Arthur Woodruff

Last updated : 01 July 2013 By Tony Scholes

Date and Place of Birth

12th April 1913 - BARNSLEY

died 5th January 1983

 

Transfers to and from Burnley

from BRADFORD CITY - July 1936

to WORKINGTON TOWN - July 1952

 

First and Last Burnley Games

PLYMOUTH ARGYLE (h) - 14th September 1936

 

CHELSEA (a) - 19th April 1952

 

Other Clubs

HUDDERSFIELD TOWN, HALIFAX TOWN, BRADFORD CITY

----------------------------------------

WORKINGTON TOWN

 

 

Burnley Career Stats

 

Season League   FA Cup   League Cup   Others   Total  
                     
  apps gls apps gls apps gls apps gls apps gls
1936/37 37 - 3 - - - - - 40 -
1937/38 21 - - - - - - - 21 -
1938/39 37 - 1 - - - - - 38 -
1945/46 - - 2 - - - - - 2 -
1946/47 40 - 9 - - - - - 49 -
1947/48 35 - 1 - - - - - 36 -
1948/49 19 - 1 - - - - - 20 -
1949/50 32 - 3 - - - - - 35 -
1950/51 37 - 1 - - - - - 38 -
1951/52 13 - - - - - - - 13 -
                     
Total 271 - 21 - - - - - 292 -

 

Profile by Tony Scholes

 

In the summer of 1936, Burnley, looking for defensive recruits, brought Yorkshireman Arthur Woodruff to Turf Moor. The Barnsley born Woodruff had previously played for Huddersfield and Halifax before spending the 1935/36 season with Bradford City.

He was 23 years of age but was still to break into the first team at any club although he didn't have to wait to much longer to get his first team debut. He started the season in the reserves but was given a first team call for the fifth game of the season, a home fixture against Plymouth.

He came in at centre half for Bob Johnson. He helped Burnley keep a clean sheet in a 2-0 win and stayed in the side for the rest of season, missing only one of the remaining 38 games. Injury curtailed his appearances in the next season but he was a regular again in 1938/39 season, the last full season in English football for some time.

Like many other players, a large slice of Woodruff's career was taken away by the second world war. He was 26 when war broke out and by the time league football resumed in 1946 he had passed his 33rd birthday, an age when most professional footballers of the time had called it a day.

That was definitely not the case for Woodruff. He'd continued to play for Burnley in the war years and was in the team that returned to FA Cup action in 1945/46 season.

Back in the last pre-war season he'd played a handful of games at right back and that's where he was under new manager Cliff Britton as the first post-war season of 1946/47 got underway. Things had changed. Only four other members of the team had played in the team pre-war. Supporters of the time were surprised that Woodruff remained and assumed he was about to play out his last season.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. He missed only two games in what proved to be a triumphant return season to competitive football at Turf Moor as we clinched promotion to the First Division and reached the FA Cup Final only to lose to Charlton 1-0 at Wembley with a goal at the end of extra time.

And so, when we travelled to Portsmouth in August 1947 it was a First Division debut for Woodruff at 34 and again he was first choice, although a year later there was a threat was on the horizon with a challenger for his place.

He kicked off the 1948/49 season in the team but played only five times before he was replaced by Joe Loughran. He found it difficult during that season. He played in only 19 of our league games and he had to move back to his old position of centre half to get ten of those appearances.

Loughran was in the team at the beginning of the 1949/50 season, but only for three games when Woodruff came back. He held his place for the remainder of the season, the next season too and was still first choice right back at the start of the 1951/52 season.

He played twelve of the first fifteen games before finding another competitor for the right back berth. This time it was Jock Aird who had been at Burnley for three seasons without having made a breakthrough.

This time there was to be no way back for Woodruff who played only one more game for the club. Months after his previous appearance he was recalled for the second last game of the season at Chelsea where we suffered a 4-1 defeat.

He'd played a total of 292 League and FA Cup games for Burnley and that last appearance at Stamford Bridge came exactly one week after his 39th birthday, a remarkable and rare achievement in the 1950s for any footballer, and that total could so easily have been doubled but for the war.

That last game gave him the record as Burnley's oldest ever outfield player with, at the time, goalkeeper Jerry Dawson being the only other player to have played for Burnley at an older age.

For over 45 years it remained a club record before Gordon Cowans beat it. He was 39 years and 29 days when he played his last Burnley game in 1997 although his record has since been broken by Graham Alexander who played his last Burnley game, coming on as a substitute for Chris Eagles against Cardiff, at the age of 39 years and 209 days.

Woodruff's time in football wasn't over. He left Burnley in the summer of 1952 and signed for Workington who at the time were playing in the Third Division North of the Football League. He spent just one year there as player/assistant manager and played eleven times.

He moved on to play for and manage Northwich Victoria and also held coaching roles with Cliftonville and Tranmere before retiring from the game and returning to live in Burnley where he run a greengrocer's shop before working as a porter at the general hospital.

He was a typical 1940s/50s full back, and played so often alongside left back Harold Mather. They were both very strong defensively and played a big part in what was described as the 'Iron Curtain Defence' in the immediate post war years. They certainly weren't full backs to get forward and neither of them ever scored a goal for Burnley.

Arthur Woodruff passed away in January 1983 at the age of 69 but there was still to be a Woodruff at Turf Moor for some years to follow as his wife Sue helped out next door at the cricket club on match days.