WOOSNAM v CHAPLIN

I think you would need to be a bit of an historian (or an anorak) to appreciate today's blog because it harks back to this day in 1965 when Max Woosnam died at the age of 72, born in 1893. He was born in Liverpool in 1892.

Max was a student at Winchester College and then Cambridge University where as a multi sportsman, he was a multi Blue at tennis, real tennis, football and cricket. He played for and captained England amateurs footballers three times in 1922. No big deal? well actually no, but the did also play for the Corinthians (including the famous tour of Brazil just before the First WW broke out) and Chelsea as an amateur before the First World War and afterwards he signed for Manchester City and appeared 96 times for them at centre-half as an amateur up to 1925, winning the Football League championship (in those days the top division) in 1920-1. There is an alley near the old Maine Road known as Max Woosnam Walk.

In tennis he partnered R.Lycett and won the Wimbledon grand slam doubles in 1921, having won Gold and Silver in the 1920 Olympics in both doubles. (he had to refuse the captaincy of the Soccer team because he was already playing tennis!) He completed a 147 break in snooker, made a century at Lords, and captained the British Davis Cup team.

A heavy smoker he eventually died of respiratory failure in 1965 but not before he beat Charlie Chaplin, having been invited to his home in California, at table tennis, Woosnam playing with a butter knife. They didn't get on!!

Mick Collins wrote his biography "All Round Genius"