Joseph Robinson (4 March 1919 – 12 July 1991) was an English

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

goalkeeper In many team sports which involve scoring goals, the goalkeeper (sometimes termed goaltender, netminder, GK, goalie or keeper) is a designated player charged with directly preventing the opposing team from scoring by blocking or intercepting o ...

. He played for

Blackpool Blackpool is a seaside resort in Lancashire, England. Located on the North West England, northwest coast of England, it is the main settlement within the Borough of Blackpool, borough also called Blackpool. The town is by the Irish Sea, betw ...

in their appearance in the

1948 FA Cup Final The 1948 FA Cup Final was contested by Manchester United and Blackpool at Wembley Stadium on 24 April 1948. United, who had not appeared in an FA Cup Final for 39 years, won 4–2, with two goals from Jack Rowley and one apiece from Stan Pearson ...

against

Manchester United 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 City of Salford, Salford to ...

Playing career

Hartlepools United

Born in

Morpeth Morpeth may refer to: *Morpeth, New South Wales, Australia ** Electoral district of Morpeth, a former electoral district of the Legislative Assembly in New South Wales * Morpeth, Ontario, Canada * Morpeth, Northumberland, England, UK ** Morpeth (UK ...

Northumberland Northumberland () is a county in Northern England, one of two counties in England which border with Scotland. Notable landmarks in the county include Alnwick Castle, Bamburgh Castle, Hadrian's Wall and Hexham Abbey. It is bordered by land on ...

, Robinson began his career at

Third Division North The Third Division North of the Football League was a tier in the English football league system from 1921 to 1958. It ran in parallel with the Third Division South with clubs elected to the League or relegated from a higher division allocated to ...

side

Hartlepools United Hartlepool United Football Club is a professional association football club based in Hartlepool, County Durham, England. The team competes in League Two, the fourth tier of the English football league system. They were founded in 1908 as Har ...

Blackpool

Robinson joined First Division side Blackpool in 1947. After He made his

Football League The English Football League (EFL) is a league of professional football clubs from England and Wales. Founded in 1888 as the Football League, the league is the oldest such competition in the world. It was the top-level football league in Engla ...

debut for them on 17 January 1948, in a 1–1 draw with

Wolverhampton Wanderers Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club (), commonly known as Wolves, is a professional football club based in Wolverhampton, England, which compete in the . The club has played at Molineux Stadium since moving from Dudley Road in 1889. The club's ...

Molineux Stadium Molineux Stadium ( ) in Wolverhampton, West Midlands, England, has been the home ground of Premier League club Wolverhampton Wanderers since 1889. The first stadium built for use by a Football League club, it was one of the first British grounds ...

, replacing

Jock Wallace John Martin Bokas Wallace (6 September 1935 – 24 July 1996) was a Scottish professional footballer and manager. Wallace played as a goalkeeper, and has the unique distinction of being the only player ever to play in the English, Welsh and Sco ...

for the second half of the 1947–48 season. He kept four successive

clean sheet In team sports, a shutout ( US) or clean sheet ( UK) is a game in which one team prevents the other from scoring any points. While possible in most major sports, they are highly improbable in some sports, such as basketball. Shutouts are usuall ...

s in the club's

FA Cup The Football Association Challenge Cup, more commonly known as the FA Cup, is an annual knockout football competition in men's domestic English football. First played during the 1871–72 season, it is the oldest national football competi ...

run that season, which took them to the final at

Wembley Wembley () is a large suburbIn British English, "suburb" often refers to the secondary urban centres of a city. Wembley is not a suburb in the American sense, i.e. a single-family residential area outside of the city itself. in north-west Londo ...

, where they lost 2–4 to Manchester United. Robinson's appearance in the final came after only seventeen games for Blackpool. Robinson played in the first eight League games of the 1948–49 campaign before being sold to

Hull City Hull City Association Football Club is a professional Association football, football club based in Kingston upon Hull, Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, England, that compete in the . They have played home games at the MKM Stadium since moving ...

. He had made a total of 25 League appearances for Blackpool, and was succeeded in ''the Seasiders''' goal by

George Farm George Neil Farm (13 July 1924 – 18 July 2004) was a Scottish professional football goalkeeper and manager. Born in Slateford, a suburb of Edinburgh, Farm represented his country on ten occasions, the last three of which occurred after a ga ...

Hull City

Robinson moved across

the Pennines The Pennines (), also known as the Pennine Chain or Pennine Hills, are a range of uplands running between three regions of Northern England: North West England on the west, North East England and Yorkshire and the Humber on the east. Commonl ...

to join

in 1948, helping them to win the Third Division North title, and with it promotion to the

Second Division In sport, the Second Division, also called Division 2 or Division II is usually the second highest division of a league, and will often have promotion and relegation with divisions above and below. Following the rise of Premier League style compet ...

in the 1948–49 season. In five years with ''the Tigers'', he made seventy League appearances.

Managerial career

Robinson had a brief career as a

player-manager A player-coach (also playing coach, captain-coach, or player-manager) is a member of a sports team who simultaneously holds both playing and coaching duties. A player-coach may be a head coach or an assistant coach. They may make changes to the sq ...

. He was in charge of

non-League Non-League football describes football leagues played outside the top leagues of a country. Usually, it describes leagues which are not fully professional. The term is primarily used for football in England, where it is specifically used to de ...

side Wisbech Town between 1953 and 1956.

Honours

*Hull City **

champion: 1948–49.

Post-retirement

Death

Robinson died on 12 July 1991, at the age of 72.

Theft

In January 2010, Robinson's FA Cup runners-up medal was stolen in a

burglary Burglary, also called breaking and entering and sometimes housebreaking, is the act of entering a building or other areas without permission, with the intention of committing a criminal offence. Usually that offence is theft, robbery or murder ...

from his son, Keith's house in

Lower Withington Lower Withington is a civil parish and village in the unitary authority of Cheshire East and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. At the 2001 census, it had a total population of 492. It contains a tin tabernacle church and a brick-buil ...

Cheshire Cheshire ( ) is a ceremonial and historic county in North West England, bordered by Wales to the west, Merseyside and Greater Manchester to the north, Derbyshire to the east, and Staffordshire and Shropshire to the south. Cheshire's county t ...

References

External links

*
Robinson's stats at Blackpool
{{DEFAULTSORT:Robinson, Joe 1919 births 1991 deaths English men's footballers English football managers Men's association football goalkeepers Hartlepool United F.C. players Blackpool F.C. players Hull City A.F.C. players Wisbech Town F.C. players Sportspeople from Morpeth, Northumberland Footballers from Northumberland