Vol 13 No 20; Charles Reep

Non-Hampton & Richmond Borough related posts.
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Les1949
Posts: 418
Joined: Thu Jun 24, 2021 3:59 pm

HAMPTON, AROUND AND ABOUT

Things you may not know, or didn’t know you knew!

No 20 CHARLES REEP
Football’s first Analyst

My previous article dealt with the military base on Bushy Park during the Second World War. A RAF Officer who served there, Thorold Charles Reep (1904-2002), was one of the earliest people to analyse football. Born in Plymouth, Reep, joined the RAF in 1928 as an Accountant and was posted to RAF Henlow. Originally a Plymouth Argyle supporter he found his football fix at Highbury watching Herbert Chapman’s Arsenal. His background in accountancy transferred itself into his studying football tactics and he started to observe how many opportunities to score were wasted by players. Reep designed his own system of recording opportunities, chances taken and made. In essence he was the forerunner of everything you now see on Sky, or Match of the Day – except he was doing it on paper. Without him what would Gary Neville and Martin Tyler have to talk about?

Reep put his ideas into practice when he was posted to Iraq in 1936 and managed an RAF team. WW2 arrived and such matters had to be put on the backburner. In 1950 Reep was posted to Bushy Park to serve on its RAF base and got involved with their team, who began to adopt his ideas. The team did well and were winning matches, one by 12-1. Brentford were struggling in the Second Division (now the Championship) and heard about the RAF team that were beating allcomers. Brentford’s Manager, Jackie Gibbons, was ready to try anything and invited Reep along to discuss his ideas. The upshot was that Reep was invited to training sessions and remarkably, there was an instant improvement. Brentford won 3-0 away to Doncaster, their first for months, followed by a 4-0 win at home to Bury. Interestingly, amongst Brentford’s players were Jimmy Hill and Ron Greenwood who presumably were destined to make use of, and no doubt improve upon, Reep’s ideas.
Reep then helped Wolves to win the championship in 1953/54 (unpaid!), Sheffield Wednesday then employed him (Second Division Champions, 1955/56). Reep went on to teach his methods to other clubs and his ideas were taken up and improved upon.

So, what did Reep’s analysis come up with in the 50s & 60s.

On average a goal was scored for every nine chances; most goals came from pressing in the opposition part of the field (Liverpool & Manchester City, anyone?); a long ball forward was likely to produce a goal rather than lots of short passes (the Wimbledon ‘gang’); seven goals out of nine came from three passes or fewer, and so on. All this seems very obvious now, but Reep was the first person to analyse a game in this way. Many still think that it was about getting the ball forward as quickly as possible but there was much more to it than that. A lot of analysis was about positional play and making the best use of the movement of players – wingers shouldn’t stand around waiting for the ball to be played out wide, for instance.

So, when Neville, or some other pundit, is moving ‘players’ around on a whiteboard/screen and pontificating, give a thought to the RAF Officer, who stood beside a pitch on Bushy Park, with notebook and pencil in hand – the world’s first football analyst.

The OldHistorian
PS Thanks to Paul Robinson who brought Charles Reep to my attention.
Jamie
Posts: 470
Joined: Thu Jan 21, 2021 11:51 am

Thanks for this, really interesting,
not just ahead of his time, but imagine the work that went into this, without being able to watch back on video, pausing and rewinding.
Amazing work.
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