Ernest Simms was an English footballer, who was best known as a Luton Town centre forward.
10 Facts About Ernie Simms
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Ernie Simms was the first forward to play for England while playing for a Third Division club.
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Ernie Simms was born in Easington, County Durham, and after playing for local clubs, South Shields Adelaide and Murton Colliery Welfare, he joined Barnsley in 1912, before moving south to join Luton Town in the summer of 1913.
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Ernie Simms joined the British Army at the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, joining the Football Battalion, a unit made up of professional footballers which was attached to the Middlesex Regiment.
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Ernie Simms was discharged in 1915 and re-enlisted with the Royal Field Artillery.
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Ernie Simms was discharged less than a month before the armistice with Germany.
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Ernie Simms then stripped down to his vest and underpants and raced up and down the terraces and completed lap after lap of the cinder track surrounding the pitch.
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The Ernie Simms case became a cause celebre; his spirit and determination matched the national wartime mood.
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Ernie Simms received his first call into an England squad in late 1920 as a non-playing reserve, before winning his first, and only, cap a year later.
10.
Ernie Simms moved up to the Second Division when he was sold to his home-town club, South Shields, in the spring of 1922, where he remained for two years before joining Stockport County, in the Second Division, in January 1924.