Stoke sprang surprise as 'dead striker' named in starting XI and how unsung hero shaped game
There have been plenty of surprise team selections at Stoke City over the last 150-odd years, from Jonathan Woodgate at right-back to the unknown David Xausa being picked up front at Bury.
But none has ever and will ever compare to Teddy Johnson lining up as captain against Southport in September 1884. The shock was that Johnson had been reported as dead a few weeks previously.
The Athletic News had to file a report saying: “Nothing gives me greater pleasure than to contradict the remarks I made in last week’s issue concerning the supposed demise of Teddy Johnson, who I am glad to say is ‘not dead yet’ but is rapidly recovering from the effects of the serious accident he sustained.”
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The reporter added years later: “(I had received) an indignant Teddy, who didn’t seem at all grateful for the lovely obituary notice I had written.”
This is one of the brilliant almost throwaway anecdotes that are packed into Penny Stanley’s new biography of Harry Lockett, undoubtedly one of the most important people in the club’s history with an incredible story of his own.
He was there pretty much from the start of it all, although in Stoke’s case, when the exact start really was has never been particularly clear. There might have been a big clue in 1885, dusted off by Stanley here, when Stoke published what was presented as their ‘20th annual report’… except that the document from 12 months previously was presented as ‘the 16th annual report’.
There’s a Sentinel almanac in 1889 too that recorded the date of the club’s formation as October 6, 1865. “It is a very specific date and there would be a good reason for believing it to be accurate,” writes Stanley. “Unfortunately, there is no trace remaining of that reason.”
Whether it was 1863, 1865 or 1868, Lockett and Stoke were definitely there in 1888 when the Football League was launched.
Lockett, a printer in his day job as well as Stoke’s secretary-manager, became the league’s first secretary. That meant that the league’s first address was his home address – 27 Harley Street, Hanley – and it was Lockett who opened the league’s first bank account.
If he couldn’t take credit for the competition, he had the idea of a league table, awarding two points for a win and one for a draw. That’s quite a major lightbulb moment in the scheme of things but this was also the same man who, at the league’s first annual meeting, thought it was a coincidence that the total number of goals scored by all clubs equalled the total number of goals conceded.
“It had to be explained to him,” writes Stanley, “that the total number of matches won throughout the league in a season was also the same as the number lost.”
He definitely had a sense of humour. When Preston North End’s Invincibles were awarded the trophy as first league champions at that end of season presentation, Lockett “created some amusement by pulling out a wooden spoon he had bought at Stoke market” to give to his own club, who had finished bottom. Stoke received it the following year too when they finished dead last again.
So Lockett was a flawed hero. He doesn’t have the best win ratio in charge of Stoke and, by all the accounts in here, he wasn’t a very good referee either even if he was very keen. He got it in the neck a few times, including when – at a time when there was still no nets – he missed a couple of goals in a match between Accrington and Everton, claiming the first had gone the wrong side of the post and the second had gone over the bar.
But it's a hell of a CV and he's a hero definitely when it came to Stoke. He was the driving force to save the club in 1908, long after he had stepped back from day-to-day activities at the Victoria Ground, when it was going to the wall and being withdrawn from the league. This involved a film-style challenge set by the board for Lockett to find “12 fit and proper local men” to pay off all liabilities inside 24 hours then “they could take over everything”.
It reads like a comedy caper as Lockett set off around the Potteries. On a similar theme – it can’t be a spoiler at this point that he was successful and Stoke survived – he managed to get Charlie Chaplin to the Victoria Ground later in the same year for a testimonial match against Fred Karno’s Circus.
Well, we did say it was packed with anecdotes. This is a must read for anyone with an interest in Stoke City's history and the early years of a sport which has taken over the world. It wouldn't have been possible without men like Lockett and he's one of Stoke's own, deserving to be remembered.
Harry Lockett, Football’s Unassuming, Unknown and Unsung Founding Father, by Penny Stanley, is out now, published by Pitch Publishing.
