John was one of three children born to Richard and Mary Goodall, two sons and a daughter, the other son being Archie. Richard Goodall was a Clackmannan-shire soldier, posted with his regiment, incidentally the same one
Willy Maley's father, the future Royal Scots Fusiliers, around the British Isles. Mary was from Ayrshire, from Tarbolton. Their daughter, Elizabeth, was born in Edinburgh but alas not a footballer, John in London in 1863 and Archie in a Belfast barracks in 1865.
When the children were very young Mary Goodall was widowed and returned home to Ayrshire, to Kilmarnock, where she remarried and raised not just her three Goodalls but several Barnes as well. And it was in Kilmarnock that John, a centre-forward, and Archie, a half-back, both learned their football. It was from there in 1884 John moved, one of three Scots recruits, to Bolton to play at first for Great Lever and then in 1885 at the age of 22 signing for Preston North End. Meanwhile Archie also took himself south to Merseyside, seemingly to Liverpool Stanley first, at the time after Everton and Bootle the city's third team, and then Everton itself before, again aged 22, joining his brother at Preston in 1887. Liverpool was, of course, not formed until 1892.
John would win his first cap in February 1888, but it would be for England against Wales, excluded from playing for Scotland not just on grounds of professionalism but also birth. He was described as a man with feet that
“seemed to move in quicksilver”
and over the next decade would play six times against Wales, once against Ireland and seven times against Scotland. Archie would win his late, first cap for Ireland in 1899, be capped ten times and with John become the first brothers to play internationally for different countries, although never against each other. That Archie had to wait so long was for the Irish FA to change its rules. In 1898, as England continued to require residency and Scotland residency and birth, Ireland joined Wales in accepting for the first time birth as qualification, in addition to residency.
And when John Goodall played his fourth international in 1889 against Scotland he was joined at inside-forward by someone he would have had no problem in understanding. They spak the sem tongue. He was Davie Weir, playing his second England game. The first had been against Ireland a week earlier at centre-half. Where Weir was born is not entirely clear, although it was perhaps Aldershot but perhaps not, and therein hangs another story. At twelve years-old he is said also to have moved back to Scotland, suggesting, like the Goodalls, a Scottish, military family, although it turns out his father was said by Weir himself to have been an 'officer's servant'. Weir is thought to have played as a junior for Maybole once more in Ayrshire. He was also to return there as player/coach at the end of his career in 1895, suggesting a more permanent link to the town, but by 1888 he had signed for Bolton Wanderers.
In 1889 John Goodall had played in the Preston North End Invincibles team that won the first English league title and the FA Cup. In it he played with Mills-Roberts, the Welsh doctor and goalkeeper, tempted away from medicine for a few seasons now as a professional footballer, and six Scots, including three other Ayrshire men. Yet the following season he moved on the Derby County, where he scored 76 goals in 211 appearances and is credited by none other than the player himself with bringing through Steve Bloomer, to this day Derby’s greatest goalscorer.
And it is this question of goals that is critical for John Goodall and Scotland. In the Preston Invincibles season he scored 21 goals in 21 games. In international appearances he scored at almost the same rate, thirteen in fourteen. Against Scotland, in a period that saw the national team try a half a dozen centre-forwards, he again netted six times in his seven games, losing only once. A perhaps simplistic measure of his effect and his effectiveness is that, if the goals he scored for England had been for Scotland, at three points for a win instead of the equivalent of four points of twenty-one being taken and a very poor run, it would have been twelve and successful.
That John Goodall was a character both on and off the pitch there is no doubt. He is said not to have kept a dog but a tame fox, which once a manager he took to walking at half-time. As a player his longevity was astounding. He turned out at a good level until he was forty-four and continued until he was fifty. And he was an all-round sportsman. When he joined Watford as player-manager in 1903 The Observer newspaper wrote the following:
“Asked as to the prospects in Watford, the new manager saw no reason why Watford, with its good central position and great railway facilities, should not be able to turn out a team to occupy a respectable position on the Southern League ladder.The moment we got away from the subject of Watford you could hear the rumbling of curling stones, the swish of cricket balls, the rippling of waters "willow-wooed," and the swipes of drivers in the royal and ancient game of "gowf".Of Goodall's fishing one need say no more than that he is an angler. But John's achievements in the roaring game cannot be passed over. While at Preston he was the champion curler, and once when playing against the best of Scotia's curlers in the championship of Great Britain at Southport, he ran out second.With reference to the game of golf, Goodall knows all about long drives and good approaches, bunkers, and other hazards; the secret of keeping your eye on the ball is his, and the language thereof! Pigeon shooting also claimed his attention.The gentler game of bowling has attracted him of a summer's evening and he can put a bowl to lie dead on the jack when required. In the cricket field he has kept wicket for Derby County against Yorkshire and Warwickshire.In the new manager, Watford have a man who can be relied upon at all times to give a good account of himself in any position, particularly in the van.”
In 1904 in his first season Watford would win the Second Division of the Southern League. And it was there he would step down as a player at least in Britain in 1907, remaining manager until 1910 before taking himself off as player-manager once more this me to Roubaix in France for two years just as Davie Weir became coach of Stuttgart Kickers in Germany.
However, more than just a player and a manager, Goodall also provides a link between the professional and amateur eras. Although in England always a paid player, he was highly regarded by the amateurs, who were still heavily involved in the game both on the pitch and administratively. In 1896 a testimonial was held for him at Derby. It was billed as "Derby County versus The Gentlemen of England" and won by the club’s working-class, professional team. It was unusual in that, except in the English International team, the mixing of professional and amateur was discouraged. However, it was played in recognition of John Goodall, a “gentleman professional", nicknamed "Honest John" and "Johnny Allgood", of his character and of his reputation for fair play. As such it was perhaps the moment that the professional footballer, the working-class footballer, ceased to be “infra dig” and amateur football on the pitch, in England at least, recognised the inevitable. Certainly in 1896 the England team against Scotland included Goodall and six amateurs, whereas by 1899 there was one, who was not paid to play, and in 1902 none.
However, neither John Goodall, his brother or, indeed, Davie Weir were alone in being caught by accident of birth. Thomas Stoddart Porteus was born in Newcastle in 1865. By 1871 he was living with his family back in Scotland in Dalkeith, his father having been born in nearby Edinburgh. In 1881 at the age of 16, two years younger than John and the same age as Archie, he was living in the Goodall's Kilmarnock, from there going back to Edinburgh joining Hearts before returning to play for Kilmarnock from 1884 and captaining the team. In 1889 he too moved south, to Sunderland, then in 1894 to Rotherham and in 1897 to Manchester City, having in 1891 played once for England at right-back in a 4:1 win against Wales. And that day he and his captain and centre-forward could agin spak the sem tongue. He was John Goodall.
Nor was that to be last of it.Three years later Goodall was inside-right, when against Scotland in 1894 he was joined at centre-forward by
Gilbert Oswald Smith. Smith was arguably the greatest amateur footballer of his day, perhaps the last great, real amateur as against shamateur. What is unarguable is that he was a unique talent, even described as "the most brilliant, indeed perfect, footballer in the world around the turn of the century" and one which again today would qualify for Scotland, as would his cousin, Charles, who two decades earlier had also played once for England. Both their fathers had been born in Edinburgh but Charles was ineligible for Scotland on the grounds of being born in Ceylon and under the then rules only considered English and Gilbert because he had been born in Croydon. Charles's game was lost. Gilbert and John's was draw in Glasgow. Goodall scored the first England equaliser. It might have had an Ayrshire burr to it but to pile irony on irony the second had a touch of the brogue. It was scored by Jack Reynolds, an "Englishman" who had been raised in Ireland, of Irish parents and who, moreover, had previously even played for Ireland not once but five times.