Who is your favourite City Player before your time?

Cityfan said:
Between Doherty for apparently being so stylish, Trautmann for playing with a broken neck and Swift for being so good. Never saw any of them though.
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I saw Trautmann over much of his City career. Great goalkeeper. I would have loved to have seen Frank Swift and been able to compare them and Joe Hart. But my number one that I never saw play would have to be Peter Doherty.
 
Uwe Already said:
Many years ago I heard of a "Mr Capper" (first name lost in history) who holds the city record for goals to games ratio as 5 goals/game. Shame he only played the one game!

EDIT: normally Google is your friend, but I can't find a thing on this - so I'll qualify it with: it was a quiz question on a city screen saver I had quite a few years ago on a win98 machine - it came from mcfc.co.uk so I have to assume its true... (or my memory is shite)
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Your memory is correct and here's my info on 'Mr Capper'.

He played one game for City and scored 5 - a 8-0 win over Blackburn Rovers on 30/12/1916. It was a WW1 Lancashire Section game (FL suspended).

The match was 2-0 at half time.

Now Capper... My research shows he was Alfred Capper. He was born in Northwich in 1891 (don't have specific date yet- some people say it was July but I think it was earlier). He played for Northwich, Manchester Utd (1 League game), Witton Albion (just before the war and then presumably guested for City in the 1 game), and then after the war his career really kicked off.

He played for Sheff Wed (59 League games but only 4 goals) between 1914-20 and then Brentford (96 league game & 5 goals).

He died on the 31/10/55. I have a book with his photo in somewhere (Sheff Wed book).


My own personal hero from the Club's early years would probably be Billy Gillespie. I loved his style of play (he used a 'barging' technique to push goalie and ball into the net) and his life style. He was the Club's first proper cult hero - idolised by fans in a different way to truly brilliant stars like Meredith. I've written lots on him over the years.

I think Gillespie set the tone for all cult heroes.
 
Imagine if Vincent Kompany had won the Tennis "Mixed Doubles" Gold Medal at London 2012.
Imagine if Kompany had scored a Century at Lords, a maximum 147 at Snooker, and was also a scratch golfer. Imagine if he had fought in Afganistan and was also Captain of the Belgian Davis Cup team.

Can't believe nobody's mentioned Max Woosman
 
Peter Doherty,funny enough I was talkin to an auld boy to-day that remembered watchin him play for Norn Iron, said he was pure class
 
MrsBanks said:
Billy Spurdle. Just love his name. Sounds like a proper footballer.
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Sadly, no longer with us....


<a class="postlink" href="http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/sport/football/manchester_city/s/1424154_manchester-city-cup-final-ace-bill-spurdle-dies-aged-85" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://menmedia.co.uk/manchesterevening ... es-aged-85</a>
 
Brook of course; while I had a Rodney Marsh football as a kid I think my uncle had an Eric Brook rolled up bunch of paper to kick around.
 
Gary James said:
Uwe Already said:
Many years ago I heard of a "Mr Capper" (first name lost in history) who holds the city record for goals to games ratio as 5 goals/game. Shame he only played the one game!

EDIT: normally Google is your friend, but I can't find a thing on this - so I'll qualify it with: it was a quiz question on a city screen saver I had quite a few years ago on a win98 machine - it came from mcfc.co.uk so I have to assume its true... (or my memory is shite)
Click to expand...

Your memory is correct and here's my info on 'Mr Capper'.

He played one game for City and scored 5 - a 8-0 win over Blackburn Rovers on 30/12/1916. It was a WW1 Lancashire Section game (FL suspended).

The match was 2-0 at half time.

Now Capper... My research shows he was Alfred Capper. He was born in Northwich in 1891 (don't have specific date yet- some people say it was July but I think it was earlier). He played for Northwich, Manchester Utd (1 League game), Witton Albion (just before the war and then presumably guested for City in the 1 game), and then after the war his career really kicked off.

He played for Sheff Wed (59 League games but only 4 goals) between 1914-20 and then Brentford (96 league game & 5 goals).

He died on the 31/10/55. I have a book with his photo in somewhere (Sheff Wed book).


My own personal hero from the Club's early years would probably be Billy Gillespie. I loved his style of play (he used a 'barging' technique to push goalie and ball into the net) and his life style. He was the Club's first proper cult hero - idolised by fans in a different way to truly brilliant stars like Meredith. I've written lots on him over the years.

I think Gillespie set the tone for all cult heroes.
Click to expand...

Ha, cap doffed, good info on Alf to bamboozle my brothers with, as for Gillespie I recall reading about him (likely in your Greatest City book) and thought we should be doing a little barging now - mind, we did have Tiatto at the time ;)
 
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