Best: Jeremiah (Jerry)

1920-1920 (Player Details)

Outside Left

Born: Mickley, Northumberland: 23-01-1901

Debut v Port Vale (a): 28-08-1920

5’10” 10st 7lb (1920)

A member of a big Northumberland football family, Best appeared in United’s first ever League game. He joined Newcastle United from Mickley Colliery Welfare in December 1919. He only played two games for Newcastle and, being unable to establish himself as a regular first-team member, moved on to the newly formed Leeds United. Leeds paid £100 for him in July 1920, after they remembered him playing as a War-time guest with Huddersfield Town. At Leeds he played in their first ever League game at Port Vale on 28th August 1920, which Vale won 2-0, and he scored in their first-ever victory on Saturday, 4th September 1920, a 3-1 win, again against Port Vale but this time at Elland Road. Matt Ellson scored a brace and Best scored the other. It being rather ironic that the first game and first victory were against Port Vale, for it was they who replaced Leeds United predecessors, Leeds City, in the League when City were expelled. He was soon ousted by Basil Wood and then played several years of Non-League football before he left for the United States. There he played with Providence Clamdiggers, scoring twenty goals in twenty-nine appearances in the 1924-25 season. He then joined New Bedford Whalers, where he scored sixty-six goals in one hundred and sixty-two games from 1925 to 1929. In 1930 he was with Fall River Marksmen, scoring once in two appearances before moving to Pawtucket Rangers, scoring fifteen times in seventeen games and then again back to New Bedford Whalers, where he scored thirty-five goals in just thirty-one games. His goal haul in the 1930 season of thirty five goals in just twenty-seven games made him the League's leading scorer. He returned to England for the start of the 1931-32 season when he signed with Clapton Orient in August 1931, where he made sixty League appearances, until he joined Darlington in October 1933. He played one hundred and fifteen games, of which one hundred and nine were in the League, for the Quakers and scored a remarkable seventy-two goals. He netted sixty-seven in the League and five in the F.A. Cup. He also scored eight goals in other games which still makes him Darlington's top scorer. He had his final League season with Hull City, joining them in October 1936, scoring eleven goals in thirty-one League games. He later played Non-League for Hexham. All-in-all, Best had a varied football career, both in England and in North America. His brother Robert played for Sunderland and Wolverhampton Wanderers. He died in Darlington in early 1975.