Longworth Bruce Image 1 Bolton Wanderers 1921

Description

Lanchester, County Durham born wing half Bruce Longworth began his football career with Hopley’s All Blacks prior to the First World War, but after the War he joined First Division Bolton Wanderers withthe resumption of peacetime football in the summer of 1919, making his Football League debut at Burnley that September. It would be his only appearance of the season but from Christmas 1920 he became an established player in The Trotters’ first eleven, as they finished third in the League Championship in 1920-21, and he rarely missed a game in 1921-22.

However in the two seasons that followed he became a fringe performer, and wasn’t selected as Bolton won the FA Cup in 1923, and by the time he joined Sheffield United in the summer of 1924 he had made 82 appearances for The Trotters. His problems were no different at Bramall Lane and he played only one cup tie (in the First Round), and ten League matches, as Sheffield United won the FA Cup in 1925, although he did score his only career goal whilst with The Blades, against Bury in a 3-1 win at Bramall Lane in February 1926.

When he joined Bury in the 1926 close season he had played just 14 matches for Sheffield United, but at Bury he failed to make a single first team appearance, and he moved to non league Darwen a year later, also subsequently playing for Clitheroe in 1928 before his eventual retirement.