[1] It was with the Rams, in 1914, that he gained his sole England cap, in a shock 3–0 defeat by Ireland at Ayresome Park, before upping sticks, again, to join Bradford City; his stay in Yorkshire shortened by the start of the First World War.

[1] Buckley went to war with the 17th Middlesex Regiment (where he commanded the Football Battalion), seeing action and receiving wounds to his lung and shoulder in the Battle of the Somme, and rose to the rank of major.

During the 1924–25 season Buckley sold established players such as Herbert Jones and Harry Bedford, which proved unpopular amongst the fans.

An alternative view is that during his stay at Molineux, Buckley once made the club a £100,000 profit within one year, purely on transfer deals; he toyed, provocatively, with the media, instigating the empty rumour that his players were using a monkey gland treatment (see Serge Voronoff) to aid performance;[10][11] he used psychologists to instill confidence in his players and was responsible for bringing through Stan Cullis and offering Billy Wright a start in professional football.

[13] He was not afraid to try all manner of ideas to induce the Elland Road club out of mediocrity: dancing songs broadcast through the public address system during training days, so-called 'shooting' boxes (a contraption designed to send the ball out at different speeds and angles to players), increasing admission costs, banning players from smoking two days before a match and youth development programmes.

[citation needed] Buckley's influence on the rise of the Blackpool and Wolves sides of the 1950s, of the Leeds United 'club culture' of the 1960s and 1970s should never be understated.

He brought in Jack Charlton, who had this to say about him: "Unlike the pros, we got just two weeks' holidays in the summer, and while they were away our job was to remove the weeds from the pitch and replace them with grass seed.

I remember being sat out there one day with Keith Ripley, another ground staff boy, when Major Buckley came over to us.

We must have looked pretty forlorn, the two of us, and to gee us up he said he'd give us five shillings for every bucket we filled with weeds.

By the time we were finished, we had filled six buckets, and, cheeky bugger that I was, I marched straight up to the Major's office.

The next morning, he summoned me to his office and handed me a pair of Irish brogues, the strongest, most beautiful shoes I'd ever seen.