John Goodall was the first player to finish as top scorer in the inaugural League season

 

GOODALL, JOHN (PRESTON NORTH END)

Season: 1888/1889

Goals scored: 20 (out of 74); 12 home, 8 away

Percentage: 27 per cent

Runner-up: Jimmy Ross (Preston North End), 19 goals

Preston were League Champions and FA Cup winners

The top scorer in the inaugural Football League season was Preston North End’s John

Goodall, who in a race to the very end, finished with a goal more than his colleague Jimmy

Ross. Not surprisingly, in a League in which each team played only twenty-two games,

Preston ran away with the title, remaining unbeaten and drawing just four times.

Formed in 1881, Preston was the possibly first club to become wholly professional. Secretary

Major William Sudell had drawn on the example of sides north of the border. England

and Scotland had first faced each other internationally in 1872, and the former even

became the first winners with a 4-2 victory in 1873. After that, the Scots reigned supreme

by deploying their players in a more balanced formation of two full-backs, three half

backs and a five forward line-up. As a result, the emphasis moved away from the dribbling

game, in which players waited until one of their teammates lost the ball, towards a passing

one.

In this, Preston were to prove the undoubted masters and Goodall – known as Johnny All

Good – was the main man, earning him the honour of being known as the first player in England to

truly pioneer scientific football.

The son of a corporal in the Royal Scottish Fusiliers, Goodall was born in Westminster,

London, on 19 June 1863, a quirk of fate giving him the right to play internationally for

England. After leaving school, Goodall worked as an iron turner and played football

whenever possible. He joined Kilmarnock Burns as a fifteen-year-old and made his debut, aged 16,

on 25 May 1880. 

A year later he signed for Kilmarnock Athletic and was to help his side win the Ayrshire Cup and also reach the Scottish FA Cup semi-final. He represented Ayrshire at District Level. 

Four years later, in 1884, he was lured south into English football – professionalism was

just round the corner and thinly disguised financial arrangements were commonplace, and

Goodall joined the Bolton side Great Lever. Playing his first game for the Lancashire club

against Derby County, he scored five goals in a 6-0 victory.

In August Goodall switched his allegiance to Preston North End, where he developed a

wonderful partnership with Jimmy Ross. It was during this season that Goodall first played

for England, scoring on his debut against Wales in a 5-1 victory. He was to play fourteen

times in all, scoring twelve times, including two marvellous efforts when England beat

Scotland 4-1 in April 1892 – his mam (John’s dad having died early in his life) must have been pleased!

Preston had opened the 1888/89 season with a 5-2 defeat of Burnley before a Deepdale

crowd of 5,000. Goodall had the honour of kicking off the game, but had failed to get on the

scoresheet. It didn’t take him long, though, to do so in the next match at Wolverhampton

Wanderers, scoring on 5 minutes. Wolves were well beaten 4-0 by the end. It was clear that

the Lilywhites were already establishing themselves as the side to beat. Derby certainly gave it

a good effort in the fourth game, but 2-0 down just before half-time, Preston fought back to

win 3-2 with Jimmy Ross scoring twice, including an unstoppable shot from 20 yards out.

And it was Ross who proved to be the Preston match-winner the following weekend,

when he became the first man to score four goals in a League game as Stoke were thrashed

7-0. Ross now had nine in the first five games and when he added another against WBA in

a 3-0 victory, he looked set to finish as the top scorer in the first League season.

In the eighth game, after Accrington became the only side during the season to keep

out Preston in the seventh, Goodall scored his first League hat-trick against Wolves. Even

though it’s now well over a hundred years ago, you can still catch a glimpse from the match

report that appeared in the Football Field that evening of Preston’s play and how good

Goodall was.

The first goal on five minutes came from some good passing between Gordon and Ross, and

when the latter crossed Goodall finished the move off in some style bringing a great cheer

from the 5,000 who had paid to see the action.

Leading 2- at half-time, Preston scored soon after the 5 minute break, when ‘Edwards and

Gordon then broke away with the ball to find Goodall who made it 3- … Ross and Gordon

combined to set up Goodall for his second to make it 4-2. The final score was PNE 5 Wolves

2 in what ‘the Football Field’ newspaper reported was “an excellent game.” ’

Goodall now had his shooting boots on, and the following weekend he again hit three as

Notts County were thrashed 7-0 at their Trent Bridge ground.

When Preston had a chance to extract some revenge for Accrington having denied them

victory in the first match that season, they were hanging on to a -0 lead when ‘following

some good passing between Goodall and Thomson the ball found its way to Gordon who

struck a hard shot that Johnny Horne was nowhere near saving.’ Preston was running away

with the League and ended November by beating Bolton 5-2 away. Ross grabbed two in this

game and after fifteen games he had sixteen goals, four in front of Goodall.

Goodall wasn’t finished, though, and some fine passing created the opening goal for him

the following weekend in a 3-0 win against Everton, in which he added his second just before

the end. WBA were then thrashed 5-0 at their Stoney Lane ground, with Goodall and Ross

both hitting two. Five games to go and only two between them, but when Goodall then hit

the only goal in the game against Blackburn Rovers and followed it up with two against

Notts County on 5 January, it pushed him to the top of the scoring charts with nineteen

goals.

There were 15,000, a huge crowd in those days, at Anfield to witness Preston’s penultimate

game of the season. Many were hoping to see Everton become the first side to beat the

League champions and at 0-0 at half time, the game could have gone either way.

However, soon after the break Preston struck and by scoring, Ross drew level with

Goodall. According to the Football Field, the goal came when, ‘Again the Preston forwards

with good passing brought the ball up the field and from a pass by Goodall, immediately

Jimmy Ross scored with a low shot.’

Soon after, Preston made sure of victory when, ‘Goodall again rushed up the centre and

after passing his opponents he lowered the home citadel a second time.’

It also, of course, put Goodall back at the top of the scorers’ chart with twenty and when

both players failed to score in the final League game of the season, a 2-0 victory at Villa Park,

he stayed there in a side that had gone the season unbeaten in the League, winning the title

by eleven points from second-placed Villa.

To top things off Preston won the FA Cup, beating Wolves 3-0 in the Final and thus

winning the competition without conceding a goal. No wonder the team become known as

‘the Invincibles’, and in Goodall they had the ultimate playmaker and goal scorer. Goodall

had scored fifty goals in only fifty-six first-class appearances for Preston. His speed over the

ground, clever footwork, willingness to shoot from any distance and his accuracy in front of

goal made him one of the most accurate marksmen the game of football has ever seen.

Not that such success was enough to keep him at Deepdale, as within weeks he signed

for Derby County. It appears money was the main reason, as along with his brother Archie,

who also signed for Derby at the same time, he was given the tenancy of The Plough pub

on London Road.

Although Derby won no major trophies while Goodall was there, the side earned a

reputation for being the most entertaining in the League, narrowly missing honours on

several occasions. Goodall also acted as a figurehead to the young players, and in particular

to another player who features heavily in this book, Steve Bloomer.

Goodall remained at Derby until 1899, when he moved to New Brighton Tower. He later

joined League side Glossop FC before becoming Watford’s first manager in May

1903, where he continued to play. In 1910 he became player-manager at Racing Club de

Roubaix in France, and finally hung up his boots in 1913, aged fifty, as player-manager of

the Welsh club Mardy. He retired to Hertfordshire and died aged seventy-eight on 20 May

1942.