Richard Henry Pym (2 February 1893 – 16 September 1988) was an English
footballer best known for being the
Bolton Wanderers
Bolton Wanderers Football Club () is a professional football club based in Horwich, Bolton, Greater Manchester, England, which competes in . The club played at Burnden Park for 102 years from 1895 after moving from their original home at Pike's ...
goalkeeper at the first ever
FA Cup final to be played at
Wembley Stadium in 1923.
The game, known as the ''
White Horse Final'' because of the presence of a mounted white
police horse at the helm of the crowd control, ended in a 2–0 win for Bolton. Pym had joined them from
Exeter City two years earlier for a world record five thousand
pounds. Pym, nicknamed ''Pincher Pym'',
won further FA Cup winners medals with Bolton in 1926 and 1929 and earned three England caps.
Dick Pym, born into a fishing family played for a local club in his hometown Topsham, initially as a centre-forward before moving to Exeter City in 1911. There he played his first game in the reserves in December and on 23 March 1912 he debuted in the first team, replacing the regular goalkeeper. He subsequently appeared in 186 consecutive matches in the
Southern League for Exeter.
In 1914, under Exeter manager
Arthur Chadwick, he toured Argentina and Brazil, playing
Brazil in Rio de Janeiro in its historic first official match.
During the First World War, Pym joined the
Devonshire Regiment in 1916, where he served as a Physical Training Instructor.
When Exeter City joined the Football League in 1920, Pym was sold to Bolton Wanderers at the end of the 1920/21 season for the enormous sum of £5,000 to enable the club to purchase its home ground,
St James Park.
Pym debuted for
England on 28 February 1925 in a 2–1 win over Wales. The following month he played in a 2–0 victory over Scotland. On 1 March 1926, again playing Wales, he earned his third and final cap. Pym left Bolton in 1930 after 336 matches for the club, going on to play for another year with non-league
Yeovil & Petters United. After this he returned to the fishing industry.
He became the last-surviving member of the historic 1923 Bolton Wanderers team and lived until he was 95, earning him the record for the longest-lived England international footballer.
Honours
Bolton Wanderers
*
FA Cup:
1923
Events
January–February
* January 9 – Lithuania begins the Klaipėda Revolt to annex the Klaipėda Region (Memel Territory).
* January 11 – Despite strong British protests, troops from France and Belgium occupy the Ruhr area, t ...
,
1926
Events January
* January 3 – Theodoros Pangalos declares himself dictator in Greece.
* January 8
**Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud is crowned King of Hejaz.
** Crown Prince Nguyễn Phúc Vĩnh Thuy ascends the throne, the last monarch of V ...
,
1929
This year marked the end of a period known in American history as the Roaring Twenties after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 ushered in a worldwide Great Depression. In the Americas, an agreement was brokered to end the Cristero War, a Catholic ...
References
External links
*
Dick Pym', Spartacus Educational, per 26 May 2012.
*
Dick 'Pincher' Pym - Exeter and England goalkeeper', Exeter Memories, per 26 May 2012.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pym, Dick
1893 births
1988 deaths
English men's footballers
England men's international footballers
Men's association football goalkeepers
Footballers from Exeter
Exeter City F.C. players
Bolton Wanderers F.C. players
Yeovil Town F.C. players
English Football League players
English Football League representative players