Albion would retain their First Division status for just two more seasons before being relegated once again, finishing bottom of the table in April 1904, with top scorer Charles Simmons, with ten goals to his name during the campaign, transferred to West Ham United at the end of the season. Thankfully ‘Chippy’ would return a season later to pick up where he left off, although he now had the likes of Adam Heywood and Fred Shinton to compete with. Fred Buck would return, signed from Plymouth Argyle and Fred Everiss would swoop on local club Tamworth for the services of a young goalkeeper by the name of Hubert Pearson. Another exciting bright spot was the emergence of a young local full back named Jesse Pennington, who had been courted by Aston Villa, but chose the ‘Throstles’ as his football home for his entire first class career, Jesse making his first team debut against Liverpool at Anfield on September 24th 1904. There was more than a glimmer of hope for the future with the return of Simmons alongside Heywood and Shinton, the three scoring 56 goals between them in a campaign that saw the ‘Throstles’ secure a comfortable fourth place finish in the Second Division.
Those years back in the Second Division were tough years, the second tier of football proving, as it is today, a really difficult league to get out of, but Albion were without doubt there or thereabouts, with two fourth place finishes in 1906 and the following year 1907, Albion also making their way through to yet another F.A Cup Semi-Final, the ninth time Albion had reached the last four, losing to Everton 2-1. In the League, the ‘Throstles’ went one better with a third place finish in 1909, with the young Secretary-Manager Fred Everiss, starting to work his undeniable ‘magic’ bringing in four excellent and pivotal players, wing half George Baddeley, inside forward Sid Bowser, striker Bobby Pailor and centre forward Billy Garraty.
Jesse Pennington would be one of thirteen players that would embark on a ground-breaking pre-season tour of Scandinavia in May 1909, the party leaving the United Kingdom on May 15th 1909, travelling to Denmark by sea via Harwich in Essex. The full contingent being Jim Stringer, Abner Harris, Jesse Pennington, Richard Betteley, Harry Burton, George Baddeley, George Timmins, Jack Manners, William Thompson, Billy Garraty, Fred Buck, George Simpson and Welsh international William Davies. It was the first time that an Albion side had ventured outside the United Kingdom, setting the scene for many more truly historic visits to foreign climes in the future.
Five officials, Fred Everiss, Billy Bassett, Charles Couse, Dan Nurse, and Trainer Bill Barber accompanied skipper Billy Garraty and the players to Copenhagen, Stockholm and Gothenburg, Albion playing an exhausting seven games in two weeks, starting with a match against Newcastle United in Copenhagen, followed by games against Gavle FC, a Stockholm X1, two games against Hull City, one in Stockholm the second in Gothenburg, with the penultimate match of the tour against a Swedish X1 in Copenhagen which preceded the final game, also in Copenhagen, against a Danish X1 which was quite amazingly abandoned after 80 minutes, with Albion trailing 3-1, the match referee citing “Albion’s brutality” during the game. Certainly the Albion players and management were less than happy with the referee Mr Lawrence an Englishman who just happened to be the coach of the Danish X1. Anyway, it did nothing to detract from the achievement, the tour classed a great success, despite such a disappointing end, and the team fortunately returned unscathed to the United Kingdom, minus Jesse Pennington, who by this time had attracted the attention of the international selectors and travelled on his own to join up with the England team on tour in Austria and Germany.
Six more League seasons would pass following relegation in 1904, with Albion mostly being ‘there or thereabouts’ in the Second Division, thankfully the financial situation was all but overcome thanks to Harry Keys and the board, before promotion was once again achieved, the ‘Throstle’ now proud once again, finishing as Second Division ‘Champions’ at the conclusion of the 1910/1911 campaign, two points ahead of runners-up Bolton Wanderers with 53 points, clinching the Championship on the very last day of the season with a 1-0 win over Huddersfield Town at The Hawthorns, a game Albion simply had to win, Pennington himself admitting that the Albion players were a bag of nerves, given the situation. Captain Fred Buck’s penalty sealed promotion back to the top flight, despite nearly making a ‘hash’ of it – according to Pennington, now a renowned English international, and about to take over the captaincy from Fred Buck.
Pennington would actually miss the first two games of the 1911/12 campaign, being embroiled in a pay dispute with the board and still refusing to sign a new contract. First Sam Timmins a useful utility player, then a young Netherton born full back Joe Smith, stepped into the breach with Pennington resuming his place in the side for the visit of Fulham on September 10th 1910, assuming the captaincy from Fred Buck, who handed on the ‘skippers armband’ to the England international. It was also the season that a young North Eastern lad by the name of Bobby McNeal, made his breakthrough into the side, making his debut against Leeds City on October 8th 1910, the first of 403 first team appearances in a fifteen year playing career at The Hawthorns. Another who came under the watchful eye of young Fred Everiss.
By this time the goal scoring talents of Charles ‘Chippy’ Simmons, had stepped down, Simmons had emigrated to Canada, where he would make a new life with a new family, settling in Montreal and Quebec. His record at the club, in his Hawthorns career was perhaps considered ‘Second to none’ apart from maybe Billy Bassett, a true superstar of the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century, with 81 goals in 193 first class appearances.
Sid Bowser would top score that season with 22 League goals, becoming the latest ‘member’ of the twenty plus club, he would also score twice in the English Cup against Fulham, Bowser following in the footsteps of ‘Chippy’ Simmons in 1902, Adam Heywood in 1906 and Fred Shinton in 1907. Bowser, a local lad born and raised in Handsworth, had two spells with Albion, first joining the club from local football in 1908, as an inside forward, before leaving the club for Belfast Distillery in 1913, and returning a year later just before the outbreak of war in February 1914. He would divide his enormous talent between two completely differing roles, a goal scoring inside forward in his first spell at the club, then a hugely talented centre half in his second spell, notably in the 1919/20 Championship season, until his transfer to Walsall in August 1924, when club skipper Fred Reed stepped into the pivot role. Bowser, a true legend of the football club ‘make no mistake’, scored 72 goals in his 371 appearances between 1908 and 1924.
Although that 1911/12 campaign, league wise anyway, would be a moderate season for the ‘Throstles’ under the fledgling captaincy of Pennington, Albion finishing ninth, the feature of the season would be the wonderful English Cup run all the way to the Final, defeating Tottenham Hotspur, Leeds, Sunderland and Blackburn Rovers the latter in a replayed Semi-Final, along the way, for the right to face the stout Yorkshiremen of Barnsley in the Final, pre-Wembley of course, played in London at Crystal Palace. It was a dour affair, with little to choose between the two sides, and after a goal-less draw after extra time, the replayed Final would move north to Bramall Lane, Sheffield, where a controversial goal by scored by Barnsley’s centre forward Harry Tufnell would win the cup.
With just minutes to go, Tufnell raced away from skipper Pennington with the ball at his talented feet, and slipped the ball into the net past Albion ‘keeper Hubert Pearson, to win the cup for the Yorkshiremen in the very last minute of extra time. A despondent Pennington, a true sportsman to the end, admitting to journalists after the game that he could, if he felt it were the right thing to do, have hauled down Tufnell, thus preventing him from scoring, but such was the professionalism and sportsmanlike attitude of the Albion captain, he refrained from doing so, and the English cup, very sadly was lost! Such was the integrity of Albion’s magnificent England man, integrity that is rarely seen in the modern game.
In a later interview, Jesse talked about that cup final, or more to the point the losing of it.
“As captain, I knew the team were confident of bringing the trophy back to The Hawthorns for the first time since 1892, but our opponents Barnsley had other ideas. They could not match us for skill, yet they never allowed us to play our usual game. They really got stuck into us and forced a goalless draw at Crystal Palace.”
“The last two minutes of the replay at Bramall Lane, Sheffield, is a fraction of time that has lived with me ever since. There seemed no danger when I went into the tackle to check Harry Tufnell, the Barnsley ‘box-of-tricks’ but he slipped the ball between my legs and before I could recover whipped the ball into the net for the winning goal.”
Albion would remain in the top flight for three more seasons, before the dark clouds of war gathered over Europe in 1914 with the 1914/15 campaign successfully completed, but the games administrators decided on a cessation of the beautiful game, whilst the world was gripped by the hostilities, and football as we know it, was not resumed until after the armistice in 1919, which of course would subsequently be a ‘blue-letter’ season in the history of West Bromwich Albion Football Club..