April 5 – The Fresh Prinsep
IN recent years we’ve seen a number of spotty-faced teenagers turn out for England, as the like of Theo Walcott, Micah Richards, Wayne Rooney and Aaron Lennon have managed to focus on their football rather than sleeping until two in the afternoon and worrying if that girl in the year above fancies them.
This recent rash of youngsters in the national team is a relatively new thing though, as the record for England’s youngest ever player stood for almost 125 after 17-year-old James Prinsep became England’s most junior player today in 1879.
The Three Lions’ opponents that day, as they usually were in the bludgeoning days of international football, were Scotland as the old rivals met for the ninth time.
The game took place at the Kennington Oval in London and was supposed to have been played on four days earlier, but was put back after heavy snowfall.
Prinsep was one of nine new caps that day, at age of 17 years and 252 days and he can’t have played in too many more thrilling games.
England took an early lead courtesy of Sheffield Wednesday’s outside left Billy Mosforth, but the Scots came roaring back, bagging four goals before half-time to take a commanding 4-1 half-time lead in front of a crowd of 4,500.
Showing a backbone that has been all-too lacking at various points over the subsequent 130 years, England immediately got started on one of their greatest ever comebacks, with a Charlie Bambridge brace inspiring a 5-4 win for the English.
Prinsep, meanwhile, would not go on to represent his country again, although he kept the record as the youngest player until Wayne Rooney made his debut against Australia in 2003, aged 17 years and 111 days.
Just a week earlier Prinsep had set another record that would stand 120-odd years, as he was the youngest player to play in the FA Cup Final, when he turned out for Clapham Rovers against Old Etonians. His Rovers side went down 1-0, but his record lasted until 2004, when Millwall’s Simon Weston was an FA Cup Final substitute against Manchester United.
Prinsep would go onto serve his country in the army, seeing action in the Mahdist War in Sudan, where he would receive the Albert Medal for saving a fellow soldier from drowning. In 1895 he was killed in action at the age of just 34.
See some old-timer England-Scotland footage below, but alas, not from Prinsep’s big day and see what else was going happening today here.
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