Anfeild’s Treasures: Ephfaim Longworth

In the latest peek behind the walls of Anfield’s famous museum, curator Stephen Done tells us all about the legend that was Ephraim Longworth.

This guy is a Liverpool legend.

He made 371 appearances between 1910 and 1928 and was the club's first player to captain England.

One of the great tragedies of being a footballer who played so many years ago, is that you tend to get forgotten. Obviously people can't remember him playing and many of those who were fortunate enough to have seen him in action aren't alive anymore.

But he did win a lot of honours and was a very important defender in the side. He also had an extremely interesting career. After he finished playing he actually ended up as the groundsman during Bill Shankly's reign and became a close friend of his during his Shanks' later years.

Longworth's family kept everything from his time with the Reds and as a result we have all of his medals on show in the museum.

He won two league championships with the club and played in our first FA Cup final appearance too. That was against Burnley in 1914 and we have his runners-up medal from it as well as all seven of his England caps.He also played a lot of post-World war representative games. This was a common occurrence after both the First and Second World War's where the Football League would play lots of high profile friendly games.

They were mainly arranged in order to boost morale, but it also helped raise funds for war widows etc.

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