The Death of Jimmy Thorpe, Sunderland Goalkeeper

by Read Listen Learn


1st February, 1936, was a terrible day for Jimmy Thorpe, the goalkeeper for Sunderland Football Club. His team was winning 3-1 against Chelsea, but Thorpe made two bad mistakes in the same number of minutes and Sunderland only got a 3-3 draw.

The match was not a friendly one. In fact, one Chelsea player was sent off. The team’s forwards ran at the Sunderland goalkeeper again and again in the match. In those days, players could kick at the ball when the goalkeeper had it in his hands. One kicked at the ball and his football boot hit Jimmy Thorpe in the face.

However, the twenty-two year old father of a baby son continued to play until the end of the match. The referee needed the police to help him off the field at the end of the 90-minute game.

The newspapers were very unkind about Jimmy’s playing. One said that he was a coward. Another wrote that he played terribly. But Jimmy was already lying in a hospital bed while Sunderland Football Club fans were reading the reports in the papers. He had broken ribs and a badly cut face. Four days after the match, he was dead.

The kick to his face was not his only problem. Jimmy had diabetes and needed to take insulin injections. The kick to his head gave Jimmy a heart attack and he died.

Sunderland won the First Division league championship that year and the team gave Jimmy Thorpe’s young wife his medal at the end of the season, months after he was dead.

The Football Association changed the rules of the game after Jimmy’s death so that players could not try to kick a ball out of a goalkeeper’s hands.