Talk:Leigh Richmond Roose

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Leigh Richmond Roose has had a peer review by Wikipedia editors which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

Leigh Richmond Roose was a good article nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. Reviewed version: June 3, 2006

[edit] GA Status

Im sorry, but while this article seems to qualify in References, Broadness, Prose, and Images, it just plain doesn't appear NPOV, and I think it may be failing the MoS on introductions as well, the intro is very short(I think you could put in some of his most famous attributes in there to extend it out) and the POV seems to creep in with it. I mean look at some of these sentences:

• "A celebrated amateur at a time when the game was played largely by professionals, Roose was renowned as one of the best players in his position in the Edwardian period. He was also well-known as a footballing eccentric, and many stories about him are still told today."
• "Roose was well qualified to play in goal, a specialised position that was, in the Edwardian era, particularly physically challenging."
• "a remarkable record not least because his team flirted dangerously with relegation in 1901, 1902 and 1904."

And the playing style paragraph seems to me little more than a large collection of various, highly favorable quotes about the guy, and while its all well and good that he's got verifiable acclaim, a section that long and on a topic which, well, doesn't seem entirely worth so much text seems to be serious overkill. Things like "He was well qualified" or "flirted dangerously with whatever" might be somehow substantiated with citations, but since it all seems to be either in books or non-inline articles, I really can't see why they aren't just sympathetic bits of POV. Most of the article just plain seems to be either praise or favorable tid bits on stuff concerning this guy, and that doesn't look right at all. Homestarmy 02:18, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV?

The article is, necessarily, based on the information available. I put in as much balance as I could; Roose is described as reckless, for instance, and there's a section on his bad temper. Thre simply aren't that many more criticisms on record, certainly not without going back and doing a match-by-match study of his playing career. There was just a lot more hero worship in those days, I suppose.

As to the specific criticisms, "Roose was renowned as one of the best players in his position in the Edwardian period" is simply true, and note that it is not given as my opinion - "Was one of the best players" - but as reported fact: "Was renowned as...". This usage is justified in the text - cf. his selection to a "World XI". Would it really be POV to apply such judgements to Banks or Yashin, say? "Roose was well qualified to play in goal" is similarly justified, in terms of his height and weight, and the reasons for this, given the footballing style of the period, are explained.

Eccentricity: it's a contentious topic, of course - one man's eccentric is another's beacon of sanity - but, again, I think it is beyond question that Roose was regarded as eccentric, and probably played up to the image. I refer you to the following citations (full bibliographical information for the books can be found in the references to the article):

Nick Hazelwood, In the Way p.46: "Roose's sense of humour, eccentric goalkeeping and extravagent behaviour made him an instant hit with the crowds... one of the great footballing and great goalkeeping characters of his time. His wanderings up and down the pitch, sorties into the crowd, his insistence on playing in the same unwashed kit for Wales, his penchant for a practical joke and his hiring of trains for personal use at Stoke City's expense all made him an amusing and likeable celebrity."

Geraint Jenkins, "Leigh Richmond Roose" in For Club and Country: Welsh Football Great p.23: "It is one of the commonplaces of sport that a goalkeeper is rather different from the rest of mankind. From the days of William ("Fatty") Foulke, who used to get his retaliation in first by waddling naked into visiting dressing rooms to intimidate opponents and referees to Rene Higuita (El Loco), the eccentric Columbian keeper, goalkeepers have taken pride in being deemed a breed apart. Arguably the most gifted superman of them all was Leigh Richmond Roose, the "prince of goalkeepers" in Edwardian Wales, whose curriculum vitae was a thing of wonder..."

Bob Wilson, You've Got to be Crazy p.44: "The joker in the pack in the early breed of keepers was Dr Leigh Richmond Roose."

Francis Hodgson, Only the Goalkeeper to Beat p.162: "Leigh Roose, the eccentric Welshman who never used to change his goalkeeping shirt..."

[1] Playerhistory.com: "Played the 1910 Scottish Cup semi final for Celtic as an amateur - Celtic lost 1-3 to Clyde and the eccentric goalkeeper shocked fans by racing from his goal to shake the hand of Clyde's third goalscorer!"

[2] Carling.com: "Leigh Richmond Roose, an eccentric Welsh goalkeeper who was an amateur, would hire a train especially to take him to International venues, when he had finished his medical duties. He had an elaborate pre-match ritual of pacing his goalmouth - no one ever knew why!"

Finally, discussion of the number of clean sheets kept by the player - "A remarkable record not least because his team flirted dangerously with relegation in 1901, 1902 and 1904" - does, I concede, require some statistical justification, but I'm happy to provide it; if we look at, say, the record of Portsmouth, the team finishing fourth from bottom of the Premiership this season, one above the relegation places, we see that the team kept only 5 clean sheets in its 38 games, or 13.1%, compared to Roose's record of 27.8% clean sheets at Stoke (http://stats.football365.com/dom/ENG/teams/Portsmouth.html). Hope this helps deal with your questions. Mikedash 09:47, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Now see, if those exact pages were cited inside the article then i'd have much less problem with looking at the sentences, but without the page numbers, as far as I could tell, those sentences just came from nowhere. And the statistics thing you mention, im not saying the facts aren't accurate, but the vocabulary being used in that sentence and one's like it just seemed increadibly favorable, there's got to be different word choices for them. And it's fine if many sources say he's eccentric, but the article just seemed to say it without much qualification of the issue until later in the article, which still has that enormous continuous speech on how amazing people thought he was. Homestarmy 19:41, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Readers of traditional encyclopedias expect the authors of the various articles to have reliably synthesised the available information without necessarily citing a source for every statement. That, to me, is what Wikipedia should do too, and I don't think it's unreasonable to suppose that the author of a well-referenced article has taken the necessary trouble. Mikedash 23:00, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Harsh judgement

Disappointing that GA has failed -- very harsh treatment for an article that should surely rank among the best of Wikipedia's "fun and fascinating" class of articles. (And I agree with the point about don't need to give a citation for every statement). Worth another try in future. --mervyn 12:53, 8 June 2006 (UTC)