He stayed only a few months, a 1910s foretaste of Harry Kane’s time with Orient or Frank Lampard’s at Swansea, but Charles Buchan - surely the greatest player associated with this club - retained fond memories of Leyton.
They were recounted in ‘A Lifetime in Football’, published in 1955 and reissued in 2010. Offering a vivid, highly readable panorama of British football across the first half of the last century, it is several cuts above most player memoirs.
An inside-forward, he joined Leyton, then a professional Southern League club playing at Brisbane Road, during the 1910 close season. More interested in being a teacher, he did not particularly want to become a pro and had turned down 30/- a week from Second Division Fulham.
Leyton offered double that, and a guaranteed first-team place. He remembered :”I thank my lucky stars I joined Leyton and not a First Division club. Not because I had any conceit about my own play, but because I kept my place in the League side…..Playing in a League side gives a young player confidence. And confidence in yourself is half the battle in League soccer.”
Looking back more than 40 years to the pre-First World War Southern League, he reckoned :”In my opinion, the standard of play was equal, at least, to the present Second Division”. He learnt some lessons from opponents. In his debut against Plymouth Argyle, the opposing left-half twice fooled him into ill-judged headers :”He taught me to think a move ahead…and never to take anything for granted on the field.”
Then there was Swindon’s Harold Fleming, a brilliant inside-forward who won 11 England caps, a significant international career at that time :”It was from Fleming that I learnt that more than speed was required to beat an opponent. I freely admit that I copied one of his most successful tricks.”
Any smart, observant Southern League player might have learnt these skills. But others came specifically from Leyton team-mates like player-manager Dave Buchanan, who was so sensitive about his baldness that he was never seen without a skull cap.
Buchan reckoned that veteran wing Jimmy Durrant’s instructions to him and Leyton’s right-half, were ‘the beginnings of triangular wing-play’, while he spent hours practising with Irish international inside-forward Jimmy Shanks, who ‘taught me things with a ball that I should never have thought of myself’.
After games he travelled home to Woolwich with centre-forward Sergeant McGibbon : “Under his guidance my soccer education advanced rapidly”. Perhaps most important was the Rev Kenneth Hunt, already a cup winner with Wolves. Hunt won two England caps with Leyton, and the legendary Billy Meredith reckoned :”I never ran up against a harder or fitter half-back”. Buchan recalled that Hunt’s quiet on-field instructions ”Instilled in me the art of positioning.”
In March he was shocked to be sold to Sunderland for £1200, a near-record fee, :”To be perfectly frank I did not know where Sunderland was”. But he stayed for 14 years, scoring 209 goals, winning the League in 1913 and six England caps. After a late career move instrumental in Arsenal’s rise to greatness, he became a noted journalist – not a purveyor of ghosted conventional-wisdom soundbites, but the real thing.
His sole regret from Leyton was getting none of that £1200. He was notionally entitled to 10 per cent, but the chairman told him ‘Sorry, Charlie, the club is so badly off we can’t afford to give you anything, much as we would like to’. Buchan remained aggrieved 44 years on, but admitted :”He must have been right since within 15 months Leyton ceased to exist as a League club.”
