Leigh Richmond Roose
Portrait of Roose on a cigarette card.
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| Personal information | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Leigh Richmond Roose | ||
| Date of birth | 27 November 1877 | ||
| Place of birth | Holt, Wales | ||
| Date of death | 7 October 1916 (aged 38) | ||
| Place of death | Western Front, France | ||
| Height | 6 ft 1 in (1.85 m) | ||
| Playing position | Goalkeeper | ||
| Youth career | |||
| UCW Aberystwyth | |||
| Senior career* | |||
| Years | Team | Apps | (Gls) |
| 1895–1900 | Aberystwyth Town | 85 | (0) |
| 1900 | Druids | 0 | (0) |
| 1900–1901 | London Welsh | 0 | (0) |
| 1901–1904 | Stoke | 81 | (0) |
| 1904–1905 | Everton | 18 | (0) |
| 1905–1907 | Stoke | 66 | (0) |
| 1908–1910 | Sunderland | 92 | (0) |
| 1910 | Celtic | 0 | (0) |
| 1910 | Port Vale | 0 | (0) |
| 1910–1911 | Huddersfield Town | 5 | (0) |
| 1911 | Aston Villa | 10 | (0) |
| 1911–1912 | Woolwich Arsenal | 13 | (0) |
| Aberystwyth Town | (0) | ||
| Llandudno Town | (0) | ||
| Total | 370 | (0) | |
| National team | |||
| 1900–1911 | Wales | 24 | (0) |
| 1911 | Wales Amateur | 1 | (0) |
| * Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only. |
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Leigh Richmond "Dick" Roose, MM, (27 November 1877 – 7 October 1916) was a Welsh international footballer who kept goal for a number of professional clubs in the Football League between 1901 and 1912. A celebrated amateur at a time when the game was played largely by professionals, Roose was renowned as one of the best players in his position in the Edwardian period. He was also well known as a footballing eccentric, and many stories about him are still told today.
Roose was born in Holt, near Wrexham in Wales, at a time when association football was principally confined to the north of the country. Roose was raised by his father, a Presbyterian minister named Richmond Leigh Roose, following the death of his mother from cancer when he was two years old. He was educated at Holt Academy – where in the course of one violent football match, Roose's brother Edward kicked H. G. Wells, then a teacher at the school, so hard in the back that he ruptured the future novelist's kidney and left him incapacitated for several weeks. On leaving school in 1895, he went on to study at Aberystwyth University.
After graduating from Aberystwyth, Roose studied medicine for a short period at King's College London. Although accounts of Roose often refer to him as a doctor of bacteriology, he never qualified as a doctor.
Standing 6–ft 1 in and weighing over 13 stone, Roose was well qualified to play in goal, a specialised position that was, in the Edwardian era, particularly physically challenging.
He began his footballing career in 1895 with Aberystwyth Town, playing for the club on 85 occasions. His debut came in a 6–0 win over the Shropshire team Whitchurch in October 1895, and he was carried from the pitch shoulder-high following the team's 3–0 victory over Druids in the Welsh Cup final of 1900. It was during this phase of his career that Roose was seen playing by the eminent Welsh historian Thomas Richards, who would later refer to him as Yr Ercwlff synfawr hwn ("This wondrous Hercules").
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Wikipedia