SHOOTING STARS
4 - Roy Goodall (England & Huddersfield Town)
Ivan Sharpe | 29/09/1930

Nature furnished him with half an inch short of six-feet of a structure that has a steel-like feel when it connects with the opposition.

He is right full-back — right in position and "right" in the sense that Yorkshire and Lancashire and most of the hardy Northern counties know. When he makes up his mind to "go in,", as he does quite often in a match, he descends on a forward like a knight with a lance, and rather like that is the resulting collision.

Yes, Goodall is a punishing player.

THE "WINDMILLS"

He is long, lithe, rather lean and decidedly hard — just the type of chap I never selected as my ideal opponent when I was a hopeful wing-man. The wise "winger" playing against Goodall uses his wings: doesn't dally. "Get a goin' Bud," someone said in "The White Man," "this is no time to be pickin' flowers."

Some chaps are "all knees and elbows." Remember Morley, the right full-back of Notts County, or Albert Sturgess, "the human hairpin" of Sheffield United? They descended on you like a windmill. The extra foot or yard their parents had given them disturbed everyone's judgment and repose.

Goodall is rather like that, yet more polished in method — his interception of the ball is neat as well as masterful. His clearances, too, can be exemplary in placing and touch. I said "can be."

When he was winning his spurs he took a leaf from the book of Samuel Wadsworth, his International partner, who did after the war what William Hampson, of Newcastle United, was doing in pre-war days: made most of his clearances a pass to a colleague at half-back or forward. Which is very good football — so  good that it is now just as scarce.

At first, this was Goodall's best asset. When he developed others, he began to lose it, and there was a period when even in Internationals, he was winning the "highest to-day" award.

AREN'T WE ALL?

Now Goodall is himself again, and that is why he was the chosen right back of the English League at Belfast, in preference to a fine player like Cooper, of Derby County.

Goodall has made a good because he has made full use of the physical advantages the gods have given him. A back of 5ft. 11 1/2in. — you all know what that means around the goal.

There may have been odd times when his long arms have been spread out to the disadvantage of the opposing forward, but in the tension of modern football anyone is liable to get "rattled." Aren't we all?