sport news Jack Leslie - the first black player to be called up by England is honoured ... trends now
Jack Leslie’s three grand-daughters agreed the man himself might have frowned upon the delightful ceremony outside Home Park in Plymouth.
‘We lived with Grandad in East Ham,’ explained Lesley. ‘It was our family home with seven of us in the house, a bit packed sometimes but it was a fun, loving happy family and Grandad was the rock.
‘There was a charisma about him. He drew people towards him and he was so humble he never talked about his football career. I don’t think he realised how great he was. We think if he could see us, he’d say, “What’s all this fuss about?”
Jack Leslie played for Plymouth Argyle from 1922 to 1934 and was chosen to play in the 1925 England squad but was not allowed to wear the England shirt because his father was a black man from Jamaica.
‘It wasn’t until Viv Anderson played for England and the Daily Mail did an interview with Grandad that people started talking about it, and he told us exactly what happened.
‘When he told us, we knew that was what had happened. He wouldn’t have made up a story like that, and yet the number of times we spoke to people about it and you’d see them glaze over because they thought if he didn’t get the cap then it was because he wasn’t good enough. We knew that wasn’t the case.’
Jack Leslie is a Plymouth Argyle legend. Signed from Barking Town in 1921, he was an inside left who scored 137 goals in 400 appearances for the Devon club and forged a prolific partnership with left winger Sammy Black.
They won promotion and went on to achieve the joint-highest finish in their history, fourth in the second tier in 1931-32, a season when Leslie top-scored with 21 goals.
Yet there is more to his story. In fact, there is a place in this country’s footballing history because he was called up by England in 1925, only to be dropped when the selection committee realised he was black, his father born in Jamaica.
‘All of a sudden everyone stopped talking about it,’ Leslie told the Daily Mail’s Brian James, in 1978, when Viv Anderson became the first black footballer to win a senior England cap. ‘Sort of went dead quiet. Didn’t look me in the eye.’
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