Alexander Leake (11 July 1871 – 29 March 1938), known as Alex or Alec Leake, was an English professional
footballer who won five
caps for his country and made 407 appearances in
the Football League playing as a
half back for
Small Heath,
Aston Villa
Aston Villa Football Club is a professional football club based in Aston, Birmingham, England. The club competes in the , the top tier of the English football league system. Founded in 1874, they have played at their home ground, Villa Park ...
and
Burnley. After retiring from playing he took up coaching, both with professional clubs and at school level. He was a cousin of fellow Small Heath and
England forward
Forward is a relative direction, the opposite of backward.
Forward may also refer to:
People
* Forward (surname)
Sports
* Forward (association football)
* Forward (basketball), including:
** Point forward
** Power forward (basketball)
** Sm ...
Jimmy Windridge
James Edwin Windridge (21 October 1882 – 23 September 1939) was an English footballer who played as an inside forward. He made more than 250 appearances in the Football League for Small Heath/Birmingham, Chelsea and Middlesbrough, and played e ...
.
Biography
Leake was born in
Small Heath, Birmingham. After leaving school he trained as a
blacksmith with Hoskins & Sewell, manufacturers of metal bedsteads, in the
Bordesley district of Birmingham, and played for the works football team. He later helped
Old Hill Wanderers win the championship of the
Birmingham & District League in the
1893–94 season. His success with Old Hill did not go unnoticed, and he signed for
Small Heath, newly promoted to the
Football League First Division
The Football League First Division was a division of the Football League in England from 1888 until 2004. It was the top division in the English football league system from the season 1888–89 until 1991–92, a century in which the First ...
, in July 1894.
Leake made his Small Heath debut in October 1895 at
left half
A midfielder is an outfield position in association football.
Midfielders may play an exclusively defensive role, breaking up attacks, and are in that case known as defensive midfielders. As central midfielders often go across boundarie ...
, but from midway through that season (in which the club were
relegated) for the following four years he rarely missed a game at centre-half. He was soon appointed
captain
Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...
. When he did suffer an injury early in the
1899–1900 season,
inside forward Walter Wigmore was tried at centre-half, and by the time Leake regained fitness, his position was taken. He played the remainder of his Small Heath career at left-half or occasionally inside-left. He helped the club gain promotion back to the First Division in 1901, but left at the end of the
1901–02 season when they were relegated again. During this season he played in an
England trial match and with clubmate
Sid Wharton played for an England XI in an unofficial international against
Germany. In a 1901 profile of the Small Heath club and players in the ''
Daily Express
The ''Daily Express'' is a national daily United Kingdom middle-market newspaper printed in tabloid format. Published in London, it is the flagship of Express Newspapers, owned by publisher Reach plc. It was first published as a broadsheet i ...
'',
C.B. Fry wrote:
He joined
Aston Villa
Aston Villa Football Club is a professional football club based in Aston, Birmingham, England. The club competes in the , the top tier of the English football league system. Founded in 1874, they have played at their home ground, Villa Park ...
in July 1902, when he was 31, and stayed five years. In his first season the club were runners-up in the First Division, and in 1905 he played in their
1905 FA Cup Final team which beat
Newcastle United
Newcastle United Football Club is an English professional football club, based in Newcastle upon Tyne, that plays in the Premier League – the top flight of English football. The club was founded in 1892 by the merger of Newcastle East End ...
2–0. While with Aston Villa Leake won five official caps for England, making his international debut at the age of 32 on 12 March 1904 in a 3–1 win against
Ireland in
Belfast.
Leake found himself unwittingly at the centre of one of the great scandals of English football. In the last League game of the
1904–05
Nineteen or 19 may refer to:
* 19 (number), the natural number following 18 and preceding 20
* one of the years 19 BC, AD 19, 1919, 2019
Films
* ''19'' (film), a 2001 Japanese film
* ''Nineteen'' (film), a 1987 science fiction film
Music ...
season,
Manchester City
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The tw ...
needed to beat Aston Villa to win the title. It was a spiteful game, and he had been involved in confrontations, both physical and verbal, with opponents. Afterwards Leake, who had captained the side, claimed that City's
Billy Meredith had offered him a bribe of £10 for his team to
throw the match. Meredith was found guilty by
the Football Association, fined, and suspended from all football for 18 months. Because his club refused to help him financially, Meredith made public
the illegal payments Manchester City were making to their players. An FA investigation resulted in life bans for directors, long suspensions for players, and the club being forced to sell its playing staff.
An Aston Villa match programme of 1906 describes him as:
Burnley manager
Spen Whittaker took him to the club in December 1907, by which time he was 36 years old. He stayed with them a further two-and-a-half years, playing a significant part in building a team for the future. His arrival has been described thus:
When Burnley were promoted to the First Division in 1913, Leake was long gone, but he played his part. At the celebration dinner, the club chairman commented that:
In 1910 he returned to
the Midlands and played for one season with
Wednesbury Old Athletic
Wednesbury Old Athletic, often referred to as W.O.A.C., was an English association football club based in Wednesbury, West Midlands (Staffordshire at the time). There were three clubs that had this name.
Original club
The first began life as t ...
, newly elected to the Birmingham & District League. He then took up posts as trainer with
Crystal Palace,
Merthyr Town, and
Walsall, and also coached at school level.
Leake died in his native Birmingham at the age of 66.
Honours
Old Hill Wanderers
*
Birmingham & District League champions
1894
Events January–March
* January 4 – A military alliance is established between the French Third Republic and the Russian Empire.
* January 7 – William Kennedy Dickson receives a patent for motion picture film in the United S ...
Small Heath
*
Second Division promotion
1900–01
Aston Villa
*
First Division runners up
1902–03
*
FA Cup winners
1905
As the second year of the massive Russo-Japanese War begins, more than 100,000 die in the largest world battles of that era, and the war chaos leads to the 1905 Russian Revolution against Nicholas II of Russia (Shostakovich's 11th Symphony i ...
Wednesbury Old Athletic
* Wednesbury Charity Cup joint winners 1911
References
General
*
* For league statistics and clubs played for:
* For clubs' league positions:
* For Wednesbury Old Athletic information:
Specific
External links
*
Profileat Aston Villa Player Database.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Leake, Alex
1871 births
People from Small Heath, Birmingham
Footballers from Birmingham, West Midlands
1938 deaths
English footballers
Association football wing halves
England international footballers
Coventry City F.C. players
Old Hill Wanderers F.C. players
Birmingham City F.C. players
Aston Villa F.C. players
Burnley F.C. players
Wednesbury Old Athletic F.C. players
English Football League players
English Football League representative players
FA Cup Final players