Flanders, Fred - A Rams Football Prodigy

FRED FLANDERS - A RAMS FOOTBALL PRODIGY

Our 'Famous Residents' section includes a number of well-known footballers. But it also embraces lesser-known names to which a particular interest or curiosity is attached. Here Peter Seddon adds the Derby County player Fred Flanders - a 'big lad for his age' in his junior years - who was arguably the greatest boy football prodigy ever to emerge from Derbyshire.

Fred Flanders looking confident and composed before the camera. The date is thought to be 1908 - Flanders was then aged 14 and captain of Derby Boys, whose colours he is wearing

Fred Flanders in a studio pose when still in his teens

Fred Flanders' credentials presented in a magazine supplement

Frederick Flanders was born in Derby on 1 January 1894. He was the son of a fomer landlord of the Byron Hotel in Lower Dale Road. Young 'Fred' attended Gerard Street School and there first played football with serious intent.

He was one of those boys who 'shot up' rather ahead of his contemporaries. Nor did he lack girth - several years in advance of reaching his teens he was already 'a big lad for his age'. But solid with it, rather than 'fat'.

These combined physical attributes, allied to reasonable comfort on the ball, gave him a distinct advantage on the field of play. He became a dependable defender - a full-back - whose 'they shall not pass' watchword proved consistently effective against the minnow forwards he towered above.

This brought its rewards before Flanders had advanced beyond his teens.

After the English Schools Football Association was formed in 1904, Derby entered a schools representative side for the first national shield competition in 1905 - the side which became familiarly known as Derby Boys.

The rules stated that players had to be under 14 on 1 September when each season's competition commenced, and Flanders was selected for the inaugural 1904-05 competition shortly before his eleventh birthday.

Birth certifcates had to be presented to the referee before every kick-off, and as Fred Flanders sprouted with each passing season, officials must have given his paperwork particularly close scrutiny.

Flanders played for Derby Boys in the English Schools Shield in four successive seasons - from 1904-05 to 1907-08. And in the last of those, when aged 14, he captained Derby Boys to a memorable final triumph over Oxford Boys, leading the side to a 2-1 victory. The game was played in May 1908 at the neutral venue of Walsall in front of 4,000 spectators.

One hundred years later this remains the only time in the history of that ongoing competition that Derby Boys have been crowned English Schoolboy Champions. Reports of the game described Flanders as 'the biggest and best player on the field' - a photograph of the triumphant Derby Boys side suggests the observation was not lightly made. See it and read about the triumph at Derby Boys - England's Finest Football Team.

Flanders was also recognised at international level. Soon after the first ever schoolboy international game was played in 1907, he was made England Boys captain - this honour was achieved against Wales at Aberdare in that year.

On leaving school he played for the Derby side Shelton United, where he was captain of the reserve side. It therefore came as no surprise when Derby County - then in the Second Division of the Football League - began to take an interest in this 'precocious talent'. They liked what they saw, and signed him in May 1910 a few months after his sixteenth birthday.

Rather more unexpected than the signing itself was the haste with which the Rams manager Jimmy Methven plunged Flanders into his first-team debut.

He was selected for his first game at home to Birmingham City on 15 October 1910. Flanders was then aged 16 years and 287 days - as such he became Derby County's youngest player in League football up to that time.

The team had begun the 1910-11 season rather badly, and Methven's decision (in conjunction with the club committee) to include Flanders in the side was considered controversial. Indeed about a dozen Derby County supporters signed a letter of protest to the selection committee stating in strong terms that the team's position was 'too critical to afford an experiment with so young and inexperienced a player'.

In the event their fears proved unfounded - the cool young Flanders played a commendable game at left-back and Birmingham City were defeated 1-0.

But here the Fred Flanders story departs from the 'fairy tale' one might anticipate. Although a long and impressive career in League football seemed to beckon, Flanders failed to fulfil his early potential. Like many 'big boys for his age', he soon discovered that all his opponents in the adult game had 'caught up' - and with his advantage thus diminished he was rendered a merely competent player rather than an outstanding one.

Fred Flanders played only 16 League and Cup games for the Derby County first team, and was let go in 1912 at the age of 18. He continued to play football, but not at such an elevated level. He first assisted Ilkeston Town, and in August 1913 joined Newport County, who had been formed only the year before.

Flanders spell at Newport County was at the time they played in the Welsh League rather than the Football League, and he left them in October 1920 to join Mansfield Town, another side which had yet to attain their Football League status.

His stay at Mansfield was a fleeting one, and in 1921 he rejoined Newport County, who for the 1921-22 season had been elected to the English Football League for the first time. By such means Flanders achieved a quirky appearances record, for when he played for Newport that season it was his first League game since turning out for Derby County more than 10 years earlier. Football statisticians - ever-excited by the idiosyncratic - consider this incongruous 'gap' to be a rare curiosity worthy of comment.

Flanders' second spell at Newport County lasted just one season - he completed only 13 League appearances before his transfer in June 1922 to Hartlepools United. Again he struggled to make a real impact, adding only 3 League games to his still modest tally during the 1922-23 season.

In the summer of 1923 he again moved on. Still aged only 29, he joined the non-league side Nuneaton Town - and there his football career quietly drew to a close. The 'child prodigy' had made just 29 Football League appearances in a career spanning 13 seasons.

The Fred Flanders story is a classic one of unfulfilled promise - a rather chastening experience which has befallen countless thousands of talented schoolboy footballers throughout the game's history.

Frederick Flanders died in Birmingham in 1967 at the age of 73.

The Fred Flanders story is of course incomplete. Nothing has been unearthed of his personal life. Nor what employment he undertook - for football alone could not sustain him. And was he actively engaged in the First World War? Nor is his exact death date known, or the location of his grave.

The absence of such detail is a pity, for in his own way Fred Flanders is a Derby County legend - so some extra flesh on those substantial bones would be a more fitting tribute.

If anyone can add to the story just click on 'edit' or 'discussion' to contribute.

Pages linking here

Derby Boys - England's Finest Football Team

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