Arthur Rowe (soccer player)

Arthur Rowe
Personnel
Surname	Arthur Sydney Rowe
birthday	September 1, 1906
place of birth	Tottenham , London ,  England
date of death	5th November 1993
Place of death	Norbury , London ,  England
position	Middle runner
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1929-1939	Tottenham Hotspur	182 (0)
National team
Years	selection	Games (goals)
1934	England	1 (0)
Stations as a trainer
Years	station
1945-1949	Chelmsford City
1949-1955	Tottenham Hotspur
1960–1962	Crystal Palace
1966	Crystal Palace (interim)
1 Only league games are given.

Arthur Sydney Rowe (born September 1, 1906 in Tottenham , † November 5, 1993 in Norbury ) was an English football player and coach. Rowe was active during his playing career in the Football League exclusively for Tottenham Hotspur and played for the club from 1930 to 1938 over 200 competitive games as a middle runner ; he also came to an international match for England . After the end of his career due to injury, he moved to the coaching bench and experienced his greatest success with Tottenham when he led the club with the push-and-run tactics he devised in 1951 as a promoted member directly to the club's first championship.

Player career

Rowe was born near White Hart Lane and was already an outstanding footballer when he was still in school, played for London national teams and missed an appearance in the English national school team only because of an injury. Already since 1921 the Tottenham Hotspur , the club he has supported since his childhood, belongs, he joined the club after the end of his school days in 1923 as an amateur. For further development, Rowe was given to Tottenham's training club Cheshunt in the Athenian League and Northfleet United in the Kent League . In May 1929 he received his first professional contract with Tottenham and was first used in October 1930 in the London FA Charity Cup against Chelsea .

It took another year until his league debut, only after an injury to the regular center runner Alf Messer and a poor performance by his substitute Tommy Cable Rowe came on October 10, 1931 in a 1-1 draw against Burnley FC to his first football League game. Although Messer returned to the team again for the following game, coach Percy Smith then relied permanently on Rowe, who was six years his junior and whose style of play was in complete contrast to that of his predecessor. While Messer, a tall and strong middle runner, saw his task in eliminating the opposing center forward and destroying the opposing game, Rowe contributed with constructive and precise passing play to open the game and initiate his own attacks.

In the following years Rowe was one of the fixed points in the Hotspur team, which in 1932/33 realized promotion to the First Division as second in the table and took third place in the table in the 1933/34 season. A highlight for him was his international match against France in December 1933 at home at White Hart Lane, which ended in a 4-1 win. The following season 1934/35 was a disaster for the club and marked the beginning of years of injury problems for Rowe. Tottenham had surprised the league with a well-rehearsed team and a quick combination game in 1933/34, but numerous injuries-related failures prevented any well-rehearsed. Rowe also fell out after a 3-2 win against Stoke in early December 1934 with an injury until the end of the season. Without his involvement, the team only won three of 24 league games and at the end of the season rose back to the second division as bottom of the table. Tottenham did not manage to return to the first division in the following years and Rowe had to contend with injury problems even after relegation, which limited his playing times. A cartilage injury finally kept him away from the game for the entire 1938/39 season and Rowe, meanwhile released for transfer by Tottenham, decided to end his playing career after 210 competitive games without scoring.

Coaching career

His path as a coach initially took him to Hungary in the summer of 1939, but the outbreak of World War II soon forced him to return to the British island. During the war he served as a physical training instructor in the British Army and also supervised army soccer teams. After the war, he took over the coaching post at Chelmsford City , who competed in the Southern League , and led the club in its first season to the championship and the victory of the Southern League Cup, and earned there in the following years a reputation as an innovative coach.

After Tottenham resigned coach Joe Hulme in the spring of 1949 for health reasons, Rowe took over his post for the 1949/50 season. Tottenham has always placed itself in the upper table area of ​​the Second Division since the resumption of play in the Football League , but they were clearly removed from the promotion places . Rowe signed for the new season with Alf Ramsey from Southampton FC , who had already tried to sign Hulme, and Billy Rees from Cardiff City , who did not get beyond the role as a substitute player and left the club a year later, only two Player and otherwise relied on the existing player material. Instead, he used push-and-run tactics to convey his footballing idea to the team, which was based on the motto “ Make it simple, make it quick ”. In possession of the ball, the midfield and opposing players should be overcome quickly with quick and easy play, in particular with the use of a short passing game, each player should pass the ball quickly and get free space again to be playable. Rowe's team dominated the 1949/50 championship of the Second Division with these specifications and returned to the English elite division as a superior second division champion after 15 years.

This system also proved to be practicable there and after a short period of adjustment, the First Division was also at the top of the table. Tottenham managed the rare feat of winning the English championship immediately after promotion. The team had remained unchanged compared to the previous season except for Peter Murphy , a variable offensive player. With the regular team Ted Ditchburn - Alf Ramsey , Arthur Willis - Bill Nicholson , Harry Clarke , Ron Burgess - Sonny Walters , Les Bennett , Len Duquemin , Eddie Baily , Les Medley , they finished the season four points ahead of Manchester United and scored 82 goals this season best offensive. After 1951/52 because of a rather mixed streak the title defense as second behind Manchester United was missed by four points, slipped in the following seasons in the table to 16th place in the seasons 53/54 and 54/55. Rowe had missed, also because of his loyalty to well-deserved players, to initiate a change or to build in new players in a targeted manner, but instead continued to rely on the increasingly aging team that had passed their zenith. In addition, the following players were not able to adequately close the gaps in the team structure left by resignations, injuries and changes and the board was not prepared to invest large sums in experienced first division players. In addition, opposing teams adjusted themselves better to the push-and-run tactics and leveraged them with the simplest of means: through consistent and aggressive man marking, the flow of the game was stopped and the tactics deprived of their fundamentals. The final highlight was the appearance in the FA Cup 1952/53, when the team advanced to the semi-finals and lost 2-1 to FC Blackpool in the last minute of extra time . Rowe suffered a nervous breakdown for the first time in January 1954 and was paused until the end of the season. During this time he was represented by assistant coach Jimmy Anderson , who, after Rowe was hospitalized again in April 1955 with health problems and finally announced his resignation in the summer of 1955, took over the office permanently.

After his resignation Rowe looked after the amateur club Pegasus AFC in 1955/56 , winners of the FA Amateur Cup in 1951 and 1953 with the push-and-run tactics mediated by Vic Buckingham , a former Spurs player ; before he returned to professional football in 1957. First chief scout of West Bromwich Albion , he held the post of assistant coach at Crystal Palace from November 1958 , and rose in April 1960 as the successor to George Smith to the main coach of the club. He led the team in the 1960/61 season to second place in the Football League Fourth Division and the associated promotion to the Third Division . After a poor start to the 1962/63 season, Rowe again had health problems that prompted him to resign from his post in December 1962. Rowe remained connected to football, however, from March 1963 he was managing director at Crystal Palace and took over the interim coaching position in the spring of 1966, later he was again active as an assistant coach. In 1971 he acted as "curator" of the short-lived Football Hall of Fame on Oxford Street in London , which was closed again in 1972 due to a lack of visitor interest. Rowe then worked in an advisory capacity at Orient from January 1972 to June 1978 and then in the same position at Millwall FC . He was also part of the board of directors at Crystal Palace before retiring from the football business.

literature

• Bob Goodwin: The Spurs Alphabet - A Complete Who's Who of Tottenham Hotspur FC ACL & Polar Publishing Ltd., Leicester 1992, ISBN 0-9514862-8-4 , pp. 316 f .
• Bob Goodwin: Tottenham Hotspur - The Complete Record . Breedon Books, Derby 2007, ISBN 978-1-85983-567-8 .
• Dennis Turner, Alex White: The Breedon Book of Football Managers . Breedon Books, Derby 1993, ISBN 1-873626-32-0 , pp. 216 .
• Martin Cloake: A Very English Visionary . In: The Blizzard . The Blizzard Media Ltd, Sunderland 2012, ISBN 978-1-908940-04-9 , pp. 55-66 .

Web links

• Obituary in The Independent

Individual evidence

1. ^ All sources contradict one another about Rowe's activities in Hungary. The spectrum ranges from an unspecified coaching position (Goodwin 1992) to a position with the national team (Turner / White) to a lecture tour in which he is said to have influenced Gusztáv Sebes (Goodwin 2007).
2. ^ Neil Carter: The Football Manager . Routledge, Abingdon 2006, ISBN 978-0-415-37539-9 , pp. 85 .
3. ↑ thepfa.com: The 1970s PFA History ( Memento of the original from October 9, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed October 9, 2016