IN 133 years, no Plymouth Argyle footballer has ever played for the England national team but in October 1925, their inside-left Jack Leslie was called into the office of his manager Bob Jack. “I’ve got great news for you. You’ve been picked for England.” 

Speaking to Brian Woolnough in 1978, Leslie recalled: “Everybody in the club knew about it. The town was full of it. All them days ago it was quite a thing for a little club like Plymouth to have a man called up for England. I was proud — but then I was proud just to be a paid footballer.”

Born in 1901, the son of a gas fitter’s labourer from Jamaica and a tailoress from Islington, John Francis Leslie grew up in Canning Town and began playing for Barking Town in the London League. 

He scored over 250 goals for the club, helping them win the Essex Senior Cup in 1920 and Premier Division title in 1921. One of three Barking players offered professional terms by Plymouth Argyle, themselves elected to the Football League only the year before, Leslie struggled to break into the first team during his first two seasons. A move to inside-left transformed his fortunes and by the mid-1920s he was a regular in the team.

At the time, selection for the England national team did not rest with one manager, but an International Selection Committee comprised of a group of coaches and trainers selected by the Football Association. Before the advent of television coverage, it is unlikely that any of the selectors had seen Leslie play, but his record spoke for itself.

With 134 goals in his 384 league appearances for the Pilgrims, Leslie would become the fourth-highest goalscorer in the club’s history. In partnership with Scottish winger Sammy Black, the 24-year-old east Londoner spearheaded the attack of a team which remarkably finished second in the Third Division South for six successive seasons at a time when only the champions were promoted.

However, Leslie’s dreams of representing his country were soon to be dashed. “All of a sudden everyone stopped talking about it. Then the papers came out a day or so later and Billy Walker of Aston Villa was in the team, not me. I didn’t ask outright. I could see by their faces it was awkward.” 

His place in England football history was never recorded in the minutes of The FA Selection Committee written many years later.

“I did hear that the FA had come to have another look at me. Not at me football, but at me face. They asked, and found they’d made a ricket. Found out about me daddy, and that was it. No-one ever told me officially, but that had to be the reason.

“They must have forgotten I was a coloured boy. They found out I was a darkie and I suppose that was like finding out I was foreign.”

On Tuesday October 6 1925, Leslie was officially named in the press as one of two reserves for the team to play Ireland in Belfast. Fifty-three years before Viv Anderson played against Czechoslovakia, Jack Leslie is therefore the first black man to be selected by England.

In an age before substitutions, a reserve was on stand-by to come in if any of the starting 11 were injured so when Huddersfield Town’s left-back Sam Wadsworth dislocated his elbow playing for his club two weeks before the game, the Western Daily Press reported on Monday October 12 1925 that “a substitute, of course, will now have to be found, and it is not unlikely that Leslie, the darkie forward of Plymouth Argyle, will fill the vacancy.” 

Described as “a versatile player,” it was said Leslie, “often provided cover at centre-half or indeed any other position which was required.”

In the event, Newcastle United’s 35-year-old Francis Hudspeth was drafted in for his first and only international cap. The match ended goalless. 

Meanwhile that same afternoon, in front of 10,593 fans at Home Park, Leslie scored twice in Plymouth’s 7-2 home win over Bournemouth and Boscombe Athletic.

Leslie was one of two black footballers known to be playing in the Football League at the time. The other, Eddie Parris, would become the first black man to play for Wales in 1931. 

Leslie admitted: “I used to get a lot of abuse in matches. ‘Here darkie, I’m gonna break your leg,’ they’d shout. There was nothing wicked about it — they were just trying to get under my skin.”

When Parris’s side, Bradford Park Avenue, were drawn to play Plymouth in the FA Cup in January 1929, the Leeds Mercury preview of the match made no mention of either player in its written preview but nonetheless used photos to identify both players as “Coloured Cup-tie rivals.”

Two years later, ahead of Plymouth’s FA Cup Third Round match against Everton, the Liverpool Echo ran a piece again making no reference to Leslie as a player but illustrated with a caricature of him claiming that he was “a big favourite wherever he goes.” 

Considering he never played for any other professional club, it seems a reference to his notoriety with opposition fans. In 1930, The Herald had described him as “known throughout England for his skill and complexion.”

Argyle finally gained promotion to the Second Division in 1930, Leslie would eventually captain the side and led them to a 4-1 FA Cup Third Round victory over Manchester United in 1932. 

Subsequently drawn away to Herbert Chapman’s Arsenal in the Fourth Round, The Daily Herald reported that 81 train loads of Plymouth supporters made the journey to London. 

In front of a then-record Highbury attendance of 65,386, with thousands more locked out, Leslie scored in a 4-2 defeat to the reigning First Division champions. 

A few weeks later at a player’s dinner, club president Mr A C Ballard “congratulated Argyle on having such an inspiring captain as Mr Jack Leslie” and later in the year Ballad presented Leslie’s wife with “a handsome diamond cluster scarf … there were less costly presents for all the others.”

However, respect for Leslie was not always forthcoming away from the south-west. 

In September 1933, in a column titled “Our Readers’ Jokes Efforts” the Bunley Express published two anecdotes from fans at Turf Moor commenting on Leslie’s colour. 

One by J Abott compared playing Plymouth to a game of snooker because “it seemed to depend so much on t’ ‘black’.”

Following his retirement in 1934, Leslie captained the Fairbairn House Old Boys in a charity match against West Ham at Upton Park in April 1935 and after a spell working as a publican in Cornwall and scouting for Argyle, he returned to East London to work as a boilermaker. 

In the 1960s, Ron Greenwood offered Leslie the chance to become part of the West Ham backroom staff working as a boot-boy. Over 15 years at Chadwell Heath, he cleaned boots for the likes of Bobby Moore, Harry Redknapp and Trevor Brooking. 

At the age of 80, his retirement was featured on ITV’s The Big Match programme. Presenter Brian Moore talked of him as a former professional footballer for Plymouth but made no reference to his England call-up. He died on an unknown date in 1988.

Today, Plymouth Argyle will honour their only footballer to be called up to play for England by naming the boardroom in their new 5,403-capacity Mayflower Grandstand after Jack Leslie.

A club spokesman told me: “The new Mayflower Grandstand at Home Park celebrates the pioneering spirit of the original Pilgrims, who set sail from Plymouth 400 years ago. Jack Leslie, too, was a pioneer — for the generations of BAME footballers that now grace the English game.
 
“He also played 401 times for Argyle in one of the most successful eras of the club’s history. It is entirely appropriate that Jack’s name will be forever enshrined at the heart of the club.”