The article warns us of the upcoming documentary on BT Sports, Saturday 9pm. Many don't subscribe to BT but you really should get hold of the film. The link is with the First World War, in which many Corinthian footballers joined in.
One member of the English Corinthians club was Charles Aubrey Smith, one of three polymaths (people of much learning); the other two were C.B.Fry and Max Woosnam. If you know nothing of these two then look them up.
Charles Aubrey Smith was one of the Old Carthusians team that met Preston North End in the FA Cup Quarter-final Round in 1887. North End were at the time the country's most successful team, later being Double winners in 1888-9, when they won the First Division without losing a game and won the cup without conceding a goal.
Smith was born in Brighton in July 1863 and he was a boy at the London Charterhouse, before St John's College, Cambridge. He played cricket for the university and then Sussex CCC, captaining the first England XI to play in South Africa in 1888-9. As a left winger he gave the "Invincibles" a fright at the Kennington Oval but it was to no avail as the professionals won the tie after extra time 2-1. In the OC team that day were the well known AM and PM Walters as "backs", Charles Wreford Brown, who first used the word "Soccer" in goal and several other English internationals, all true amateurs.
It was the last serious attempt at the FA Cup by a truly amateur club. Preston met West Bromwich Albion next who beat them in the semi-final.
Aubrey Smith became a star of film appearing in "A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer All Talking Picture". He appeared in 76 films including "Tarzan and Ape Man", "Lives of a Bengal Lancer", Prisoner of Zenda" and "Sixty Glorious Years".
He brought cricket to Hollywood and founded a Club there. In 1938 he was awarded the CBE and was Knighted in 1944.
Would you like to meet him on a dark night?
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