Abstract
In March 1887, a young man named Arthur Wharton started in goal for Preston North End in a soccer match against Corinthians in London. The match, attended by the Prince of Wales, was played in honor of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. Wharton was no stranger to the spotlight: the previous summer he had won the Amateur Athletic Association’s 100-yard dash in a record-breaking time of 10 seconds. He was dropped from Preston’s roster the next season, but he continued playing with other teams until 1902, when he retired and became a coal miner. A generation later, another young soccer player named Walter Tull impressed top London club Tottenham Hotspur and he was quickly signed to the team. He played there for two seasons before moving on to play for Northampton. However, his promising career was cut short in 1914 when he enlisted to fight in World War I. He became an officer in 1916 and was then killed two years later at the second battle of the Somme (Jenkins, 1990; Vasili, 1996, 1998, and 2000).1
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© 2014 Phillip Janzen
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Janzen, P. (2014). Blurring Touchlines of Empire: The Diasporic Identities of Arthur Wharton and Walter Tull. In: Onwumechili, C., Akindes, G. (eds) Identity and Nation in African Football. Global Culture and Sport . Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137355812_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137355812_2
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