Sharpe: Ivan Gordon (Ivan)

1920-1922 (Player Details)

Winger

Born: St Albans, Hertfordshire: 15-06-1889

Debut v Coventry City (h): 01-12-1920

5’6” 10st 2lb (1913)

Famous sports journalist and author Ivan Sharpe was also one of England’s greatest amateur players. A winger of great skill, he took his footballing talents wherever his journalistic career went. The St Albans-born son of a cobbler, he was educated at Watford Grammar School and there began his football career and as a youth he went on to play for St Albans Abbey, Luton Town, St Albans and Hertfordshire. He joined Watford, then of the Southern League, as an amateur in October 1907), scoring once in seven games before joining Northern Nomads before the end of the 1907-08 season. Always an amateur, he joined Second Division Glossop in August 1908 and he stayed there until September 1911, apart from a brief spell with Brighton & Hove Albion in February 1911, scoring sixteen times in eighty-six League appearances. It was at Glossop that he won the first of twelve England Amateur caps and he was also included in the English F.A. Touring team to South Africa in 1910, being one of four amateurs in the eighteen man squad, which was extended to nineteen to accomodate Sharpe after Gordon Wright had been injured on 28th May 1910. It started with a 7-1 win in Capetown on 26th May and was followed by a 13-0 win two days later in which Wright was injured. By the time the tour came to a conclusion in Capetown on 30th July when South Africa were beaten 6-3, the team had played twenty-three games, won every one and scored one hundred and forty-three goals and conceded but sixteen. He moved to Second Division Derby County in October 1911 where he scored twelve goals in fifty-four league appearances over two seasons, winning a Second Division Championship medal in his first season and the following year won an Olympic soccer gold in Stockholm with Great Britain, playing in all three games, at the age of twenty-three. He played in a full International trial at Blackburn in 1912. In June 1913 he went to Leeds City, where he scored sixteen goals in sixty-one League appearances, together with one goal in four FA Cup games. After World War One he played for Glossop, who had by then lost their League status, but returned to Elland Road twice in war-time League to play in a 3-1 home win over Grimsby Town on 19th February 1916 and a 1-2 home defeat by Huddersfield Town on 22nd April of the same year. When his journalistic career brought him back to Yorkshire, he joined local amateur side, Yorkshire Amateurs, but did make a brief return to League Football with the newly formed Leeds United in November 1920, thus becoming the first man to play for both City and United. Tommy Lamph was the only other player to appear for both clubs. Sharpe retired in the summer of 1923 but occasionally played with Yorkshire Amateurs as he went on to further his journalistic career. His soccer moves were reflected in the newspapers he worked for, starting with the Herts Observer and St Albans Times, Glossop Chronicle, Yorkshire Evening News (Leeds) and the Sunday Chronicle, whom he joined in 1922. In 1924 he became the editor of Athletic News and was later editor of the Sunday Chronicle. Sharpe died in Southport on 9th February 1968, aged seventy-eight.

James Rhodes has compiled Ivan Sharpe's lifestory and included it on his website which can be found at: //https://rhodestothepast.com/2018/06/14/the-leeds-city-united-football-star-who-won-olympic-gold-and-met-mussolini/)