RANGERS and Tottenham Hotspur will play for The Walter Tull Memorial Cup when the sides meet in a friendly match on Saturday.
The Premier League side will travel to Ibrox in what will be Gers’ final preparation match ahead of the 2022/23 campaign with the trophy being presented at full time by former Rangers and Spurs striker Jermain Defoe.
Walter Tull was the first black player to sign for Rangers and also played for Spurs during his ground-breaking career which was tragically cut short by the First World War. Indeed, it was at Tottenham where he became Britain’s first black outfield player.
At 21-years-old, he joined Spurs for a signing-on fee of £10 and played 10 times before being signed by Northampton in 1911.
By 1914, he had made an impressive 110 appearances for Northampton before becoming the first of the Northampton players to join The Players’ Battalion (17th (Service) Battalion, Middlesex Regiment).
Tull became a Rangers player and signed for the club on February 2, 1917.
He was sent to the front line in France and was awarded a commission in May 1917, becoming the first British-born black combat officer in the British Army.
It is believed to have been his intent to return to play for Rangers when the war ended, but just four months after signing at Ibrox he was fighting in the Battle of Messines, before the third Battle of Ypres, the Somme and the Menin Road Ridge.
In 1918, he was transferred to Italy before returning to Northern France for the spring offensive. Sadly, Walter was killed by machine gun fire on March 25, 1918 in Pas-de-Calais.
Tull was inducted into the prestigious National Football Museum English Football Hall of Fame in 2021 in recognition of his football career and his pioneering successes as one of the first black professional footballers.
The trophy was first played for when the two sides met in a friendly in 2004 at Ibrox. That night, Nacho Novo and Dado Prso were on target in a 2-0 victory for Gers.
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