Arthur Rowley, (1926-2002)
Michael Rhodes
most explosive left foots in postwar English football.
Though he never quite achieved the stature of his older brother Jack,
himself a formidable left-footed goal scorer for Manchester United and
England, Arthur was astonishingly prolific over many seasons.
Altogether, he scored 434 goals in 619 Football League games for four
different clubs.
He was born at Wolverhampton, 21 April, 1926.
His first club was West Bromwich Albion. Powerfully built, standing
5ft 11in and weighing 13st 6lb, he was only a little better
appreciated at the Hawthorns than was Jack at Molineux.
Making a couple of league appearances in the first postwar season, 21
the next, for just four goals, and just one in 1948-49, he was sold
that season to Fulham - and, at once, flourished. Albion lived to rue
the day they let him go, for his 19 goals in only 22 games, from
centre-forward, won Fulham the second division championship and
promotion to the first. Albion, however, went up too, finishing a
single point behind Fulham.
In the second division, Rowley's left foot was a deadly weapon, from
either close or long range, but the first division was far less
fruitful for him. He scored only eight times in his 34 matches, which
suggests the gulf between his talents as a centre-forward, and those
of brother Jack, a regular scorer for Manchester United in the top
division.
Fulham seemed of that opinion too, since, at the end of his second
season at Craven Cottage, they transferred Arthur to Leicester City,
where he would stay for the next eight, hugely productive seasons. At
Filbert Street, the gulf would narrow, for when Rowley eventually
returned to the first division, he would be just as dangerous a
striker as he had been in division two.
His first four seasons at Filbert Street, in the second division, saw
him score no fewer than 115 goals, 30 of them in Leicester's 1953-54
promotion season, when they won the second division title on goal
average from Everton. Returning at last to the top division, he would
score 23 times in 36 games. It was hardly Rowley's fault that
Leicester went straight back to the second division.
In season 1956-57, however, the club bounced back again, and this time
there was no question of their winning the second division title on
mere goal average. With Rowley contributing another quite remarkable
haul of 44 goals in 42 games, Leicester finished fully seven points
ahead of their east midland rivals, Nottingham Forest.
Now Rowley was back in the first division again, with an honourable
booty of 20 goals in his 25 games. This time, Leicester stayed up,
but, at the end of the season, a still fully functional Arthur Rowley
left them to become player- manager of Shrewsbury Town, arriving at
what was then hardly a Gay Meadow, for the club had just finished 17th
in the old third division (south), having scored a parsimonious 49
goals.
Rowley would soon change all that. Banging away with that famous left
foot, he scored 38 goals in 43 games, enabling the club to win
promotion from the newly-formed fourth division.
Though steadily gaining weight, Rowley continued to score prodigiously
- 32, 28, 23 and 24 goals in the ensuing four seasons. Only then, his
last couple of years, would he fall away, with just five goals in
season 1963-64, and two in a dozen games in his last season at Gay
Meadow, 1964-65.
A short spell at Sheffield United, as joint manager with John Harris,
the former Chelsea centre-half who had been at Bramall Lane for years,
was ill-augured. Harris did not want anyone to share his authority,
and Rowley himself was known as a forceful, uncompromising, even
perhaps, authoritarian character.
He was much happier when, in 1970, he became manager, for the next six
years, of Southend United. In season 1971-72, Southend came second in
the fourth division, and were thus promoted to the third, though in
season 1975-76, Rowley's last in charge, the club was relegated again.
He subsequently pursued a business career. His wife and son survive
him.