John Middleton Campbell
Born 19th February 1870 Died 8th June 1906, Aged 36
Centre Forward
Renton FC - Sunderland AFC – Newcastle United
John Middleton Campbell, or Johnny as he was better known, was regarded in his day as one of the most feared centre-forwards around in the late Victorian period. He was a hugely central figure in Sunderland's title winning sides throughout the 1890s.
Johnny was born on the 19th February 1870, in Renton, Dunbartonshire, Scotland and at only nineteen years old he would have been right in the thick of things at the very birth of The Football League. You can almost imagine some early cynics even then saying; “I’ll give it ten years; it’ll never last” as the football revolution began in earnest. If there is such a thing as 'Football Heaven', how proud the likes of Johnny and other celebrated Victorian pioneers would now be looking down on every one of us and all they have created. (Until it all went a bit crazy in recent years of course, but that's a debate for another time). Footballers now are just passing through history. The early Victorian players not only wrote out the first chapter of our game but kick-started it all. They are the ones who made history. These are English football's genuine legacies, and we'd do well to remember them. They made it all possible. That is the reason why they should never be forgotten. I think, they remain even now, the true superstars of the game.
Johnny Campbell was little more than a boy when he started out with Renton FC, then a powerhouse in Scottish football, and they won the Scottish Cup in 1888. He scored in a 6-1 demolition over Cambuslang at Hampden Park. To this day, that is still a joint record for a winning margin in a Scottish final, alongside Celtic's hammering of Hibs in 1972 by the same score line. Both Campbell and Renton almost repeated their cup triumph the following season but went out in the Semi Final 2-0 to Third Lanark, yet another team, along with Renton, that are sadly now no more.
Little is really known about Johnny’s scoring exploits in his time with Renton. You’d have more luck finding the Ark of the Covenant than stumbling across any records covering his time there. For those who have read my biography on Steve Bloomer, another great, I touched on this then, when right at the beginning of the game, it just wasn’t the thing and maybe it was Victorian thriftiness decreeing that the keeping of such things was an act of extreme vanity and very ungodly. Then again, they were probably thrown out or used for lighting the fire.
During those two Cup runs, what we we do know is that Renton recorded notable wins over Lindertis Kirriemuir (13-1), Bowling (8-0) and Vale/Leven Wanderers (10-2). Thirty-one goals in three games would have meant that a good centre-forward would probably have grabbed at least a third of them. We’ll never know exactly how many Johnny got but I’m guessing it was a fair few because it wasn’t long before Sunderland came sniffing and he joined 'The Team of All The Talents' at the beginning of the 1889/90 season.
Campbell was only 5'9’, relatively small by today’s standards, but back then someone that size then would certainly qualify as above average height. He was described as a 'bustling' and 'powerful' forward with a high work rate, and that would have put him in the mould of a Joe Jordan or an Andy Gray, only without the whining, histrionics and false teeth. He had a real eye for goal, and this led to an outstanding league record of 136 goals in only 190 appearances. Campbell's FA Cup record is also excellent, with 18 goals in 26 matches. He still stands today at number five on Sunderland's all-time top scorer list with 154 goals in just 216 league and Cup appearances behind Bob Gurney (228), Charlie Buchan (224), David Halliday (165) and Seaham Harbour’s finest, George Holley (160). Kevin Phillips remains the club's record post-war scorer on 130.
The Football League's inaugural season was to be 1888/89, thanks largely to the organisation, administrative skills and drive of another great Scotsman and ZZ Top lead guitar lookalike, William McGregor, who was the brains behind the structure of the early association game. Campbell and Sunderland would have to wait a short while longer to join as election had not yet been granted. Sunderland's geographical position counted against them, as the bulk of the inaugural league was made up of teams in and around the same part of the country; with the likes of Blackburn, Burnley and Accrington forming the very first league setup. Clubs could just probably buy themselves in these days though eh?
At the beginning of the 1889/90 season, Sunderland applied yet again to become members of the Football League but were turned down once more. Even then they had Sepp Blatter equivalents running the show. In the meantime, Sunderland still kept up their tradition of signing many talented players from north of the border. They carried on playing in local competitions and won the Durham Challenge Cup, beating Bishop Auckland in the final. They also continued to participate in the FA Cup. Surviving reports from around the time show Campbell scored many more goals for the club. The books by Sunderland AFC historian Rob Mason, The Complete Record and The Absolute Record go some way to filling in the blanks. If you don't have them already, they are a must add to any collection.
Before the start of the 1890/91 season, the Football League at last confirmed the news that all of Sunderland had been waiting for. Election to the League was granted ahead of their fierce local rivals Sunderland Albion, who had also applied. Albion, like so many others, quickly disappeared from history not long afterwards. (There had been some feisty encounters between the two rivals, and they were Sunderland’s original arch enemies. Newcastle United remember, weren’t formed until 1892). There are also surviving reports of matches between the two sides of large scale fighting and even both sets of supporters throwing rocks and other objects at each other. They were also drawn against each other in the FA Cup; resulting in Sunderland withdrawing from the competition so that Albion wouldn't benefit financially from the gate receipts of a typically larger, swelled attendance.
In the league, Sunderland replaced Stoke City, who had finished bottom in both seasons. With Johnny Campbell joining the previous season, he took part in the club's very first league fixture, a 3-2 home defeat to Burnley and he grabbed the second goal. Sunderland began life in the league rather slowly, taking time to find their feet. They won just three of their first twelve matches but fared much better in the second half of the season and finished a respectable 7th in a division containing a dozen clubs. Campbell was top scorer with 16 in 21 league games and netted a further five in four FA Cup ties. Reports from this season suggest that this should have been six goals, with Campbell having a late 'winner' chalked off in the Semi Final against Notts County at Bramall Lane. Technology even then was a bugbear and with the absence of goal nets at the time (they came along shortly afterwards, it is widely believed because of this incident), let alone video technology, officials ruled that a shot from Campbell had gone wide; when contemporary reports from the time stated that it had looked like it was a legitimate goal (according to Sunderland fans, of course). It was, however, disallowed, and the game ended 3-3. Just to add insult to injury, they lost, at Bramall Lane again, 2-0 in the replay. Harsh on Campbell and Sunderland, but unfortunately this incident was just part and parcel of football in the late 19th century.
After a respectable first season, Sunderland added a couple of new faces to the squad ahead of the 1891/92 season. Two Scottish Internationals Gow and Hannah joined as the side looked to kick on from their 7th place finish and they were quietly fancied for a push at winning the League Championship. Johnny Campbell bagged a brace in a 5-2 opening day win over Wolves and was forming a rather formidable partnership with inside-forward and fellow Scot James 'Jimmy' Millar. The partnership produced thirty-five league and cup goals the previous season, and it didn't take long for it to swing into action once again. There was yet another shaky start with Sunderland winning only once in their opening four games, scoring an impressive twelve goals but conceding a disastrous fourteen. However, from then on, they won an incredible seventeen out of eighteen matches that saw them clinch the league title. Along the way, there were some impressive wins including a 7-0 home win over Darwen (Campbell 2 and Millar 3), a 7-1 away win at Derby County (Campbell 4, Millar 1) and a 7-1 victory in the reverse fixture at Darwen (Campbell grabbing a hat-trick). The club's only loss in this eighteen-game run came at Blackburn Rovers. Sunderland became Champions in only their second season in league football, a remarkable achievement even then. Campbell was top scorer again finishing the season with thirty-two goals in only twenty-four league matches, a figure that I felt just wouldn’t happen again in the top-flight today, until a certain Mr Haaland came to these shores. He notched a further seven in five FA Cup ties in Sunderland's second successive Semi Final. Jimmy Millar finished the campaign with seventeen in twenty-four league and cup games.
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| Johnny Campbell of Sunderland AFC |
A run of only one defeat in ten matches put Sunderland back in the hunt for the title along with another late 19th century heavyweight, Aston Villa. Villa had earlier dumped Sunderland out of the Cup in the third round and they were becoming a slight bogey team for them. Two daft defeats for Sunderland in the remaining four fixtures gift wrapped the Championship to Villa who finished four old points clear at the top.
After smashing 110 league and cup goals in his first four seasons in the league, you would have thought that Scotland would have been calling on Campbell with international recognition, but despite his record, fearsome reputation and his consistency, this honour eluded him throughout his career; and they say modern squad selection is ludicrous.
Campbell was to win his third title in four seasons in 1895 with Sunderland finishing five points clear of Everton. He once again was top scorer, with twenty-one league goals and was an ever present in the team that season. The FA Cup still proved elusive, however, and their old foes Aston Villa yet again knocked the Wearsiders out in another Semi Final. En route to the last four, on the 2nd of February, Sunderland recorded a club record 11-1 win over Fairfield in the first round. Somehow Campbell failed to find the back of the net and had to settle for watching his partner in crime Jimmy Millar, notch five. Records do state that Johnny did play that day!
Campbell's quest for a fourth league winners medal proved fruitless in 1895/96 as Sunderland could only manage fifth place. He still finished as leading goal scorer, this time scoring fifteen league goals with a further two coming in the Cup and was the only player to reach double figures that season.
1896/97 was to be Campbell's last in red and white, when he finished the season with a poor return of just four league goals. He joined local neighbours Newcastle United for an unbelievable fee of £40. Had Mike Ashley been around at the time I bet he’d have paid no more than a fiver. It was a season to forget and almost ended in disaster as Sunderland slumped to finish second from bottom and suffered the humiliation of having to take part in a series of 'Test Matches', a playoff system with leading second division clubs, to avoid relegation. As a matter of extreme irony that sometimes always happens in football, it was the same system which was to cost Sunderland dearly an incredible ninety years later in 1987 when they crashed lost on away goals to Gillingham and were consigned to Division Three. Back in 1897, Sunderland needed to win their last match at home to Newton Heath (now Manchester United), to avoid the drop and duly obliged by winning 2-0 and saving any further embarrassment. Just think what might have happened to their subsequent history had they gone down then. It would be another sixty-one years before they suffered that ignominy in 1958. The title in 1897 went to who else, but old foes Aston Villa.
As all great teams eventually do, “The Team of All the Talents” began to break up at the end of the 1896/97 season. Manager Tom Watson left to join Liverpool and was replaced by Johnny's brother, Robert. Jimmy Millar moved on to Glasgow Rangers. It was the end of an outstanding partnership. In their six seasons together, Campbell and Millar scored a staggering 248 league and cup goals between them, Campbell 150 and Millar's 98. This achievement is unrivalled in the modern game and will surely never be repeated in the top-flight. If it was, what would be the going rate today for two forwards that would guarantee that sort of return?
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| Sunderland's 'Team of All The Talents' - Campbell is in the front row, with the ball at his feet. |
Johnny Campbell never fulfilled his ambition of adding an FA Cup winner’s medal to his three league titles and solitary Scottish Cup triumph with Renton. It just wasn’t meant to be. He reached three Semis, and helped Newcastle win promotion in 1897/98, along with his former Renton and Sunderland team-mate John Harvie. The Magpies were dumped out of the FA Cup in the second round after losing 1-0 away to Southampton. Campbell made his Newcastle début on the 4th September 1897 in a 4-1 win over Woolwich Arsenal, scoring once. Overall, he made twenty-nine appearances, scoring twelve times. This season was to be Johnny's last in the game as incredibly, aged only twenty-eight, he retired to become a licensee. This was a sad way to leave football and if he had played on, he would doubtless have added many more goals to his impressive tally. Such was the vagaries of life then as a footballer; football then in its infancy just couldn’t compete financially with the pub trade and Johnny was a lot better off pulling pints than he ever would have been scoring goals; even at that level of professional football.
Even with such a short lifespan in the game, Campbell was still one of the finest goal scorers of the late 19th Century, playing in the same era as other giants such as Derby County great Steve Bloomer and inspirational Sheffield United captain Ernest ‘Nudger’ Needham. He finished with an overall record of 154 goals in 216 league and cup matches for Sunderland, and a further 12 in 29 appearances for Newcastle United. He won three league titles with the Black Cats, finished runner up once and reached the FA Cup Semi Finals on three occasions. In his final season, he won promotion to the top-flight with Newcastle, plus his Scottish Cup win early in his career with Renton in 1888. He was also the leading scorer in the English top-flight three times, in what was a remarkably short career in the game.
Johnny's place in English Football League history and at Sunderland AFC as a true great is firmly cemented, and although there is no-one alive today who witnessed him play, his legend lives on through his achievements and the clubs he represented during his career. Sadly, he died aged only thirty-six in Sunderland on 8th June 1906.
Career:
Renton Appearances and goals unknown.
Sunderland AFC: 216 Appearances, 154 goals.
Newcastle United: 29 Appearances 12 goals.
Honours:
Scottish Cup Winner: 1887/88.
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