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Spurs and Rangers to compete for the Walter Tull Memorial Cup

Wed 20 July 2022, 15:00|Tottenham Hotspur

We can confirm that our men’s first team will be competing for The Walter Tull Memorial Cup when we take on Rangers in Saturday’s pre-season match at Ibrox, kick-off 3pm.

The trophy will be awarded in memory of Britain’s iconic first black outfield player who had links to both clubs during a playing career cut short by his death in battle during World War One.

It was first awarded when the two sides last met during a pre-season friendly in 2004 and will be presented to the winning captain after the game by Jermain Defoe – another former player of both clubs and one of the many black players for whom Walter’s incredible career blazed a trail.

Walter joined Spurs from Clapton in March, 1909, and went on to make 10 first team appearances in our colours, becoming Britain’s first black professional outfield player when he appeared in a 3-1 defeat at Sunderland that September.

He scored two goals over those 10 appearances and played numerous non-first team games in our colours, including helping our Reserves win the South Eastern League title in 1910/11, before a transfer to Northampton Town in October, 1911. There, he became a legendary figure, making 110 appearances before the outbreak of war in 1914.

Walter joined the 17th (1st Football) Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment and was sent to the front line in France on 18 November, 1915, fighting in the infamous Battle of the Somme.

During a spell away from the front line, Walter signed for Rangers on February 2, 1917, but would sadly never make an appearance for the Gers.

He was commissioned as a second lieutenant three months later, becoming the first British-born black combat officer in the British Army in the process. Returning to the Somme, he was leading his troops in ‘No Man’s Land’ when he was shot and killed on March 25, 1918, at the age of 29.

Walter was posthumously awarded the British War and Victory Medal and was inducted into the National Football Museum Hall of Fame last year.

His legacy lives on at Spurs, with the Club’s Foundation continuing to deliver workshops for local school children, focused on his incredible career on and off the pitch.