TWO NAMES ADDED TO UNITED'S LIST OF FALLEN
Extensive research conducted by Old Trafford Museum curator Mark Wylie has uncovered two more registered players of Newton Heath and Manchester United who perished while serving their country in combat.
Each year the club pays its respects to players who represented the club but bravely lost their lives at war, with the list of confirmed names now comprising 22 names following the addition of two new names.
Museum curator Wylie says: “We continue to find players who were registered with Newton Heath or Manchester United, with Frederick Okoro and Alf Griffiths being the latest of those.
“There are others that we suspect were our players who were killed in action but we can’t add them to our list of fallen until we have extensively researched and proven it. These latest two additions take the current total to 22 players but I expect that number will rise further.”
Private 2663 Alfred Griffiths
Alf was a goalkeeper and our investigation suggests he was registered as a Newton Heath player on 29 November 1899. Griffiths served in the Anglo-Boer War during 1901 but was back in Manchester a year later, when he played for the Reserves against Burnley in the Lancashire Combination
and kept a clean sheet, with the Athletic News noting he had been "severely tested". A member of the 1st Battalion Manchester Regiment, Alf’s death was assumed to have happened on 8 March 1916.
Alf was a goalkeeper and our investigation suggests he was registered as a Newton Heath player on 29 November 1899. Griffiths served in the Anglo-Boer War during 1901 but was back in Manchester a year later, when he played for the Reserves against Burnley in the Lancashire Combination
and kept a clean sheet, with the Athletic News noting he had been "severely tested". A member of the 1st Battalion Manchester Regiment, Alf’s death was assumed to have happened on 8 March 1916.
Wylie says: “We discovered details of Alf while looking for information on his brother William on the Ancestry genealogical database. With all names you have to type in different ways of spelling it because quite often they are spelt incorrectly. It was by doing this that we found William and his brothers, one of whom was on the regimental list for the Manchester Battalion as Alf – a goalkeeper who played for Newton Heath Reserves in 1902. Through further research we were able to prove that the soldier reported missing and presumed to have been killed in action in Mosopotamia (Iraq) in March 1916 was the same Alf Griffiths who was on Newton Heath’s books.”
Gunner 1697582 Frederick Okoro
Okoro was born on 11 December 1919 in the St. Chads area of Manchester and later lived in Moss Side. He had signed for United as an amateur on 28 August 1936 and is likely to have appeared in pre-season practice matches, but there is no definitive evidence that he played a competitive game. Okoro was released in 1937 and, with the 2/1 Maritime Regiment, Royal Artillery, he is presumed to have been killed in action on 2 November 1942.
Okoro was born on 11 December 1919 in the St. Chads area of Manchester and later lived in Moss Side. He had signed for United as an amateur on 28 August 1936 and is likely to have appeared in pre-season practice matches, but there is no definitive evidence that he played a competitive game. Okoro was released in 1937 and, with the 2/1 Maritime Regiment, Royal Artillery, he is presumed to have been killed in action on 2 November 1942.
Wylie says: “The Okoro family contacted us about their relative and gave enough information to show he was a player in the club’s records. The confusion came in that his name was written wrongly in several different ways in documents, including in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission who listed him as O’Kora. But we figured it out and proved that he was registered as our player with the Football League.”
We will always remember them.
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