Henry W. Brown

Henry W. Brown Martín was an English footballer who played as a goalkeeper and defender for Spanish club FC Barcelona at the turn of the century.

[2] Brown appears in what is regarded to be the oldest photograph of a football team in Spain, which depicts these two sides before the match at Can Tunis.

[2] In late 1894, a conflict between the club's members caused the entity to split into two groups, which led to its change of name to Sociedad de Foot-Ball de Barcelona, with whom Brown played several training matches (Blue vs Reds) at Bonanova, including on 2 February 1895, in which he played as a midfielder for the Reds led by John Beaty-Pownall in an eventual 4–1 victory over the Blues captained by Reeves.

The result was attributed to the fact that Torelló's five forwards (or runners as the local press of the time called them) had trouble getting through Barcelona's strong and robust defenders: Brown and Wilson, who "every time they kicked the ball with one of those blows that raised it 30 or 40 meters away, a wave of enthusiastic applause and cheers arose".

Brown thus joined the ranks of Barcelona, debuting on the Christmas Eve of 1899 against Català FC (3–1), which was only Barça's second-ever game, where he apparently played as a goalkeeper in the absence of Juan de Urruela.

[1] In the following year, Brown made a brief return to Catalan football when he served as a linesman under referee William Mauchan in a match between Hispania AC and Tarragona at the 1900–01 Copa Macaya, which ended in a 5–0 win to the former.

Members of the Barcelona Football Society on 24 March 1895. Brown can be seen standing, the second from the left, between Alberto Serra and John Beaty-Pownall .