John Bowman (footballer)
English football player and manager (1879-1943)
John William Bowman (23 April 1879 – 26 January 1943) was an English football player and manager.
He played one cup game for Burslem Port Vale in 1899, having previously appeared for several nearby amateur sides. He then spent two seasons with Stoke, playing four games in the Football League, before he joined Queens Park Rangers in 1901. In four years with QPR, he played more than 100 matches before he was selected to serve Norwich City as manager in March 1905. He stepped down in 1907, returning to the game in 1912 for a four-year stint as Croydon Common manager. He then returned to QPR in various roles whilst he ran his sports outfitters business at 7 Park Parade, Harlesden. He later became a club director, also briefly taking the managerial reins in 1931 before stepping down due to ill health.
Playing career
Bowman moved to Staffordshire at a young age and started with Shelton Juniors before moving on to Hanley St. Jude's and Burslem Park before joining Burslem Port Vale of the Second Division in February 1899. He played at left-half in a 1–1 draw with Walsall in a Birmingham Senior Cup semi-final match on 13 March 1899, but was not selected again.
The public source identifies “John Bowman (footballer)” as english football player and manager (1879-1943). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around John, Bowman and footballer.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4817141. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1879, 1943, 1899 and 1901.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Bowman (footballer)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.