A reminder of what it's really all about... Officers and men of the 17th Middlesex

I'm unashamedly cutting and pasting a Daily Mail piece by Alan Fraser from yesterday's paper below. Given that it is Remembrance Day and it is a well written and timely article, I hope this is okay with you all. A link to my own blog post from last year on 11/11 follows at the foot of Alan's article. I'll be posting a more trite piece on Hereford v Yeovil later in advance of my trip to Edgar Street tomorrow. Best, Jeff

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The Football Battalion never played at Flanders Field where the poppy grew long before becoming a symbol of remembrance. But the professionals and supporters who joined the 17th Service (Football) Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment, to use its full name, lost a lot more than a game at the Somme.

They lost many of their 600-strong team, including, to name just one of the dead, Evelyn Lintott, the England international and Queens Park Rangers stalwart.

Which is why FIFA - though needing a deal of persuading - simply had to unearth sufficient common sense for a compromise which will allow the England players to attach commemorative poppies to their black armbands for the game against Spain on Saturday.

First Football', as the battalion became known, was formed on December 12 1914, by William Joynson-Hicks, later a post-war Home Secretary. England centre half Frank Buckley, better known as 'Major Frank Buckley', who played for a host of clubs, including both Manchester teams and Birmingham City, was the first to join.

Three weeks earlier in Scotland, the Hearts team, then the best in the country, joined the British Army en masse. Seven players never returned home.

There had been an initial slowness among the professionals to enlist. Contracts were said to be the problem, with clubs keen to keep playing to offer a release for the general public from the daily horrific tales from the front line. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stepped in with an appeal.

'If a footballer has strength of limb, let them serve and march in the field of battle,' he declared. And they did. By March 1915, 122 professional footballers had joined the regiment, including the entire Clapton (now Leyton) Orient team.

Walter Tull, of Tottenham Hotspur and Northampton Town, enlisted and went on to become the first black combat officer in the British Army.

Vivian Woodward, the prolific-scoring England centre forward and Chelsea hero, was another. It was his presence which persuaded many a Blues supporter to head for the front with recruiting posters specifically - some said shamelessly - targeting the football fraternity.

Major Buckley later wrote that by the mid-1930s more than 500 of the original 600 men in the Football Battalion were dead, either killed in action or dying from wounds suffered during the fighting.

Last October, a Footballers' Battalion Memorial was unveiled in Longueval in France for the 17th Battalion and the 23rd, which was formed in 1915. We shall all remember them.

Taken from yesterday's Daily Mail. Follow the link (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2059660/Officers-men-17th-Middlesex--Football-Battalion.html)%20to see the full article including photographs of these brave men.


My piece from last year: "Football's just .. football." : http://jefftaplin.blogspot.com/2010/11/footballs-just-football.html