Sharpe: Ivan Gordon (Ivan)
1920-1922
(Player Details)
Winger
Born: St Albans, Hertfordshire: 15-06-1889
Debut v Coventry City (h): 01-12-1920
5’6” 10st 2lb (1913)
Famous sports journalist and author Ivan Sharpe was also one of England’s greatest
amateur players. A winger of great skill, he took his footballing talents wherever his
journalistic career went. The son of a cobbler, he began at St Albans Abbey and then had
spells with then Non-League Watford and Second Division Glossop, winning the first of his
twelve amateur caps with the latter. He stayed at Glossop for three seasons, scoring sixteen
times in eighty-six League appearances. Then, in 1911, he joined Derby County, scoring
twelve goals in forty-four league appearances over two seasons, winning a Second Division
Championship medal in his first season and the following year won an Olympic soccer gold in
Stockholm with Great Britain, playing in all three games, at the age of twenty-three. He
played in a full International trial at Blackburn in 1912. In 1913 he went to Leeds City,
where he scored sixteen goals in sixty-one League appearances, together with one goal in
four FA Cup games. He also had a short spell at then Non-League Brighton and Hove Albion and
turned out for Nottingham Forest and Luton Town as an amateur. After World War One he played
for Glossop, who had by then lost their League status, but returned to Elland Road in
November 1920, thus becoming the first man to play for both City and United. Tommy Lamph was
the only other player to appear for both clubs. Sharpe retired in the summer of 1923 but
played with Yorkshire Amateurs and went on to further his journalistic career. His soccer
moves were reflected in the newspapers he worked for, starting with the Herts Observer and
St Albans Times, Glossop Chronicle, Yorkshire Evening News (Leeds) and the Sunday Chronicle,
whom he joined in 1922. In 1924 he became the editor of Athletic News and was later editor
of the Sunday Chronicle. Sharpe died in Southport on 9th February 1968, aged seventy-eight.