Thomas Lawton (born 6 October 1919 – died 6 November 1996) was born in Farnworth near Bolton. Lawton's natural footballing ability earned him a place on the Bolton Town Schools team in 1930. He was picked by Lancashire Schools at the age of 13. Despite scoring a hat-trick in a trial game for England Schoolboys, he never earned a full England Schoolboy cap.
At the age of 14, Tommy began playing for Hayes Athletic in the Bolton Senior League, and went on to score 570 goals in three seasons. He played amateur football at local Rossendale Utd before he turned professional at Burnley on his 17th birthday. The FA's rules meant he was unable to turn professional at a club until he was 17, and Lawton's grandfather rejected Bolton Wanderer's offer for Lawton to work as a delivery driver for two years before turning professional at the club. Lawton instead played as an amateur for local Rossendale Utd in the Lancashire Combination, scoring a hat-trick on his debut against Bacup.
He took up temporary work at a Tannery, and then joined Burnley as assistant groundsman after his mother rejected an offer from Sheffield Wednesday, as she objected to him travelling to Sheffield on a daily basis.
His potential as a footballer won him a £6,500 move to Everton in January 1937 and finished as the First Division's top-scorer in 1938 and 1939, helping Everton to finish as champions of the Football League in the latter campaign. League football was then suspended for seven full seasons due to the outbreak of war in Europe, during which time he scored 24 goals in 23 appearances for England whilst guesting for Everton and a number of other clubs. In November 1945, he moved to Chelsea for £14,000, and scored a club record 26 goals in 34 league games in the 1946–47 season.
In November 1947, he made a surprise move to Third Division club Notts County for a British record fee of £20,000. He helped the club to win promotion as champions in 1949–50, before he moved on to Brentford in March 1952 for a club record £16,000. In January 1953, Brentford appointed him player-manager, though he would only remain in charge for nine months. He joined Arsenal as a player in November 1953 for £10,000, where he saw out the remainder of his playing career. Despite losing much of his best years to World War 2, he scored 260 goals in 433 league and cup competitions in 14 full seasons in the Football League.
He scored 22 goals in his 23 England appearances over a ten-year international career from 1938 to 1948, including four against Portugal in May 1947, a match that England won 10-0 (Stan Mortenson also scored 4, Tom Finney one and even Stanley Matthews, usually a supplier, scored).
He helped England to win two British International titles outright (1946–47 and 1947–48), and to share the Championship in 1938–39. He fell out of international contention at the age of 28 due to his contempt for the "academic" manager, Walter Winterbottom. He also decided to drop out of the First Division, and the arrrival of Jackie Milburn and Nat Lofthouse on the scene. As well as his England caps, he also represented The Football League XI and played in a special Great Britain XI against The Rest of Europe in 1947. His ashes are held in the National Football Museum, and he was inducted into the England Football Hall of Fame in 2003.
Lawton also played cricket for Burnley Cricket Club in the Lancashire League. He hit a six against both Learie Constantine and Amar Singha. He scored 369 runs in 15 completed innings for an average of 24.06.
He turned a football professional at Burnley at the age of 17 on wages of £7 a week. His grandfather attempted to negotiate a £500 signing-on fee on his behalf but was rebuffed after the club alerted Charles Sutcliffe, Secretary of the Football League, who informed them that any attempt to circumvent the league's maximum wage was illegal. Lawton scored in his first appearance since signing the contract after just 30 seconds, before going on to record a PERFECT hat-trick in a 3–1 win over Tottenham Hotspur, scoring a goal with either foot and one with his head.
In January 1937, First Division club Everton paid Burnley £6,500 to secure Lawton's services, and also gave his grandfather a job as deputy groundsman at Goodison Park; the fee was a record for a player under 21. The move to Everton made him a teammate of Dixie Dean. his boyhood idol, whom he was expected to gradually replace as first choice centre-forward. He later recalled that on his way to Goodison Park on his first day as an Everton player he was told by a tram conductor that "You're that young Lawton, aren't you? You'll never be as good as Dixie."
Dean was finally rested on 13 February, which allowed Lawton to make his first team debut against Woilves at Molineux; the match ended in a 6–2 defeat, though Lawton scored a penalty. He spent the rest of the season at inside-left, with Dean at centre-forward, and ended the 1936-7 campaign with four goals in 11 games. He started the 1937-8 season in the Reserves, but was installed as first choice centre-forward in September after Dean was dropped for punching club secretary Theo Kelly (don't ask!). On the 2 October, Lawton scored the winning penalty in a 2–1 victory over Merseyside rivals Liverpool at Anfield. He ended the campaign with 28 goals in 39 appearances to become the Division's top scorer.
Everton had a young but highly effective team for the 1938-9 campaign, and Lawton was praised for the way he led the attack, Lawton scored 35 goals in 38 league games to finish as the division's top-scorer for the second successive season. However, in the summer he wrote to Leicester City, to request that the club buy him from Everton; it was reported that he reached out to Leicester as they were managed by Tom Bromilow, his former Burnley manager. Everton were fifth in the league and Lawton was the division's top-scorer with four goals when league football was suspended three games into the 1939-40 season due to the outbreak of WW2. Lawton later remarked that "I'm convinced that if it hadn't been for the War, we'd have won the Championship again, the average age of those players was about 24 or 25".
Stanley Matthews surmised that "Quite simply, Tommy was the greatest header of the ball I ever saw." Lawton was never booked throughout his career; as a centre forward that is remarkable.
As was common for footballers during the war, he also made guest appearances for a number of clubs besides Everton, including Leicester City, Greenock Morton, Chester City, Aldershot and Tranmere Rovers. He was called up to the British Army in January 1940, and his status as an England international saw him recruited to the Physical Training Corps and played for the British Army team and his Area Command team. He was posted in Birkenhead, which allowed him to frequently appear for Everton.
On Christmas Day 1940, he played for Everton against Liverpool at Anfield in the morning and for Tranmere Rovers at Crewe Alexandra in the afternoon. Explaining this later, he said, 'The Tranmere people came into the dressing room and asked if anyone wanted to play as they were two men short. I said, "Go on, I'll help you out." And I did.' In 1942 he scored a hat-trick for England in a 5–4 win over Scotland at Hampden Park. Later in the year he scored six goals for Aldershot in a 9–0 win over Luton. On 16 October 1943, he scored four goals in an 8–0 victory over Scotland at Maine Road.
Chelsea- July 1945, Lawton handed in a transfer request at Everton as he wanted a move to a Southern club so as to see more of his increasingly estranged wife. In November 1945, he was sold to Chelsea for a fee of £14,000. Chelsea continued to play regional wartime fixtures as national league football had not resumed for the 1945-6 season, and Lawton also continued his uncapped appearances for the England national team. In the summer of 1946, following his demobilisation, he coached for the FA in a summer camp in Switzerland. However he struggled to settle at Stamford Bridge and came into conflict with manager Billy Birrell after refusing to go on a pre-season tour of Sweden in 1947, which resulted in him requesting a transfer. Chelsea eventually allowed him a move to Arsenal.
In November 1947, Lawton was sold to Notts County, in the Third Division South for a British Record fee of £20,000 (equivalent to £832,500 in 2021). He made the surprise decision to drop down two divisions so as to be reunited with manager Arthur Stollery, his former masseur and friend at Chelsea, and because he was promised a job outside of football upon his retirement by vice-chairman Harold Walmsley. He scored two goals on his home debut, a 4–2 win over Bristol Rovers in front of 38,000 spectators at Meadow Lane – a huge increase on previous home games of typically 6,000 to 7,000 supporters. He ended the 1947-8 season with 24 goals in as many games, though was resented by the club's directors after he insisted on pay rises for his teammates and stopped the practice of director's friends and family travelling to away games on the team coach.
County finished in mid-table despite scoring 102 goals, 15 more than champions Swansea. Lawton turned down the role as player-manager. and Lawton finished as the division's top-scorer with 31 goals in 37 league games in the 1947-8, as County won promotion as champions.
By 1950-1 Lawton was losing his form and he joined Second Division Brentford in March 1952 for £16,000. In January 1953 Lawton was appointed as player-manager, however he lost the dressing room due to his excessive demands of the players, and the strains of management were having a negative impact on his form. Brentford also lost their best players having sold both Ron Greenwood and Jimmy Hill.In November 1953, Lawton was traded to First Division champions Arsenal for £7,500. However Lawton was limited to ten appearances in the 1953–54 campaign after picking up an injury on his debut. He also played in the 1953 Charity Shield match, scoring one goal as Arsenal (League Champions) beat Blackpool (FA Cup Winners) 3–1. On the opening day of the 1955-6 season, he announced his decision to leave Arsenal to pursue a career in management eight games into the campaign.
Lawton was called up to play for The Football League XI against a League of Ireland XI at Windsor Park on 21 September 1938, and scored four goals in what finished as an 8–2 win. A month later he went on to win his first cap for England on 22 October, England's first game of the 1938-9 Home International season, a 4–2 defeat to Wales at Ninian Park and converted a penalty kick to mark his first England appearance with a goal. This made him the youngest player to score on his England debut, a record which lasted until Marucs Rashford broke it in 2016. Four days after Lawton's debut, he scored again for England at Highbury in a 3–0 win over 'The Rest of Europe', a team of players selected from Italy, Germany, France, Belgium, Hungary and Norway.
Newly appointed England manager Walter Wiunmterbottom played Lawton in England's first official match in seven years on 28 September 1946, a 7–2 win over Ireland. He played the remaining three fixtures of 1946, and scored four goals in an 8–2 victory over the Netherlands on 27 November. On 10 May 1947, he scored two goals playing for the Great Britain XI in a 6–1 victory over a Rest of Europe XI that was billed as the 'Match of the Century'. Five days later he scored four goals in a 10–0 victory over Portugal at the Estadio Nacional. On 21 September, he scored after just 12 seconds in a 5–2 win over Belgium at the Heysel Stadium.
He retained his place in the England team following his club move to Notts County, and in doing so became the first Third Division footballer to represent England when he scored from the penalty spot in a 4–2 win over Sweden on 19 November. However he only won three further caps in 1948, his final appearance coming in a 0–0 draw with Denmark in Copenhagen on 26 September. He had become increasingly disillusioned with the England set-up, and told Winterbottom that "if you think you can teach Stanley Matthews to play on the wing and me how to score goals, you've got another think coming!" Winterbottom was also frustrated by Lawton's smoking habit, and preferred Jackie Milburn ahead of Lawton. Hopes of any future comeback were ended by the emergence of powerful centre-forward Nat Lofthouse who made his England debut in November 1950. His later life was not impressive and he had many financial issues.
Lawton's health deteriorated in his old age and he died in November 1996, aged 77, as a result of pneumonia. His ashes were donated to the National Football Museum and he was inducted into the English Hall of Fame in 2003.
He starred alongside Thoora and Diana Dors in 1953 film The Great Game playing himself in a cameo role. Throughout the 1950s he went on to appear on What's My Line amongst other radio and television programmes. He published a total of four books: Tommy Lawton's all star football book (1950), Soccer the Lawton way (1954), My Twenty Years of Soccer (1955), and When the Cheering Stopped (1973).
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