A lifelong Blackburn Rovers fan has written a new book detailing the life and career of one of the club’s most successful players and managers.
Bob Crompton spent all of his playing career as a defender for Rovers, bar a brief stint at Blackpool during World War I when regional leagues were set up by the Football League.
He made more than 500 appearances for the club, captaining them to league titles in 1912 and 1914, and was the manager that guided them to FA Cup success in 1928.
He died in 1941 of a heart attack during a match in which Blackburn beat local rivals Burnley.
Rovers Till I Die is the “definitive story of a Blackburn legend who achieved his aspirations and more.”
Author Harry Berry, 78, said that he was approached seven or eight years ago to write about Crompton and initially thought it would be hard to find anything out about a man who died in 1941, but came across a lot more than he could have imagined.
He said: “I’ve written books before and about seven or eight years ago a guy rang me up who claimed to be an award-winning football writer. He said he was going to write a book about Bob Crompton and initially proposed that I do the research and he wrote it.
“I thought it was probably impossible to do it for a guy who died in 1941, but I started looking into it and found out so much about him. So much more to him as a man rather than a player.
“He was such a huge figure in football terms that I thought it was rather a shame there was nothing written about him.
“It’s a hobby of mine I’ve done for years and it just fitted in.”
Harry, who is from Withnell but now lives in Eccleston, started work on the project on his own within a year and soon gathered lots of information on Crompton.
He said: “He was captain of England and probably their first professional captain. He was a Blackburn guy who worked as a plumber and made a fortune out of selling patents. He was the first footballer to drive a car and he later went on to manufacture cars himself.
“He became a director of the club, masterminded a cup final win and a promotion. And he was England’s starting right-back for maybe 10 years.”
Harry has written numerous books before, including being commissioned by Rovers to write the club’s centenary history in 1975. For the last two years, he has published statistical work on the club via his Twitter account.
Rovers Till I Die is available to buy online or instore at WHSmith and Waterstones.
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