Town, the top senior team in the town. Despite a challenging childhood where he had lost his father when he was 3 and then his mother at the age of ten, Ambrose had been raised well by his his aunt and uncle. However neither were too keen on him pursuing a career in football, believing it to be a fad that would go away as quickly as it came and thought it more important to have the security of a ‘proper job’.
The tension between Ambrose and his uncle grew further when, after his uncle had refused to buy his nephew some football boots, Ambrose had gone and put studs in a pair of boots that his uncle, a cobbler, had just hand made for him. Ambrose wore them for Lincolnshire Challenge Cup match against Barton which resulted in the boots being well and truly ruined.
It was in his second season (1887) Horncastle Town surprised the nation when they reached the 5th Round of the FA Cup. Despite the help of a couple of byes this was still considered a remarkable achievement for team from a town that had a population of around 4500 people.
Work boots similar to those Langley destroyed playing football.
Archie Hunter of Aston Villa
A growing reputation across Lincolnshire
The cup draw presented them with an away tie against Aston Villa, the greatest club of the Victorian era and a 16 year old Langley the task of marking Archie Hunter, one of the finest forwards in England. It would be the end of the road for Horncastle, but Langley and the rest of the team put in a spirited performance in a 5-0 loss.
A few months later the side that had got to within one match of an FA Cup quarter-final were struggling to get enough players to field a team and an emergency SOS was sent out to Gainsborough to draft in players for a match against Notts Mellors. This would lead to Langley first encountering fellow Lincolnshire footballer Fred Spiksley, a player who would have a dramatic impact on Langley’s future achievements in the game. Despite being the same age Spiksley still had the physique of a school boy and Langley was distinctly unimpressed by his first impressions of what Gainsborough had sent over that day.
Ambrose soon became the football hero of Horncastle. Aged 17 he formed an under 18’s side to compete in a county wide tournament, leading his Horncastle Gridirons to the final, only to fall at the final hurdle. His boss, a local photographer called Mr Charlton, made the decision to sack Langley, not because Ambrose did anything wrong but to help him make his mind up that he should become a professional footballer. It also put an end to the endless calls Mr Charlton received on a Saturday from local residents begging him to release Ambrose early so he could play in the match that day. Ambrose was soon made Horncastle’s captain but with his reputation as a no nonsense brick wall of a defender growing it was inevitable that he would move on to play for bigger clubs.
Turning Professional
He would play local for two more years, first for Boston Town but mostly for Grimsby Town, who with Langley as full-back boasted the record for the least amount of goals conceded in the Football Alliance. This gained the attention of Middlesborough Ironopolis, a heavily financed club and the first professional side in Middlesborough, who won Langley’s signature by offering him 10 extra shillings than Grimsby. In his two seasons for Ironoplois Langley played over 100 games and won the Northern League in both seasons.
The Northern League was one of three leagues set up by clubs that had not made it into the Football League. Along with the Football Alliance and the Midland League, the Northern League contained several famous clubs that are still around today providing high standard competition each week for the likes of Newcastle United, Newton Heath (Manchester United), Nottingham Forest, Middlesborough FC, Sheffield United, Sheffield Wednesday and Small Heath (Birmingham City).
Middlesborough Ironopolis 1892-93 Northern League Champions.
Featuring Ambrose Langley
Paradise Ground
The home of Middlesborough Ironoplis. Capacity 14,000.
By the time Langley had completed his second season with Ironopolis the Football League had expanded and some of these teams had joined the highly successful competition first envisaged by Aston Villa’s William McGregor and it was Villa that were favourites to sign Langley for the start of the 1893-94 season.
After his performance as a 16 year old against them in the FA Cup in 1887 it would have been a fairy tail story for Langley to sign for the West Midland giants. But it was never to be!
An example of how tough Ambrose Langley was as a player came during his days at Grimsby Town in a match against Sheffield Wednesday which was reported in the Athletic news...
Signing for The Wednesday
The Wednesday 1895
Langley pictured back row far left
Such was Langley’s reputation by 1893 that he was being scouted by several Football League teams and initially ended up signing for Everton. However, just a few weeks after signing on the dotted line, Everton cancelled the contract and allowed gave him a free transfer out. Professional football was in it’s infancy and despite being well administered by the likes of William McGregor and Charles Alcock a lot of change was happening and particularly at club level was a lot of ‘suck it and see’ decision-making. In the 1890’s almost all playing contracts were a year long, committing club and player to one another for the following season.
Clubs would not benefit from being able to sell players as they would move on freely, but also they didn’t have the same level of responsibility for looking after the players and should a player sustain a long term injury then they would only have to pay them up to April when the season ended.
From about January onwards clubs would start looking at who they may want to sign for the following season and try and pin these players down with a contract that would come into force as soon as the season ended, thus allowing players to play out the remainder of their contracts with their current club. Often, with smaller clubs outside of the Football League contracts were not worth the paper they were written on, which did lead to a lot of mercenary players and also a great deal of player poaching.
Langley signed for Everton for the 1893-94 season whilst seeing out the season at Ironopolis, but unbeknown to him, Everton’s scouts continued to monitor him and reported back that he was too slow for first class football. At the heart of this was a recent knee injury that was hindering his performances and to be fair to Everton it was an injury that Langley would struggle with for the rest of his career.
“The injury that I sustained, whilst causing considerable discomfort, was not so serious that it would prevent me from playing, and generally I was able to play up alright through a whole game.”
Wednesday’s Gamble
When Aston Villa came in for Langley he refused their request of a medical assessment, probably knowing that he would fail and this left the door open for Sheffield Wednesday to capture a player who would become their future club captain.
News soon spread that Wednesday had signed a ‘crock’ and even Wednesday would have admitted that at the time they had taken a calculated risk. It would only be Wednesday’s second season in the Football League and despite being in the First Division they were significantly behind Founding Member clubs such as Villa and Everton, and therefore they were much more likely to take a gamble on Ambrose at that time.
The gamble would see Langley united with fellow Lincolnshire footballer Fred Spiksley, who, 6 years on from their first encounter at Horncastle, had just become the most famous player in England having the first ever hat-trick against Scotland in April 1893.
The Olive Grove Ground (1887-1899)
Langley’s new footballing home for the next six seasons would be the Olive Grove Ground in Sheffield. Located within view of the Bramall Lane ground Olive Grove had become The Wednesday's permanent home in 1887, it was a compact atmospheric ground that was loved by both the supporters and players. Despite being squeezed in between Olive Grove Road and the railway tracks Olive Grove could accommodate crowds of well over 20,000 for the bigger matches and the atmosphere was well known to be an electric one for those big occasions. The ground certainly helped Wednesday establish themselves as a competitive side in League and Cup. Opposing players certainly did not enjoy playing at Olive Grove particularly in the Cup where Wednesday would win 19 of the 23 cup ties played there with only one of their 3 defeats occuring after Ambrose joined the club. Olive Grove certainly helped Wednesday become one of the best Cup sides in the country and although they were less competetive in the League they were able to hold their own in the first division.
“Olive Grove always appealed to me and I can honestly say that it was the most comfortable little ground that I ever played upon. It was a ground that seemed to foster friendships and encourage that feeling amongst the supporters that they were an important part of the Wednesday team.”
Ambrose Langley, The Sports Special 1925.
Langley and the FA CUP
Prior to Langley joining Wednesday the club had reached the FA Cup quarter final two seasons in a row and it was this tournament that would become the main focus during Langley’s early period with club. Wednesday were unable to find the week-on-week consistency that was being achieved by the likes of Aston Villa and Sunderland, but knew that on their day they were a match for anyone. It would be cup favourites Villa who would come to Olive Grove to play Wednesday in Langley’s first season with Wednesday in an FA Cup quarter-final that would long be considered the greatest match to be played on the ground. Those who were present that day would long tell the tale of how, in the dying moments of the 90 minutes, Wednesday managed to equalise before grabbing an extra-time winner to win the tie by 3 goals to 2.
It was Fred Spiksley, who made the different once again, dribbling through the entire Villa back-line to score the late equaliser and then repeating his dribble in extra-time before squaring for Woolhouse to score in the unguarded net.
When Wednesday took the lead Bob Chatt, Langley’s former team mate at Ironopolis, approached Ambrose and told him that there was still time and that the game was far from over. Langley famously responded by saying ‘whilst there may be enough time for you, there aren’t enough balls!”
Langley spent the rest of the match demonstrating his point by repeatedly booting the ball over the stand and railway line into the nearby allotments, thus winding the clock down, much to the delight of the home supporters.
The Olive Grove Ground with Sheffield Wednesday painted across the roof of the main stand. In the foreground is the allotment where Langley famously booted the ball to run the clock down in the 1894 FA Cup seimi-final against Aston Villa.
Wednesday went on to lose in the semi-final that year after two controversial off-side decisions denied them two goals against Bolton Wanderers. The following season they again fell at the same stage, this time against West Bromwich Albion and it was Langley who was at the centre of another contentious refereeing decision that cost his team the game.
“Most of the old Wednesday supporters will remember that Bassett was a great thorn in my side and always seemed to come out on top. In this particular instance, however he didn’t, and a penalty kick was given against me; I say for no infringement whatever. In those days the penalty line went right across the ground. The ball was close to the corner flag, when Bassett and I turned sharply to go for it. Bassett slipped, and in my eagerness to reach the ball I accidentally trod on his foot. The penalty-kick was awarded. As soon as the decision had been given Bassett was so delighted that he jumped about and danced like a marionette. His recovery was so complete and instantaneous that it would have been difficult for him to account for his previous agony.”
Ambrose Langley
The Romance of The Wednesday by Richard A. Sparling, 1926.
The 1894 FA Cup semi-final vs Bolton Wanderers
For the third year in a row The Wednesday Football Club reached the FA Cup semi-final. Langley had only played in one of the cup ties up to that point, a 2-1 victory over a fine Sunderland side. He was selected to play in the semi-final replay at Nottingham Forest’s Town Ground against Bolton Wanderers. Langley had come under considerable fire from the Wednesday directors at this time as they considered his rough play to have cost the side a number of points in the league that season and with event’s of the previous year Langley would have been nervous going into such a high profile match.
His concerns would have heightened further just before kick-off when Tommy Crawshaw went up to him and said: “You can look out today, old lad, as Johnny Somerville has told me that they have got a centre-forward who is going to put ‘that big Langley’ fellow through it.”
Langley was never going to be intimidated by such talk and promptly went to battle with Bolton's Tommy Vail with the outcome being that whilst Langley was looking forward to appearing in an FA Cup Final, Vail was back in Bolton’s reserves the following week and would only make one more senior appearance for the club!
However, things never seemed to be straight forward for Ambrose and on the eve of the 1896 FA Cup Final he was a very nervous man. News had been leaked within the Wednesday camp that if the pitch was soft and heavy that he would lose his place due to his knee problems. Overnight rain had been forecast and neither Langley or his room mate Fred Spiksley, who was desperate for his fellow Lincolnshire man to play, could sleep.
“I shall never forget that Friday night’s experience at the Queen’s Hotel. Spiklsey was my sleeping partner, and he, like me, did not have more than two hours sleep the whole of the night. Coming from the same county as myself, Spiklsey was anxious that I should play. First he would get out of bed and look out of the window to see what the weather was like. Then, after he had got back into bed it would not be long before he would nudge me and say: ‘You go and have a look’. And so it went on through the night. You may think it ridiculous conduct, but recollect, a Cup medal was at stake. The ambition of all players is to get an English Cup winners’ medal - the value is beyond price.”
Ambrose Langley
The Romance of The Wednesday by Richard A. Sparling, 1926.
The 1896 FA Cup Final
The rain never came and the following day 48,836 spectators (a new World record for a club football match) gathered to watch both Lincolnshire men play magnifcently as Wednesday became the first Yorkshire side to win the English Cup, beating Wolverhampton Wanderers by two goals to one. It was Langley's room mate that scored both of Wednesday's goals, the first was scored inside the first 30 seconds and remains one of the fastest ever cup final goals. Whilst his second was often refered to as one of the most spectacular strikes in an FA Cup Final during the pre-WW1 era.
Although Spiksley's performance was to grab the headlines the result had just as much to do with the Wednesday backs as it did their star player. Massey, Langley, Brandon and Crawshaw all performed heroically that day, with the Sheffield defence having to overcome sustained Wolves pressure for the last 20 minutes of the game. To a man they held firm, resulting in huge celebrations back in the steel city as the result was telegraphed back to a gathered crowd inside Olive Grove.
Live action photographs of the 1896 FA Cup Final.
It would be some time before Wednesday were to go on another great FA Cup run but that didn't mean that there was any less drama and most of it would centre around Ambrose Langley.
In 1898 Wednesday contested a fiercely fought cup tie against Sunderland at Roker Park. Albert Key had given Wednesday a slim 1-0 advantage and Sunderland just couldn't break through the Wednesday defence. The crowd became increasingly antagonlised by the robustness of Langley's play, so much so that one supported through his breakfast can at Langley, only to hit a policeman on the head.
By the end of the match the Sunderland fans were threatening to spill onto the pitch and Langley feared that if they did he was going to be on the receiving end of some violent retribution. A view that was shared by the owners of Sunderland Football Club who decided to book Langley a private cab that they smuggled him into out a back entrance.
1896 FA Cup finalist photograph given away by Sports newspaper.
The rest of the Wednesday team had to wait for some considerable time for an angry mob to disappear from outside the ground before they could leave. When the team finaly made it back to their hotel Langley was sat waiting for them next to a roaring fire, sipping tea and consuming buttered muffins.
To be continued...
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