William ‘Fatty’ Foulke looks like he’s playing a scene straight out of professional wrestling’s greatest playbook. Tom Kirkham, a man who has just refereed what is arguably the biggest game of his life, is cowering in fear, locked inside a broom cupboard. Ironically, he’s locked himself in there. Mainly due to the naked, six-foot-nine, 24 stone (336lbs) behemoth of a man trying to reach him by ripping the door off of its hinges for a decision he’d made about 10 minutes before. It takes multiple F.A officials to even stop him from tearing the door down, let alone calm down but he finally relents – and walks back into his team’s changing room, still unclothed.
That was who William ‘Fatty’ Foulke was.
The origins of William ‘Fatty’ Foulke
Born in the small Shropshire town of Dawley on April 12th, 1874, ‘Fatty’ Foulke first found his hand in football playing for his works team, the Blackwell Colliery – a team made of miners who worked down in the dim and dangerous coal mines of West England. When he was just 19, he was scouted by top clubs in the country – mainly those in the surrounding area with the Derby Daily Telegraph describing his skills as certainly having “the making of a first-class custodian”.
His shot-stopping ability allowed him to be scouted by Sheffield United who bought him from Blackwell for £20 (approximately £1200 today) in 1894 where he’d play a majority of his career. In his maiden season with the South Yorkshire club, he played all but one game and would miss just three first team games throughout the next four seasons.
In 1895, Scottish Sport praised Foulke heavily after a league game against Preston North End noting that “in Foulke, Sheffield United have a goalkeeper who will take a lot of beating. He is one of those lengthy individuals who can take a seat on the crossbar whenever he chooses, and shows little of the awkwardness usually characteristic of big men.”
The 1896-97 season was Foulke’s best yet, with the Blades finishing runners-up in the league to Midlands club Aston Villa who would win the double that season. Foulke caused quite a stir amongst fans at the time, having dribbled the ball out to the halfway line – something which was never seen by a goalkeeper at the time considering the way players could barge each other off the ball. Foulke was different however, at this point in his career being six-foot-two and whilst he was certainly much slimmer than he would end up in his later playing days, opponents would still struggle to get the ball off of him.
World-renowned and legendary cricketer C.B. Fry, who also played professional football for Southampton, once spoke of Foulke as if he was some immovable object stating, “Foulke is no small part of a mountain. You cannot bundle him.”
The Sheffield United days
Only conceding 29 goals across the season, which would give Sheffield United the best defensive record in the country, Foulke would receive his first and only England cap against Wales in 1897, despite England taking a 4-0 victory. At the time, Southampton goalkeeper John Robinson was starting between the sticks, but the Football Association was well known for disliking Foulke.
At the time, the Sheffield Daily Telegraph wrote, “It is a pity that Foulke cannot curb the habit of pulling down the crossbar, which on Saturday ended in his breaking it in two. On form, he is well in the running for international honours, but the Selection Committee are sure to prefer a man who plays the game to one who unnecessarily violates the spirit of the rules.”
The next season, Foulke would go onto win the First Division in the 1897-98 season, and over the next few years came two F.A Cup wins in 1899 and 1902. However, with trophies came weight. And the nicknames.
With ‘Fatty’ and ‘Colossus’ being just two of the many he was given, Foulke had put on over eight stone in between the two F.A Cup wins. However, he was still a great goalkeeper in his own right – and a great sportsman at that, having played cricket for Derby in 1900. His average score was 10.83 with his biggest innings being 53 against Essex at Leyton.
“Any footballer that can win two FA Cups, a league title and play for his country in a little over a decade speaks for itself,” Sheffield United historian John Garrett when speaking to BBC Sport about Foulke’s career. “I’ve seen reports describing him as ‘as big as a mountain, as agile as a cat’.
“It is fair to argue that Foulke was one of football’s first real superstars. There was a showman aspect about him. You think of your Paul Gascoignes with their flamboyance or your mavericks of the 1970s like Tony Currie or Stan Bowles.
“Ernest Needham, a Sheffield United player who was revered by everyone in football as arguably the best half-back who ever played the game, said Foulke was far and away the best goalkeeper he had ever seen or played with.”
By 1903, he was well over 20 stone and was said to be able to punch the ball from his own area further than some outfield players could kick it. With his wages being increased to £4 a week (approximately £300 today), you would think Foulke would be worth the money. Well, not quite. The extra weight made it so he would struggle to get down to block low shots, with him clearly not being as agile as he had been 10 years prior.
Once teams found this out, he was fair game. Whilst he still couldn’t be bundled into the net by forwards – mainly due to his frame -, he was still susceptible to low shots and was duly punished – in one game, he let seven past him in a heavy loss to Bury. He still had glimpses of his old self however. One example comes from a 1904 game reported on by the Athletics News which said, “He doesn’t claim a foul, but simply places that paw of his on the shoulder of the charging gentleman in a most fatherly manner, and pushed him aside with an expression of get on one side, little boy”.
Another newspaper described a match against Bolton Wanderers in March, 1904 with, “Stokes rushed past both backs and seemed likely to dribble through, but the mountain of flesh which is posed by Foulke hove in sight, and appeared to paralyse the little Wanderer, who simply shot into the hands of the leviathan.”
Embed from Getty ImagesHis transfer to Chelsea
The next season, he’d leave the Blades after 11 seasons after he wouldn’t take a pay cut. However, despite being officially the heaviest player to have ever played first-class football, one team would snap him up – perhaps for more than what he was worth – and whilst his ability as a goalkeeper declined, his celebrity got stronger.
Foulke had joined a young Sheffield United side at the age of 19 and had helped the Yorkshire team rise up to the top of English football. Now, he was in the position to do it again, this time in West London for a small, newly-founded team called Chelsea. Arriving in 1905 for £50 (approximately £4000 today), Foulke was Chelsea’s first ever goalkeeper for their first professional season.
The Blues had just joined the Football League and despite his now-grossly-overweight nature, Foulke was still playing at a decent level. In their first season, Chelsea finished third in the league behind the goals of top scorer Frank Pearson and young Scottish player-manager John Tait Robertson, just two points off of promotion to England top tier.
It would be at Chelsea where some of Foulke’s greatest stories would be made. As a man who would pick up strikers who angered him and throw them into his goal, it should come as no surprise there are tales of him turning up to breakfast before the rest of the starting XI and finishing each and every plate of food before the rest could even turn up.
Foulke also managed to save ten penalties in his only season with the Blues and is arguably the man who created ball boys. With Foulke pulling great crowds, opposition forwards already found it tough to finish past the goalkeeper without the noisy stands. To put them off even further, the Blues usually put two young boys behind the goals to distract them, as well as to return the ball quickly to the larger-than-life Foulke. Leaving Chelsea in 1906 to be closer to his family back up in the north of England, he transferred to Bradford City for £50 where he’d spend one more season before hanging up his boots.
In this final season, it’s been said that whilst playing against Accrington Stanley in February 1907, Foulke’s shirt clashed with the red of Accrington and due to no-one being able to find a shirt large enough to fit him, he played wrapped in a bedsheet from a nearby house. Bradford won the game 1-0 and Foulke didn’t dive during the match, so he kept a ‘clean sheet’. It was during this game that he snapped a crossbar in two causing the match to be stopped.
After his retirement, ‘Fatty’ Foulke opened up a beer house in Sheffield and was said to walk around town with his F.A Cup winners medals around his neck on a gigantic homemade chain. Foulke died of cirrhosis in 1916, nine years after his football retirement.
Whether these incredible stories are fact, fiction or a mixture of both, there’s no doubt that Chelsea’s first ever goalkeeper was an incredible man – and a true person of Foulke-lore.
Written by Oliver Jones (@Oliver_OJ_Jones)
Edited by Tom Coley (@tomcoley49)
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