Teddy Duckworth

Teddy Duckworth
Personnel
Surname	Thomas Crook Duckworth
birthday	1881 or 1882
place of birth	Blackburn or Blackpool ,  England
position	Right winger
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
	Blackpool Etrurians
1902-1903	Blackpool FC	9 (3)
1903	West Ham United	0 (0)
1903-1905	Blackburn Rovers	1 (0)
1905-1906	Blackpool FC	19 (2)
Stations as a trainer
Years	station
1921-1929	Servette FC Genève
1924	Switzerland
1929	Club sportif des Terreaux
1929-1931	Servette FC Genève
1931-1933	Lyon Olympique Universitaire and AC Espagnol (Lyon)
1934	Lyon Olympique Universitaire
1935-1936	AS Saint-Etienne
1937-1938	Lyon Olympique Universitaire
1938-1939	AS Saint-Etienne
1940- ...	Lyon Olympique Universitaire
at least 1950	Olympique Lyonnais
1 Only league games are given.

Servette's 1929/30 master team, Teddy Duckworth standing left

Teddy "Ducky" Duckworth , actually Thomas Crook Duckworth (* 1881 in Blackburn or 1882 in Blackpool , England ; † unknown) was an English football player and football coach . As a coach, he won several Swiss championship titles and led the Swiss national soccer team to their greatest success to date.

Club career

Duckworth came to the 1902/03 season from an amateur club called Blackpool Etrurians , for whom he is said to have played some "remarkably good games" in the local Blackpool Medal Competition , to the professional club Blackpool FC playing in the Football League Second Division . In 1903 the right winger moved to London to West Ham United in the Southern League . There he did not make the leap into the first team and returned to Lancashire in November 1903, where he signed with the Blackburn Rovers .

His time with the Rovers in relegation battle was also not very successful. Duckworth brought it only one league or cup use. In his only league game, a 0-1 home defeat against The Wednesday on October 1, 1904, the young Fred "El Bombin" Pentland was with him in a team that coached France at the Olympic Games in 1920 and in the 1920s and 1930s in Spain, especially at Athletic Bilbao , should have great success. He probably already knew Pentland from their beginnings at Blackpool. After two years, Duckworth left the Blackburn Rovers to return to his home club. At Blackpool he became a regular player again before a serious knee injury put an abrupt end to his career.

Coaching career

During the First World War , Duckworth was seriously wounded at the Battle of the Somme and spent a year and a half in hospital. After his recovery, a mutual acquaintance, the English record swimmer David Billington , put him in contact with the management of Servette FC Genève in 1921 , who were looking for a professional coach. Duckworth received the post, becoming the club's first full-time coach.

The Englishman introduced new training methods and, among other things, sent the players to dance lessons. In the regional championship of western Switzerland Servette remained undefeated and was able to prevail in the final round against the other two regional champions. So Duckworth had won the title with a team led by Otto Fehlmann and Robert Pache in its first season.

In 1924 the Swiss Federation decided to prepare the team for the Summer Olympics in three regional groups, with Duckworth being responsible for the French-speaking group, while the other two groups were trained by Jimmy Hogan and Izidor Kürschner . Duckworth took care of the national team during the final tournament in Paris, where the Swiss made it to the finals sensationally and finally lost 3-0 to the Uruguayan team . This is still the greatest success in Swiss football history and brought the Swiss not only the silver medal but also the unofficial title of European champion .

At club level, Duckworth continued to be successful with Servette and won two more championship titles in 1925 and 1926 and the first cup win in club history in 1928. In the summer of 1929 Duckworth left the garnet to move to France, where he took over the coaching position at Club sportif des Terreaux (now Rhône Sportif ) in Lyon, but a few months later he returned to Servette, where he took the team after a bad start of the season brought it into the final round, which was won convincingly with wins in all four games. Duckworth stayed another season with the club before he was replaced by the previous player Karl Rappan .

In August 1931 he returned to Lyon to train the men of Olympique Universitaire , participants in the "Championnat du Lyonnais", the Gauliga of Lyon, where one could qualify for the national championship. In the first year, Lyon OU formed a syndicate with AC Espagnol . He probably stayed there until 1933.

In 1935 he trained for the first time AS Saint-Étienne , located about 60 km southwest of Lyon, where the local President Pierre Guichard had put together a starting squad at high cost to force promotion to the national first division created in 1932. That didn't work. The team did not achieve the necessary victory on the last match day and only finished third due to the poorer goal quotient . Therefore, President Guichard brought Zoltán Vágó as coach for the next season . The Hungarian, who led Rouen FC to the first division in the previous season, was denied great luck and only finished third. In the following season he was replaced at the end of the first week of April by Duckworth, who again on the last day of the game absolutely needed a win to secure second place. Thanks to a 7: 3 victory over US Tourcoing on May 30th, St.-Étienne entered the stage of French national football for the first time. In the first year, the Duckworth team did well with a fourth place. "Papa" Duckworth, as he was now known, was to lead ASSE through the 1939–40 season. But then the war intervened.

1940 Duckworth was back at Lyon Olympique Universitaire. With the team he finished 15th among 18 teams in the first division after the war. Theoretically, that was enough to keep the league, but a reorganization of the league made it second class. It is said that Duckworth stayed with Lyon OU. In the second division, however, the team was initially only fifth, which was not enough for the immediate promotion.

When the footballers split off from Lyon OU in mid-1950 and formed the new club Olympique Lyonnais , Duckworth became the first coach of the amateurs of the new club.

So far, no information has been obtained about the further life of Duckworth.

successes

• 1924 Summer Olympics : silver medal
• Swiss championship : 1922, 1925, 1926, 1930
• Swiss Cup : 1928

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dates of birth according to the English National Football Archive (ENFA) , accessed on February 23, 2019
2. ↑ BLACKPOOL. . In: Sheffield Daily Telegraph , August 29, 1902, p. 10.  (paid link)
3. ↑ BLACKPOOL CLUB. . In: Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser , June 21, 1902, p. 3.  (paid link)
4. ↑ SPORTING NOTES. . In: Nottingham Evening Post , May 12, 1903, p. 3.  (paid link)
5. ↑ ROVERS ENGAGE A RESERVE FORWARD. . In: Northern Daily Telegraph , Nov. 7, 1903, p. 3.  (paid link)
6. ↑ BLACKPOOL FOOTBALL CLUB. . In: Lancashire Evening Post , May 18, 1905, p. 4.  (paid link)