How did the prolific goalscorer come to live in Granity, and how did his cup winner’s medal resurface? Gavin Bertram looks into the story.
Behind an unremarkable headstone at Westport’s Orowaiti Cemetery lies a remarkable story.
The epitaph notes Sergeant Alexander Brown’s service with the Royal Scots Fusiliers, but there are no clues about his storied footballing career.
Interred here is the star goalscorer behind London football club Tottenham Hotspur’s triumph in the 1901 FA Cup.
Known as Sandy Brown, the forward from a Scottish mining background scored in every round of the English knock-out competition.
First played in the 1871-72 season, the knock-out cup is the oldest football competition in the world. This year’s final between Chelsea and Manchester City kicks off at 2am on Sunday.
But one of its great occasions came in 1901, when the FA Cup was displayed in the window of the village store.
Then a gritty coal-mining community, it is now a desolate spot where most of the buildings have been demolished.
Near the Bill Shankly Memorial at Glenbuck Heritage Village is another memorial to the two local heroes who literally brought the FA Cup home.
The ‘‘Two Sandys’’ - Brown and Tait - were central to Spurs’ 1901 cup win, and both were veterans of the famed Glenbuck Cherrypickers junior football club. Brown was so productive a scorer he was called the ‘‘Glenbuck Goalgetter’’.
And Glenbuck became known as ‘‘the nursery of footballers’’, producing many professional footballers. Both Sandys became professional footballers in their teens, before forging careers in England.
Tottenham player/manager John Cameron signed them as he built a powerful team at the turn of the century.
Founded in 1882, the North London club was playing in the Southern League in the 1900-01 season when they won the FA Cup. Spurs remain the only club from outside the league to have won the competition since the English Football League system was introduced in 1888.
In the official Tottenham Hotspur history And the Spurs Go Marching On, author Phil Soar wrote that the 1901 team remains one of the greatest sides in English football history.
Soar noted Brown ‘‘was suddenly to become one of the most talked about centre-forwards of all time ... his career with Spurs was quite astonishing’’.
IT WAS an emotional moment for Sandy Brown’s great-niece when she visited Glenbuck two years ago.
Now living in Brisbane, Shirley Whyte grew up in Granity, on the West Coast. Her mother, Ruby, was the daughter of Brown’s brother and often told stories about her Uncle Sandy.
‘‘It was sad; both my daughter and I had a good cry,’’ she recalls of the Glenbuck visit.
‘‘We didn’t know him as Alexander, and so we were quite confused to start with.’’
Brown was born in Glenbuck on December 21, 1877. Football was one of the few escapes from a life working in the mines.
After playing for Glenbuck, both Sandy and his brother, Tommy, forged professional careers.
In 1896, Brown moved to England, where he turned out for Preston North End, before joining Portsmouth in 1899. Cameron recognised something in Brown and lured him to North London.
‘‘Three seasons with Preston developed him from a raw 11-stone youth into one of the finest of goal-scoring centre-forwards,’’ Julian Holland considered in his 1956 book Spurs.
Tottenham Hotspur came fifth in the 1900-01 Southern League - the third tier of English football. But they went on an unbelievable FA Cup run, progressing against the big clubs of the day.
At home in front of 21,000 spectators at White Hart Lane in the second round, Brown scored both goals in a 2-1 win over reigning cup holders Bury.
He then put one away in each fixture of a 1-1 draw and 3-0 replay win over Reading in the quarterfinal.
The North London side were imperious against West Bromwich Albion in the semifinal, Brown scoring all the goals in a 4-0 triumph - his third a 30-yard screamer.
‘‘It really must be said that the centre-forward made the most of his opportunities,’’ This Sporting Life noted.
The final on April 20 against Sheffield United was played at Crystal Palace. A then world-record crowd of over 110,000 packed the South London ground.
Spurs went a goal down after 10 minutes, but were soon even thanks to a Brown header. He scored again just after halftime to edge the London side ahead.
But a bizarre incident saw the game end 2-2. Somehow a ball that had gone out of play was pronounced a goal by referee Arthur Kingscott.
‘‘Tottenham’s precious lead had vanished into thin air,’’ Julian Holland wrote.
‘‘And there it was to remain.’’
Inconceivably, it was the first FA Cup final to be documented on film. Footage of the ‘goal’ didn’t reflect well on Kingscott.
Replayed a week later at the unlikely venue of Burnden Park in Bolton, the second final attracted only around 20,000 spectators.
In a scrappy game, Spurs again went behind. But three goals in the second period, including a back-header by Brown, sealed their unlikely FA Cup triumph.
It was his 15th goal across the eight games of the cup campaign, and would be the high water mark of his football career. The winning side’s blue and white ribbons were tied to the FA Cup after the 1901 final, in what has become a tradition.
But Brown would soon leave Tottenham, heading back to Portsmouth before playing for Middlesbrough and Luton Town.
In 1904 he played one game for Scotland, against England in the British Home Championship. Brown had also played in a 1902 fixture that was declared unofficial after 25 fans died when the stand collapsed at Glasgow’s Ibrox Park.
While playing for Luton he was landlord of the town’s Dewdrop Inn. There were marital struggles with his wife, Winifred, although details of the relationship are patchy.
Brown would return to Glenbuck, and work at the Grasshill Colliery. A 1915 photo shows the FA Cup winner played for the local ‘‘Glenbuck Ancients’’ football team.
At the advent of World War 1 he joined the Royal Scots Fusiliers. An entry in Andy Mitchell’s book The Men Who Made Scotland notes Brown ‘‘was injured on active service in France in 1916, losing the use of his left arm, but he continued in the regiment as a staff sergeant’’.
Records show he was eligible for the Victory Medal and the British Service Medal. As many records were destroyed during World War 2, Brown may also have been eligible for campaign medals.
Shirley Whyte believes it was because of family that Brown came to live in New Zealand.
With football and the war behind him, in 1922 he followed his brother, Willie, to Granity.
His occupation was listed as ‘‘miner’’, so he had likely recovered from the war injury and perhaps worked at Millerton or Stockton.
Newspapers detail his involvement in the Granity Bowling Club, and Whyte’s mother, Ruby, related that Brown was often at the pub.
‘‘He was a real larrikin,’’ she says.
‘‘And he was a bit of a boozer. He used to ride his bike home from the pub and Mum would have to open the gate for him to try and get through.’’
Brown’s football medals had become a legend in the family. Ruby had long been promised them, but that didn’t happen.
When he died on March 6, 1944, Brown was 66. His funeral was attended by a large gathering of family, friends, returned servicemen and bowling club members.
Whyte says the medals were in the possession of her mother’s brother, before being handed down to his son.
‘‘Mum was very, very bitter about the medals,’’ Whyte relates.
‘‘She’d always been promised them and they meant an awful lot to her.’’
But after Ruby died in 2019, Whyte, brother David and her daughter, Sharlene, were at her late mother’s Christchurch house.
David mentioned a pair of treasured binoculars that had belonged to their cousin, and went to retrieve the box they were in from the solarium.
‘‘The binoculars weren’t there, but lo and behold the box had the medals in it,’’ Whyte marvels.
‘‘We don’t know how they got there. My mum was a nosey-parker, so if someone had put the box there she would have been looking to see what was in it and would have found the medals.’’
As well as the 1901 FA Cup winner’s decoration there is a medal commemorating Brown’s appearance for Scotland, and another for Portsmouth winning the 1902-03 Western League.
Whyte has the medals in Brisbane, and is concerned about what will ultimately happen to them. With no-one beyond her daughter to hand them down to, she would like the medals to go to the museum at Tottenham Hotspur’s huge stadium in North London.
‘‘People keep sending my daughter contacts at the club, but they just don’t answer,’’ Whyte says.
‘‘A friend of mine in England tried to get in touch with them, but he had no luck at all. We’d like to give the medals back because I’m sure they’d like them.’’
• Tottenham Hotspur visit New Zealand to play Auckland FC at Eden Park in Auckland on July 26.
