Evelyn Lintott, training to be teacher at St Luke’s College, helped out Exeter City when he made a solitary Plymouth and District League appearance in December 1906. Also featuring for Plymouth Argyle around this time, he went on to play for Queens Park Rangers, Bradford City, Leeds City and England before dying on the first day of the battle of the Somme in 1916. 

Educated at the Royal Grammar School Guildford, Evelyn played for Woking before moving to Exeter to train to be a teacher at St Luke’s training college. Invited to play in the Southern League by Plymouth Argyle, he made his debut for the Pilgrims on 31 October 1906 and played once more on 5 January 1907.

In between these games it has been claimed that he played for England amateurs in a 15-0 win over France although this is contradicted by the surviving line-ups. However, on 8 December 1906 Evelyn assisted an under-strength Exeter City in the game against St Michael’s (Plymouth) in a season when forty-two players appeared for the first-team. The invitation to play for City may have come through Percy Worner, a one-time Exeter player and fellow St Luke’s trainee. 

Not featuring for the club again, Evelyn qualified from St Luke’s and moved to London where he joined Queens Park Rangers helping them win the Southern League before, having made his first (of seven) appearances for the full England team on 15 February 1908, moving on to play for both Bradford City and Leeds City as a professional. He also appeared five times for the England amateur team during 1907/08 featuring in 12-2 and 12-0 victories against the Netherlands and France respectively.       

Having previously served with the 17th Service Battalion Middlesex Regiment - often known as the ‘football battalion’ - he became a lieutenant in the West Yorkshire Regiment and was killed in action on 1 July 1916 on the first day on the Somme. Losing his life on the same day as Fred Bailey, another former Exeter City player, Evelyn Lintott was to die in action a few months before Percy Worner his old friend from St Luke’s training college in Exeter.

For more information about Evelyn Lintott’s war service and death see his entry in the Killed in Action section of the Archive