Colin Booth

[roversdude]

Former Wolves and Rovers player has passed away aged 90 RIP

[Alickismyhero]

Very sad, I have very happy memories of his time at Donny.

RIP my friend, RIP

[selby]

  If not the best definitely one of our best finishers of all time to play with the club.
  When King Alick broke his leg in that game playing for England at Bristol Collin came on as the substitute to replace him, he might even have been the first England substitute, definitely one of the first.

[BobG]

I was just going to ask, Selby, did they have substitutes back then? My old Dad used to tell me about matches where some crock would be stuck out on a wing to hobble around for the rest of the match.

Were subs in international games introduced before they arrived for league games?

Cheers

BobG

[ForsolongaRover]

  If not the best definitely one of our best finishers of all time to play with the club.
  When King Alick broke his leg in that game playing for England at Bristol Collin came on as the substitute to replace him, he might even have been the first England substitute, definitely one of the first.

I didn’t know that! I’m not sure his dependability was truly recognised at the time. Coming from a First Division club we seemed to assume he would almost automatically finish almost every scoring opportunity he would get in our level, but scoring goals is not that much easier when you stepped down a level or two as we have seen from Billy Sharp. It was almost as though he was taken for granted. My memories of him are that he always got his head over the ball and kept the ball low. A young nephew of mine used to do “pretend” commentaries on the matches which would end with “Booth making no mistake with the finish”!

It’s always good to see a footballer making it to a ripe old age too!

[graingrover]

I had never heard of some of the adjectives used to describe him when he came to town . Unfortunately, he was a one-man show in a poor team.What a scorer , 57 goals in 88 matches for Rovers ..very prolific

[idler]

A joy to watch. Very fast and clinical. I was gutted when he left and went to Oxford.

[selby]

  The first substitutes I am aware of were in international friendlies
 first just one then extended to two.
  Just when they were introduced to competitive games and what competitions in I have no idea.

[BobG]

Ok. Cheers Selby.

I was curious because I remember the idea of subs being introduced in league games, but given my memory only goes back to around the early mid 60's and Aleck smashed his leg in 1956, I have always assumed that when he went off England were down to 10 men.

If there were subs in international games in 1956 then they predated subs in league games by quite a long time - which feels a bit odd to me.

BobG

[Pintolager]

https://www.soccerhistory.co.uk/a-history-of-substitutions

[roversdude]

Sure DW will remember Colin

[BobG]

Thank you Pint. Sadly, the article doesn't mention substitutes in international matches.

So it's over to Wolfie.
BobG

[idler]

I think Keith Ripley replaced Laurie Sheffield at Southport away 1965 as our first sub.  It was our third match and after two 4-0 wins at home we lost 2-1 I think.

[drfchound]

Colin Booth scored the first goal by a Rovers player that I saw.

[selby]

  Bob, the first international game I saw at Wembley was England v Yugoslavia with Duncan Edwards, Byrne, and Tommy Taylor Busby Babes playing.
  Tommy Taylor came on for Tom Finney who got injured and scored two goals that day as a substitute, so in friendly internationals they were common use in the late 1950's.
  The right back that day was Geoff Hall from Birmingham City who died of Polio shortly after, so a lot of the heart of that team coming up to the 1958 world cup was ripped out of what was one of our strongest sides ever.

[Donnywolf]

Sure DW will remember Colin

Absolutely and as Idler said , gutted when he left for Oxford