Rangers and Tottenham Hotspur are set to play in the Walter Tull Memorial Cup this weekend, which will commemorate the life of one of the first black British players to play in the English top flight.
While Tull’s life was filled with several incredible achievements, many will be wondering who he was and why the two football giants are commemorating his life.
Tull’s career marked him as a pioneer for black footballers before he made the rare achievement of becoming a non-white commissioned officer in the British Army during the First World War.
Early life
Before the many remarkable achievements in his later life, Tull was born on April 28 1888 in Folkestone, Kent to Barbadian carpenter Daniel Tull – the son of a plantation slave - and Alice Elizabeth Palmer.
What marked the beginning of a period of constant change for Tull, he lost his mother to cancer at the age of seven and then his dad to heart disease a few years later.
In the coming years, Tull would be adopted by the Warnock family in Glasgow, becoming Walter Tull-Warnock and, reportedly, came to identify as a Scot.
In the first of many boundary-breaking achievements, Tull qualified as a dentist and became the first mixed-raced man to practice the profession in the UK.
Becoming a footballer
Having moved to London, Tull joined amateur football side Clapton in 1908 where he had reportedly never lost a match and caught the attention of top-flight side Tottenham Hotspur.
Signing for Spurs in 1908 at the age of 21, Tull would go on to make 10 appearances for the club, scoring 2 goals. In that time, he became the first mixed-race footballer to play in Latin America and earned rave reviews, being described as the side’s “most brainy forward”.
One write-up read: “He is Hotspur's most brainy forward ... so clean in mind and method as to be a model for all white men who play football ... Tull was the best forward on the field.”
Despite his performances on the pitch, Tull was subject to horrific racist abuse from opposing fans, with language at one match described as “lower than Billingsgate” by a sports reporter.
Some believe that the abuse he received was behind him being dropped to the reserve side, with him subsequently finding it hard to establish himself at the club.
Tull then signed for Northampton Town where he registered over a hundred appearances before joining the army.
Fighting in the First World War
At the outbreak of the war, Tull became the first Northampton Town player to enlist, joining the Duke of Cambridge's Own (Middlesex) Regiment, and was eventually promoted to the rank of Lance Sergeant.
After three years in the ranks – including seeing action in the Battle of the Somme – Tull was accepted as an officer cadet, sparking his return to Scotland, being stationed in Gailes, Ayrshire.
It was during this time that he signed for Rangers, promising to play for the Glasgow side once the war was over, an opportunity that would sadly never come.
Eventually promoted to the rank of Second Lieutenant – being one of the first mixed-race officers to ever serve in the British Army – Tull was praised for his “gallantry and coolness” in action while on duty in Italy.
However, it was in France that Tull would find the end of his war, being killed in action on March 25 during the first battle of Bapaume. In a testament to the impression he left on his comrades, attempts were made to recover his body despite being under heavy fire – efforts which were unfortunately unsuccessful.
In a condolence letter to his family, a commanding officer wrote that he had been recommended for a military cross.
It read: “He had been recommended for the Military Cross, and certainly earned it."
