Peter Roney

Peter Roney

Personal information
Full name	Peter Roney
Date of birth	(1887-01-15)15 January 1887
Place of birth	Rutherglen, Scotland
Date of death	25 August 1930(1930-08-25) (aged 43)
Place of death	Clydebank, Scotland
Position(s)	Goalkeeper
Senior career*
Years	Team	Apps	(Gls)
1907–1909	Norwich City
1909–1915	Bristol Rovers	178	(1)
*Club domestic league appearances and goals

Peter Roney (15 January 1887 – 25 August 1930) was a professional footballer who played in goal for Norwich City and Bristol Rovers prior to the First World War.

Footballing career

Roney began his footballing career in England in 1907, when he joined Norwich City. Two years later he joined Bristol Rovers where he became one of the first goalkeepers to score a goal, netting in Rovers' final game of the 1909–10 season from the penalty spot against Queens Park Rangers, and the only goalie to have scored for Bristol Rovers. He went on to play in a total of 178 games in the Southern League for Rovers in his six-year stint with the club.

Personal life

Roney was born in Rutherglen in Scotland in January 1887. He married his wife Violet in 1909, and at the time of the 1911 census he had one son, Kenneth.

In 1914 Roney joined the 17th Middlesex Battalion, better known as the Football Battalion, with whom he served in the Great War. He found the realities of war difficult to cope with, and the mental traumas that he suffered meant that he would never return to professional football, it being reported in 1919 that he had undergone "such experiences during the war that he is unlikely to be heard of again in professional football".

You could hear the Germans talking and singing among themselves as though there was no war on at all. Then all of a sudden our artillery would send them a reminder, and then all you could hear were cries of agony. I've nearly turned grey listening to the groans of the wounded.

— Peter Roney, March 1917

His plight became a matter of concern to Bristol Rovers in 1921 when he was said to have been "down on his luck" and "[lying] on a bed of sickness", suffering from severe rheumatism as a result of his time fighting in the war. The directors of the football club donated ten guineas (£10.10s) to him and arranged for a collection to be made at a Southern League match between Bristol Rovers and Norwich City, his two former clubs.

Roney died on 25 August 1930 in Clydebank in Scotland at the age of 43.

Sources

• Byrne, Stephen; Jay, Mike (2003). Bristol Rovers Football Club – The Definitive History 1883–2003. Stroud: Tempus. ISBN 0-7524-2717-2.