Top scorers: only one Nottingham Forest player has finished top scorer in the top division: Enoch West and who was later banned for life
Season: 1907/08
Goals scored: 26 (out of 59); 19 home, 7 away
Percentage: 44.6 per cent
Runners-up: Sandy Turnbull (Manchester United) and Albert
Shepherd (Bolton Wanderers), with 25 goals each
Forest finished ninth
Enoch ‘Knocker’
West was born in Hucknall Torkard, Nottinghamshire on 31 March 1886.
He worked as a coal-miner and played for Hucknall
Constitutionals until signing for
Sheffield United in November 1903. He failed to make the
first team at Bramall Lane and
returned to the Constitutionals until June 1905, when he
joined Nottingham Forest.
In his first two seasons at The City Ground, utility forward
West scored a total of twenty-eight
goals, playing an important role in helping Forest win the
Second Division championship.
In 1907/08, he was quite outstanding while occupying all
five front-line positions and
besides being Forest’s leading marksman again, he also
topped the First Division scoring
charts with twenty-six goals in thirty-five games.
Powerful in all aspects of forward play, his total included
four goals in a 4-1 home win over
Sunderland in November, and hat-tricks in a splendid 6-0
victory over Chelsea and in the
3-3 draw at Blackburn Rovers.
Forest fielded an unchanged team in their first eight games
of the season, winning three
of them, including a 3-1 opener against Liverpool and the
demolition of hapless Chelsea in
late September.
West, in fact, occupied the left wing position in all of
these games. Arthur Green led the
attack, and Tom Marrison and Grenville Morris were the
inside forwards, with Bill Hooper
on the right.
It was the dashing Hooper who helped set up two of West’s three goals against the
London club, but after that each of the other forwards and
more assisted West on his quest
for goals.
After scoring against Blackburn Rovers (won 3-2) and
Birmingham (1-1) West, who had
by now been switched to inside left, was in great form with
a booming four-timer against
Sunderland, two of his goals being struck with deliberate
right-foot drives after some smart
build-up play involving Morris and left-winger Alf Spouncer,
who had returned to the side
following a lengthy injury.
After a goal in each of his next two games –
in a 3-1 defeat at Arsenal and a 2-2 home draw
with Sheffield Wednesday – West
missed two easy chances in a 3-0 defeat at Bristol City
before scoring in a 2-0 win over arch-rivals Notts County.
He took a battering from some
sturdy defenders in a 4-2 defeat at Manchester City, but his
well-taken effort against Preston
in the next game helped salvage a point from a 2-2 draw.
Out of sorts in a 4-0 drubbing at Villa Park on Christmas
Day, West netted both goals
in the return fixture twenty-four hours later, which
finished 2-2, but then he was rather
frustrated as he failed to hit the net in four of the next
five matches, owning up to missing
three clear-cut chances in a 0-0 draw at Anfield.
That disappointing display against Liverpool was soon
forgotten, however, as West
returned to form with a wonderful treble against Blackburn in
early February, one of his
shots almost ripping a hole in Rovers’net!
During the last months of the season West suffered a few
injuries, missing three games.
He scored only five goals in his last nine outings, two
coming in a 3-0 home win over Bristol
City and a beauty in a 2-0 win against Manchester United.
Despite West’s bold efforts, Forest
managed only ninth place in the First Division
– reasonable enough, one felt – but over the next two seasons they slipped even lower,
finishing fourteenth both times.
During the 1908/09 and 1909/10 campaigns, West netted
forty-four goals for Forest,
ending his five-year stay at The City Ground with exactly 100
to his credit in 183 competitive
games. He was one of three players who scored hat-tricks in
a record-equalling First Division
victory of 12-0 over Leicester Fosse in April 1909, and he
also represented the Football
League.
In June 1910, West, who was still only twenty-four, moved to
Manchester United to
replace Jimmy Turnbull. He had a great first season, scoring
nineteen goals in thirty-five
games. He formed a terrific partnership with Sandy Turnbull
and they netted more than
half of the team’s goals.
On the last Saturday of the season, League leaders Aston
Villa lost at Liverpool while with
West outstanding, United thrashed Sunderland 5-1 to clinch
the title.
In the 1911-12 season, West was once again leading scorer
with twenty-three goals.
However, his fellow strikers, Sandy Turnbull and Harold
Halse, were disappointing and
Manchester United finished thirteenth.
West again topped the scoring charts in 1912/13 with
twenty-one League goals. However,
he lost form in 1913/14, scoring just six times, and was
under par again in 1914/15 with just
nine goals.
After Manchester United had defeated Liverpool 2-0 on 2
April 1915, certain bookmakers
claimed they had taken many bets on the 7-1 odds offered on
a 2-0 United victory. They
suspected the game had been fixed and pointed out that late
on, Liverpool’s Jackie Sheldon
had missed a penalty. The bookmakers refused to pay out and
offered a £50 reward for
information that would unmask the conspirators.
The Sporting Chronicle newspaper took up the story
and claimed to have discovered
evidence that players on both sides had combined to concoct
a 2-0 scoreline. The newspaper
argued that some of the players had large bets on the
result.
The Football League investigation that followed reported in
December 1915 and concluded
that, ‘A considerable amount of
money changed hands by betting on the match and ... some
of the players profited thereby.’
Three Manchester United players were banned for life,
including West who, in fact, was
the only one to play in the match. Sandy Turnbull and Arthur
Whalley were the others.
The same sentence was imposed on four Liverpool players – Jackie Sheldon, Tom Fairfoul,
Tommy Miller and Bob Pursell. An eighth player, Laurence
Cook, who played for Stockport
County, was also convicted of being a member of the betting
ring.
It was suggested that if the men joined the armed forces,
their punishment would be
rescinded. All the men, except West, who protested his
innocence, signed up. After the
war, six of the men were allowed to continue playing in the
Football League. The exception
was Sandy Turnbull, who had been killed on the Western Front
in 1917. Arthur Whalley
was seriously wounded at Passchendale, but recovered to play
in twenty-three games in the
1919/20 season.
West contested the sentence several times in court, but the
ban was only lifted in 1945 as
part of a general amnesty, by which time he was fifty-nine
years old. He eventually died in
September 1965.
NB: An accomplished sportsman, West also won medals as a
track athlete and at billiards,
finishing runner-up in the Professional Footballers’ Charity
Billiards tournament in
1915.
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