Fred Pugsley was an
Anglo-Burmese football player, who played primarily as a
forward and achieved fame and popularity during his days in Indian club
East Bengal FC.[2][3] He was born in
Rangoon,
Burma, a British colony, where
football is one of the popular sports. He began his football career in an amateur league club in Rangoon during the late 1930s. He is considered as the first ever foreign signing by an
Indian football club.[4][5]
Personal life
Pugsley was born in an
Anglo-Burmese family in British controlled
Burma. In his childhood days, he chose football as his love and later joined a local
Rangoon-based amateur club during the late 1930s.
At the beginning of the
Second World War, Burma was still a British colony from 1939 to 1942 and was attacked by the Japanese forces simultaneously. Pugsley faced tremendous helplessness in his homeland before moving to neighbouring country
India in 1942.[6]
It was not an easy journey. The refugees had to travel for almost 500 kilometres entirely on foot, through dense forests, over mountains and across rivers. Several of them perished on the way and many of the ones who survived were injured or seriously ill. Pugsley and his family survived, but were essentially in a land which was foreign to them; they had never visited India before and didn't know anybody there and had no jobs to feed themselves.
Luckily for Pugsley, his reputation as a footballer earned him a job in
Burnpur at the
Indian Iron and Steel Company, which was majority-owned by
Sir Birendranath Mookerjee, who later became president of East Bengal's arch-rival
Mohun Bagan Club.[4]
Pugsley returned to Burma in 1946 with his family after the war. He also worked as an employee in Rangoon Customs.[7] He died in 1958.[4]
Club career
Holding the hands of his wife and daughter, Pugsley literally walked down to Calcutta (now
Kolkata). He was a reputed player in Rangoon (now
Yangon), but had no friends in India. All he knew were few officials in
East Bengal Club since the red and yellow team had toured Burma a few years ago to play some exhibition matches. Extremely ill because of the inhuman exhaustion he suffered while running away from his country, a frail looking Pugsley requested East Bengal club officials to try him out for their team.[8]
The club officials were hesitant. First, East Bengal had never included a foreigner before.[9] And more importantly, Pugsley's poor health was surely a cause of worry. They reluctantly fielded him in three matches and when Pugsley started vomiting midway through the third, he was withdrawn promptly for the season. But it was only the beginning of an unbelievable success story. To cut the long story short, the Burmese striker recovered soon and went down in the history as one of East Bengal's greatest strikers.[10][11][12]
In the 1945 season,[13] East Bengal won their first "double" in
domestic football – they won both the
Calcutta Football League and
IFA Shield. In the Shield final, East Bengal beat their traditional rivals
Mohun Bagan AC by a solitary goal. The second-half strike came from the boot of Pugsley. It was an epoch-making achievement in East Bengal history, something the club fans could never forget.
Indian football had rarely seen a goal-machine like Pugsley.[14][15] In a
Rovers Cup match, East Bengal struck 11 goals, Pugsley scored eight of them. While representing
Bengal football team in
Santosh Trophy (there was no rule those days against playing foreigners in state teams), he scored seven goals in the 7–0 rout of
Rajputana.[16]
His thundering left footers left may goalkeepers spending sleepless nights before he decided to return to his country after the war.[17] He scored a total of 48 goals for East Bengal.[18][19]
International career
Pugsley represented
Burma during its maiden international tour to India in 1938, where they played against
India and
IFA XI representative sides. They also played against the major Calcutta clubs
Mohun Bagan and
East Bengal.[20] He scored two goals in the match against the
India XI side on 30 May 1938 at
Calcutta. After the War, he also returned for a national team tour to India in 1948 and played against the
IFA XI side and the major Calcutta clubs.
He also holds the unique record of scoring 8 goals in a single match against B.C.L.I Railways in the
1945 Rovers Cup match, which is till date the most goals scored by an individual in a single match in Indian football.[15][23]
^It is only befitting that East Bengal, once taunted as a "refugee club" by one of its former opponents, signed Fred Pugsley as their first ever foreign player – an actual wartime refugee immigrant who went on to shine for his team and show the fans what a talented immigrant is capable of if given the proper opportunities
^Gupta, Shirshaditya (13 November 2020).
"Fred Pugsley — The Greatest". East Bengal the Real Power.
Archived from the original on 24 June 2021. Retrieved 25 June 2021.