Walter Bowman

Walter Bowman
Personnel
Surname	Walter Wells Bowman
birthday	August 11, 1870
place of birth	Waterloo , Ontario ,  Canada
date of death	March 7, 1948
Place of death	Seattle ,  United States
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
	Berlin Rangers
1892	Accrington FC	5 (3)
1892-1899	AFC Ardwick / Manchester City	47 (3)
1 Only league games are given.

Walter Wells Bowman (born August 11, 1870 in Waterloo , Ontario , † March 7, 1948 in Seattle ) was a Canadian football player . Bowman became the first foreigner in the English Football League in 1892 as a player for Accrington FC . In 2008 he was inducted into the Canadian Soccer Hall of Fame .

Career

Bowman played in Canada for the Berlin Rangers from what is now Kitchener, which was founded by graduates of Berlin High School . In 1888 and 1889 he won the championship of the Western Football Association (WFA) with the team . As early as 1886, Bowman was involved in a selection game in New Jersey between the WFA and the American Football Association . In 1888 he took part with a selection team from the WFA on a two-month tour of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland . The team did well with nine wins and five draws in 23 games, and the tour is still considered a milestone in Canadian football history. Bowman scored a goal during the tour, among other things in the 2-0 win against Newton Heath and was also in the 0-4 defeat against the Scottish national team in action. In 1891 Bowman took part again with a Canadian selection on a tour of Great Britain, but this time he did not return to Canada, but stayed like his compatriot James Dalton ( Sunderland AFC ) as a professional player in England.

As a player for FC Accrington , Bowman scored three goals in five games in the final stages of the 1891/92 season and became the first foreign player in his appearance on January 23, 1892 against West Bromwich Albion (final score 4: 2, a goal from Bowman) the history of the Football League . The following season he moved to the newly created Football League Second Division for AFC Ardwick . Bowman was initially used as a left half- forward or center forward , so he scored again in his league debut, a 3-1 win against Crewe Alexandra , again a goal, later he acted as a center runner or right outer runner . In 1896, the team around right winger Billy Meredith , one of the most dazzling players of his time, missed promotion to the First Division in the test matches called relegation games . In the following years, Bowman was rarely used, his 47th and last league appearance for the club, renamed in 1894 after financial problems in Manchester City , completed Bowman on October 1, 1898 in a 3-1 home win against Woolwich Arsenal .

Little is known about the rest of his life, but it is certain that he returned to North America after retiring. At a meeting of the tour participants from 1888 in 1929 Bowman was not present, a newspaper article published in this regard mentions the mining town of Butte in the US state of Montana as his last known place of residence .

literature

• Nick Harris: England, Their England - The definitive story of foreign footballers in the English game since 1888 . Pitch Publishing, Hove 2003, ISBN 0-9542460-1-2 , pp. 21-30 .

Web links

• Entry into the Canadian Soccer Hall of Fame