GoS: Player Details

NEIL LANGMAN

Born: 21 February 1932

Came from: Tavistock Went to: Colchester United

First game: 27 February 1954 Last game: 09 November 1957

Appearances: 99 (99/0) Goals: 50

Langman, like his brother Peter, was born in Bere Alston and began his career with Tavistock. Whilst Peter was a centre-half, Neil was a forward.

He joined the elder Langman at Home Park in 1953 and made quite an impact, scoring twice on his debut later that season (debuting before his brother had by some 12 months), and ending up with nine goals in nine appearances by the end of the campaign. He twice finished as the club's top scorer and grabbed four hat-tricks over his five years at Home Park. Perhaps more impressively, three of his four hat-tricks were scored away from home (at Derby, Coventry and Reading), but the home one was notable, against Liverpool no less, in a 4-0 Second Division drubbing in February 1956.

Despite this, he was unable to truly make the centre-forward position his own.

His final game for Argyle was also the last game that his brother played for the club at Brentford in November 1957, the last of 46 games they played together in green.

Neil moved on to Colchester United in 1957, for £6,750, where he scored 50 goals in 128 games before ending his career back locally, with prolific scoring spells with Bath City, Barnstaple Town, Falmouth Town and St Austell.

After football, Neil returned to Tavistock, working as a caretaker in a local school before moving to Exeter to work as a civilian with Devon & Cornwall Police, staying with them until he retired.

Spending his later years living locally, he passed away in September 2021 at the grand old age of 89.

YOUR CONTRIBUTION

If you can add to this profile, perhaps with special memories, a favourite story or the results of your original research, please contribute here.

From John Pickford in Sainghin-en-Melantois, France on 02/03/2019 ...

Neil Langman is one of a reasonably small number of players to have gained representative honours while on Argyle's books. Being a home grown hero and registering a goal to his name on that occasion make him especially noteworthy. Neil was selected in the Third Division South side which lost 1-2 to the Third Division North side in April 1957 - this followed his success in the 1956-57 season when he scored 17 goals in 32 games for Argyle. I came across this information while researching Wilf Carter who was selected to play in the same fixture the following season. Thanks to Steve Dean's enquiries it emerged that Wilf did not actually play in that match - he was injured. I missed seeing Neil play for Argyle but I saw him, and got his autograph, when he returned to Home Park with Colchester in February 1959. His appearance, and Argyle's promotion form of course, helped to produce a crowd of 22,000. Honours were even in the 1-1 draw.

APPEARANCE DETAILS [reselect competitions]

The details below reflect appearances in all first-team competitions.

I'm very grateful to many who have helped write GoS-DB's player pen-pictures, and to Dave Rowntree, the PAFC Media Team and Colin Parsons for their help with photos. Thanks also to staff at the National Football Museum, the Scottish Football Museum and ScotlandsPeople for their valuable assistance.

The following publications have been particularly valuable in the research of pen-pictures: Plymouth Argyle, A Complete Record 1903-1989 (Brian Knight, ISBN 0-907969-40-2); Plymouth Argyle, 101 Golden Greats (Andy Riddle, ISBN 1-874287-47-3); Football League Players' Records 1888-1939 (Michael Joyce, ISBN 1-899468-67-6); Football League Players' Records 1946-1988 (Barry Hugman, ISBN 1-85443-020-3) and Plymouth Argyle Football Club Handbooks.