ALEX MORROWSMITH recalls the life of David Jack, famous manager of Southend United in the years between two world wars

David Bone Nightingale Jack, 1899-1958, Captain of England, FACup & League Championship Winner, scorer of the First goal at Wembley, Southend United manager 1934-40, lived here as a child.

It seems sadly apt to find this Blue Plaque on a house in that forgotten end of Westcliff's Hamlet Court Road north off the London Road.

As No 254 is just down from Roots Hall, it is appropriate that it commemorates a once-famous and hugely-talented footballer of yesteryear who must seem light years away from the pampered players of today.

David Bone Nightingale Jack was one of the titans of English football between the wars as inside right for Bolton Wanderers and Arsenal.

He was the first player to score at the new Wembley stadium in the 1923 Cup Final, was four times captain of England, had nine English caps, three FA Cup winners medals and was involved in three First Division championship wins.

However, it was in the transfer market that Jack really made his mark. His transfer from Bolton to Arsenal for £11,000 in 1928 made him the first-ever five-figure transfer player. It was the start of a trend that is only too obvious today.

So imagine the surprise when in May 1934 Third League Southend United acquired this paragon -- though he was a chain smoker with a great love of chocolate and other sweet things -- to become their manager for £750 a year.

It was, of course, David Jack's local links that drew him back to Southend.

His father, Scots-born Bob Jack, had been Southend United's first manager in 1906. Hence the house in Hamlet Court Road and David Jack's education in Southend.

David had delusions of becoming a civil servant but in 1919 he joined Plymouth Argyle where his father was manager.

At Southend he had the reputation of a martinet who wanted the club to echo Arsenal.

This was probably the wrong approach. He had been a great player; he was never a great manager. He lacked the common touch, was reckoned to be too much of a gent --in the old Arsenal style -- to have anything in common with the up-and-coming players of the late 1930s.

David Jack left Southend United in August 1940, and moved north to run a greyhound track in Sunderland. He made up for shooting off at this strange tangent by becoming manager of Middlesbrough in 1944.

He saw them through eight years in the First Division and left there in 1952 to run a pub in then unfashionable Islington.

In August 1953 he went back to football to manage Irish club Shelbourne but left to become a civil servant in the Air Ministry. A civil servant at last.

During this time he was Southend's southern talent scout. David Bone Nightingale Jack, died in London on 10 September, 1958. He was 59.

David Jack - a titan of English football between the wars whose childhood in Westcliff is commemorated by a Blue Plaque (left) in Hamlet Court Road. His fame earned him a place on every schoolboy's treasured possession - football cigarette cards.

The one above gave a brief resume of Jack in his inside right role with Bolton Wanderers, including that he was a star sprinter and hurdler

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