Percy Lynsdale: The British and football in Iraq
Some of you may or may not know, I recently published a book on the history of the Iraqi national team which I called Birth of the Lions of Mesopotamia.
The word ‘birth’ is a key one, the book looks at the early beginnings of football in Iraq after WWI and how the Iraq FA was first formed along with the first Iraqi national team, later to be known as the Lions of Mesopotamia.
The British through its old imperialist empire had a strong influence in world football in the late 19th and early 20th century, and this ran right through Iraq. However, you would never have known it. The political split in 1958 in Iraq and what came after has overshadowed the British involvement in football and sports in general in Iraq.
From the Casuals Club
What is not well-known is the oldest British club in Iraq, the Casuals Club, formed initially as a cricket club, were actually a founder member of the Iraqi Football Association, and even participated in the first two seasons of the FA’s Baghdad League. The same club also gave its name to Iraq’s first cup competition the Casuals Cup, a name somewhat difficult for Iraqi locals to pronounce.
The British involvement in football in Iraq reminds me of the remark made by the British Governor of Aden in the mid-Sixties to a Labour politician over what would become of the British Empire when it “sank beneath the waves of history.” He stated only two things would be left behind, one was the game of Association Football, the other was an old four-letter word Anglo-Saxon expletive.
I want to tell you about the story and life of Percy Lynsdale, who best encapsulates the relationship between football in Iraq and the British when the first Iraq FA and the Iraqi national side were formed.
I had first heard of the name Percy Lynsdale many years ago as one of the 16 names of Iraq’s first national team, believing he was an Iraqi Christian, either an Assyrian or Chaldean. It was only when reading an interview with one of his old Basra team-mates Karim Allawi that I found out about his British origins, and when I spoke with the long lost Saeed Easho, another one of the four Basra contingent of Iraq’s first national side in 1951, he explained to me that Percy’s father was actually English.
Once I discovered the correct spelling of his surname ‘Lynsdale’, I was able to find out more about Iraq’s first Anglo-Iraqi footballer, who turned out to be the ‘Messi of Iraq’.
The Iraqi football star with roots in England
Percy Lynsdale, despite being known for being from Basra, was actually born in Baghdad. His roots were from South London, so long ago that it was then part of Surrey. His earliest known English-born ancestor had joined the British Army in 1797 and set off for India, where he settled.
A hundred years later, Percy’s father Cyril was born, and he arrived in Baghdad not long after WWI, where he married an Iraqi woman and took Iraqi citizenship. Percy’s uncle had been one of the first soldiers to march into the Iraqi capital after the fall of Baghdad in 1917.
The young Percy spent his early life in Baghdad and later for a period in Mosul as the family followed the patriarch around the country in his job with the Iraqi Railway company.
Percy had been a keen sportsman and when he enrolled at the Jesuit Baghdad College in the early 1940s, he was one of the boys who would spend their school breaks kicking a ball around the school’s ground, eventually forcing the teachers at the school to set up a football pitch with goalposts after fears students would take chairs from the classrooms to form makeshift posts.
Percy Lynsdale was one of those boys, and he became part of the Baghdad College’s first football team and in his senior year, not only captained the school team but was inducted into the school’s hall of fame!
From Baghdad College to the B.P.C.
In 1948, Percy graduated and the Lynsdale family moved south to settle in the British community of Maqil or Margil as the British called it. There his father had found a job with the local railway station as a director and Percy joined the Basra Petroleum Company or the B.P.C. as a clerk, appearing for their football team as a gifted inside left.
It seemed that for Percy Lynsdale, the stars had aligned, as at the exact time he moved to the city of Basra, the Iraqi Olympic Committee was formed, resulting in the nation’s participation at the London Games and paving the way for the formation of the Iraqi Football Association and the first football leagues in the country.
The way football was set up in Iraq, there were three leagues in Baghdad, Kirkuk and Basra, where Percy played for the B.P.C. football team, managed by Tommy Thomas (who was actually an Iraqi and not English).
Percy was the team’s star player and in his first season scored the winner in the first-ever Iraq FA Cup or Kas Al-Ittihad with a 2-1 victory at the Kashafa in Baghdad in front of Prince regent Abdelilah.
The left-footed player went from strength to strength, making his debut for the Basra XI, the province select team, and there were many stories of his goalscoring exploits, once scoring five goals in the second half for his team and hitting a hat-trick in another game and being carried on the shoulders of spectators after winning a cup for his side.
After the Iraq FA joined the world football governing body in 1950, the first Iraqi national team was formed, and Percy was one of three players from outside the Iraqi capital to be selected. He was the first player to wear the No.10 jersey in a 5-0 victory over the famous C.C team of Habbaniya.
The team toured Turkey, playing matches in Izmir and Ankara, where Percy was joined by three other Basra players, Saeed Easho, Shaker Ismail and Karim Allawi.
Iraq lost both matches on the tour by heavy scorelines to a Turkey B team and the Ankara XI, 7-0 and 7-5.
Percy later joined the Basra Port Club Al-Minaa, who currently participate in the Iraqi League, and after a season with the side he left to study in Norwich, settling in England where he became was a self-employed trader, playing Sunday League football in Manchester.
His full story and that of the other 1951 players are mentioned in my book ‘Birth of the Lions of Mesopotamia’.