327 Jack Dowen

Biography

Promising full back Jack Dowen joined Hull City in June 1938 as makeweight for the transfer of left-back David Parker to Wolves. Dowen was immediately put in the first team by manager Ernest Blackburn, at right back for the first two fixtures then at left back for the remainder of the season in which he missed only three matches during March 1939 due to a thigh injury. Despite this consistency Dowen retired from the professional game in the 1939 close season and left the Tigers to become a football coach.

John Stewart “Jack” Dowen was born in Wolverhampton and was chosen to play for England Schoolboys in 1929, the pinnacle of a youth career that also encompassed playing for various regional representative XIs and Walsall Schoolboys. In his late teens he played for Courtaulds FC in the Wolverhampton Works League, before being snapped up by Wolverhampton Wanderers in May 1932 and spending the 1932/33 season playing for the Wolves A team. Jack progressed to the Wolves reserve side in 1933/34 and by the closing months of the season Wolves’ manager (and later Hull City’s manager) Frank Buckley was talking about Dowen as a future senior England international. He made his First Division debut during the 1934/35 season but in October 1935, after eight starts for Wolves, he was transferred to West Ham United. Dowen was unable to break into the Hammers’ first team, making just one first team start, and in October 1936 he returned to Wolverhampton Wanderers. Dowen added a handful of further appearances before joining Hull City in June 1938.

In July 1939 Dowen returned to Wolves for a third time, this time taking the post of assistant trainer – he was widely reputed, at 24 years of age, to be the youngest coach in the English professional game. World War Two quickly hampered his coaching career and when war broke out Jack and his wife Elsie were living with Jack’s parents in Wolverhampton, with Jack working as a storekeeper. During the war he resumed his playing career, turning out regularly for Wolves and also playing in military representative games for Northern Command and, oddly, a Scottish and Welsh XI. In May 1942 he played in both legs of the FA Wartime Cup Final for Wolves against Raich Carter’s Sunderland, with Wolves emerging victorious 6-3 on aggregate. He also guested for Leeds United and Darlington during the war years, and in October 1944 he returned for one more game for Hull City against Darlington, which the Quakers won 7-1.

After the war Dowen was Stafford Rangers’ player-manager between August and December 1947, then became a fixture in the Wolves backroom staff until the early 1970s, displaying his fastidious disciplinarian tendencies as reserve team coach, apprentices’ co-ordinator, kitman and even caretaker manager for a few weeks in November 1968. He remained in Wolverhampton for the rest of his life and died there in November 1994.

Details

Nationality: England
Date/Place of Birth: 31 October 1914, Wolverhampton
Hull City First Game: 27 August 1938, Chester A (Division Three North), 23 years, 300 days old
Hull City Final Game: 29 April 1939, Oldham Athletic A (Division Three North), 24 years, 180 days old

Clubs

Wolverhampton Wanderers (1932-1935), West Ham United (1935-1936), Wolverhampton Wanderers (1936-1938), Hull City (1938-1939), Stafford Rangers (1947)

Hull City Record

Career: 43 apps, 0 goals

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