ran onto the pitch to appeal for calm and was knocked out by one of his own forwards. The result was appealed to the Staffordshire FA, which declared the championship void, and Stoke's ground was closed for the first fortnight of the 1910–11 season. Roose is reported to have said, in his own defence, that he had believed the game to be a friendly and had not realised a championship was at stake. Playing for Stoke against Liverpool at Anfield on 4 January 1902, Roose, along with his team-mates, unwittingly ate a lunch of tainted fish. By kick-off time many of the Stoke players were feeling the effects and – having conceded a goal after only eight minutes – Roose ran from the pitch in search of a toilet. He had a pulse rate of 148 and did not return to the game. At the start of the second half only seven of the Stoke players were in a fit state to continue, the dressing room resembling "the cabin of a cross-channel steamer in bad weather." Liverpool won the game 7–0. In March 1909, Roose travelled with Wales to play Ireland in a British Home Championship match. He appeared at Liverpool station with one hand heavily bandaged, telling the waiting press that he had broken two fingers but would nevertheless play in the match. Roose's Welsh team-mate Billy Meredith, suspecting trickery, peered through the keyhole of the goalkeeper's hotel room soon after their arrival in Belfast and saw his friend remove the bandage and wiggle his fingers with no sign of discomfort. News of Roose's disability having spread through the city, a huge and expectant crowd turned out next day in the hope of witnessing an Irish victory. Instead Wales won the game 3–2, Roose himself playing superbly. Like many footballers, Roose was famously superstitious, wearing a 'lucky shirt' beneath his goalkeeping jersey throughout the course of his career. The shirt, said to have been an old black-and-green Aberystwyth top, was reputedly never washed. Some support for this story comes from a contemporary article in Bolton's Cricket and Football Field (March 1904), which observed: "Roose is one of the cleanest custodians we have, but he apparently is a trifle superstitious about his football garments, for he seldom seems to trouble the charwoman with them." Personal life Roose enjoyed to the full the acclaim that his sporting exploits brought him. Contemporaries