handle outside his penalty area, was directly due to the performances of Roose, who enjoyed taking part in attacks. At his best, the Welshman was also a superb if unorthodox shot-stopper, once saving a full blooded drive from only six yards out by clamping the ball between his knees. He was extremely athletic and was reputed, by the football spectators of the day, to have the mysterious ability to change his direction while diving full length. Roose was a famous saver of penalties. Thomas Richards (1878–1962), the renowned Welsh authority on seventeenth century Puritanism, gave an account of a save he had seen Roose execute for Aberystwyth against Glossop North End, a professional team from the Midland League, in an FA Cup match. "One of the full backs," Richards wrote in Gwr o Athrylith (Man of Genius), his profile of Roose, "committed an unforgivable foul in the penalty box; the harsh blast of the referee's whistle, his finger pointing to one of the most calamitous places in the purgatory of this life; the penalty spot. The heavy odour of death hung over the fateful spot: did you not hear a crowd of thousands suddenly become dumb mutes, did you not see the players standing in a half circle as if they were at a graveside... Everyone holding his breath. I have always believed that Roose grew to his full height as a man in the purgatorial crisis of a penalty, drying off the clay around his feet, washing away the dross which entered his character with the gold... Arthur's sword against the bare fist. Then came the signal; the ball travelled like a bolt from the foot of the penalty taking forward, and in the blink of an eyelid, revolution, a thump, and the ball landed in the heather and gorse of the Buarth." Physical size and agility have, nonetheless, never been sufficient, on their own, to qualify a goalkeeper for greatness, and Jimmy Ashcroft, the Woolwich Arsenal goalkeeper, contributed an appreciation of Roose which singled him out for his bravery in diving at the feet of onrushing forwards: "Last season when Stoke played Arsenal at Plumstead, I watched the Reds swoop down on Roose like a whirlwind. There was a scrimmage in goal and Roose was down on the ball like a shot with a heap of Arsenal and Stoke players on top of him. It was all Lombard