Meet the footballer labelled the next George Best who turned his back on the game to become a Jehovah’s Witness

He was a firecracker, Keith Moon. Quite literally. Trashing hotel rooms was barely the half of it. The legendary Who drummer loved to create a stir, and routinely used flash powder to ensure the band’s trademark kit-smashing at the end of live performances went off with a bang. 

On one infamous occasion in Los Angeles in September 1967, Moon overdid things even by his standards. He loaded a small cannon with so much gunpowder that the resulting explosion, which punctuated a performance of My Generation, left him with cymbal shrapnel in his arm, set fire to Pete Townshend’s hair, and reputedly made the watching Bette Davis.      

So when Harry Redknapp wrote in his autobiography that sharing a room with Peter Knowles on England youth team duty was ‘like being shacked up with Keith Moon’, he painted a pretty vivid picture of the former Wolverhampton Wanderers winger. 

‘In his playing days he was a lunatic,’ Redknapp recalled. ‘He was renowned for pranks. He drove me mad. I got stuck with him, really, because nobody else wanted to share his room.

‘He was wild. Flash, too. He would sit on the ball, or beat his man and deliberately go back and beat him again. I remember him getting George Best sent off once, by tripping over his own feet.’

There is irony in that last detail, for it was Best, the late Manchester Winger legend widely regarded as one of the greatest players the game has ever produced, to whom Knowles was most frequently likened. 

It is a big claim, yet those who saw Knowles play in his late-60s heyday remain adamant the comparison was warranted.

‘What people forget is that he was a very, very special player,’ the late Wolves defender Frank Munro would later recall. ‘We had a good team then and he was probably the best player in it. If he’d continued playing I think we would have won things. 

Peter Knowles signed for Wolves in 1962 and went on to make 174 appearances, scoring 61 goals and arousing transfer interest from Bill Shankly’s Liverpool – before retiring aged 23

Knowles was known for his mercurial skills and showmanship, but also for his competitive edge. Here, he is seen berating the late referee Norman Burtenshaw in a game against Spurs

Knowles arrives at Wembley Stadium for the International Assembly of Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1969. His involvement with the movement eventually led him to quit football

‘He was a good passer of the ball, had two good feet and could strike the ball really cleanly. He scored a lot of goals and had intelligence with it – he was one of those players who, when through on goal, you really fancied him to score.’

What no one fancied him to do was to walk away from the game at the age of 23 to become a Jehovah’s Witness. Yet that is precisely what happened in September 1969, seven years after Knowles first arrived at Molineux as a gifted but callow teenager. Even for the son of a Wakefield Trinity rugby league player, it was the most unlikely of conversions. 

Replete with the trappings of on-field success, Knowles had it all in the eyes of many observers. Money. Looks. Fame. His initials emblazoned on the side of a white Triumph Spitfire sports car. Covetous glances from the legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly. The very real prospect of a place in Alf Ramsey’s 1970 World Cup squad. What more, it was reasoned, could anyone want?

For Knowles, the answer to that question came when he answered a knock on the door shortly after marrying his wife Jean. He was greeted by a Jehovah’s Witness who introduced himself as Ken. 

Knowles, a confirmed atheist who had suffered a devastating double bereavement at the age of 11, when his father and younger sister died within a fortnight of each other, was immediately skeptical. 

Asked if he believed God put all things right, his answer was emphatic. ‘Never!’ he replied, before explaining to Ken how he felt.

‘My father had been a popular, well-respected man, just 42 years of age, when he died of cancer,’ Knowles later told the religious magazine Watchtower. ‘I could still remember the wave of bitterness that swept over me as I stood by his grave. 

‘Just two weeks later my baby sister died. My mother was broken hearted. And I could not forget how, as an 11-year-old boy, I had walked up the stairs with the dead infant in my arms and laid it on the bed. Why had these things happened?’

Knowles said visiting Wembley for the Jehovah’s Witness event gave him ‘a unique chance to contrast the atmosphere of the dressing room with the family spirit of the convention’

Former Wolverhampton Wanderers chairman John Ireland, left, compares a match ball with the ball from the 1893 Fa Cup final, in which Wolves defeated Everton by a single goal

Knowles, right, congratulates team-mate Jim McCalliog on a goal during a match against Spurs

The discussion that followed piqued both Knowles’ curiosity and that of his wife. They attended a local Kingdom Hall meeting and began studying the Bible. 

During a subsequent pre-season tour to the United States, where Knowles and his Wolves team-mates played for Kansas City Spurs as part of an initiative to promote the North American Soccer League, he attended local Jehovah’s Witnesses meetings. It was, he would later reflect, ‘a critical time in my spiritual advancement’. 

Football is often likened to a religion; for Knowles, it proved to be the gateway to an altogether more literal form of faith. The tipping point came with a visit to Wembley Stadium on his return home – not to watch football, but to attend an International Assembly of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

‘That week is one I will never forget, for, in addition to attending my first assembly, I also had to play three football matches,’ Knowles recalled. ‘Here was a unique opportunity to contrast the atmosphere of the dressing room with the family spirit of the convention. 

‘I looked at the crowds at the games where I played, then compared them to the 82,000 who attended the convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses on Sunday. That week brought home to me very forcefully the tremendous difference that existed between a life of soccer stardom and one of godly devotion.’

Feted by fans for his exploits on the pitch, where his obvious gifts were underpinned by a combative streak that often landed him in disciplinary trouble, Knowles became increasingly aware of the tension between his profession and his principles. 

‘We were all in shock when we heard because it was completely out of character,’ said Munro. ‘He was always a bit of a jack-the-lad. He’d just bought a brand new MG sports car and put his name on the side. It just seemed so unlikely.’

‘Many in the crowd were treating me almost like a god,’ he recalled. ‘It was a form of idolatry, and I knew it was wrong.’

Knowles was frequently likened to George Best, the late Manchester Winger legend widely regarded as one of the greatest players the game has ever produced

Knowles pictured with his wife Jean in the late 60s.The footballer came to believe that the aggression and all-consuming focus associated with the game were detrimental to married life

Knowles did not show and, as weeks turned to months and then years, and the contracts sent out to Knowles continued to be returned unsigned, it became clear he would never be returning.   

Knowles nonetheless started the new season in flying form, scoring in each of his first three games. So when he approached club manager Bill McGarry to inform him that he was planning to quit the game, no one took him seriously. 

Knowles did not show and, as weeks turned to months and then years, and the contracts sent out to Knowles continued to be returned unsigned, it became clear he would never return. 

Yet Wolves, who retained his registration for 12 years, were as unwilling to give up hope as the club’s fans. 

‘We were all in shock when we heard because it was completely out of character,’ said the late Wolves defender Frank Munro. ‘He was always a bit of a jack-the-lad. He’d just bought a brand new MG sports car and put his name on the side. It just seemed so unlikely.’

True to his word, however, Knowles walked down the tunnel after a 3-3 draw with Nottingham Forest on September 6, 1969, and never returned – contrary to the hopes of his manager.

‘As far as Peter Knowles is concerned I am still hoping that there will be a happy ending’, McGarry wrote in his programme notes for the Forest game. ‘His training gear will be laid out as usual on Monday morning and I will expect him to be here.’

But, it became clear he would never again pull on the black and gold shirt. 

‘As a confused 12-year-old I was one of the thousands unable to accept the fact that Knowles would never return,’ historian and author Clive Corbett later wrote. ‘Peter left the game and never returned, but left an impression that has faded very little in the five decades since.’

The attacker’s departure was no less keenly felt among his team-mates – including the midfielder Kenny Hibbitt, who shared the pitch with Knowles for just 20 minutes on his club debut, but remembers a player who ‘stood out so much it was frightening’.

‘What he did with a ball and the cheekiness he showed with it was amazing,’ said Hibbitt. ‘He would spin the ball by treading on the front of it so hard that it spun away from him. 

‘His marker thought he had lost possession and would run after it, but such was the spin Peter put on the ball, it just came back to him as though it was on elastic and he would laugh as he ran away with the ball. It was sheer genius.

‘True, he was a cocky so and so, but he had unbelievable charisma and confidence which I’d never seen before or since. He was special, an entertainer, and the game needs more players like him. Wolves and England lost a great football player who oozed total class.’

Ironically, the impudent gifts that made Knowles so good also informed his decision to quit. Neither his showmanship nor the competitive edge he brought to the field of play – ‘I know the personality I am, the flair I have got, that I could one day break somebody’s leg,’ he reasoned three months after quitting – were compatible with his beliefs. 

Knowles’ has been a life less ordinary; one of devotion to his beliefs and jobs that have included delivering milk, cleaning windows and working in a warehouse. Aside from lacing up his boots for the testimonials of former team-mates Ted Farmer, Munro and Hibbitt, he has never looked back.

‘I used to go on the football field and I’d really make sure that I was the centre of attraction,’ Knowles reflected in the late 70s. ‘I think this is it with people that have got skill. It isn’t just a matter of playing the game, they like to do things out of the ordinary.

‘If I was playing at Wolves, I’d really make sure that I did things out of the ordinary – and when I look back at some of those things, it makes me sometimes ashamed of myself.’

Others look back with a sense of regret about what was lost to the game. That, and unalloyed admiration for a man who put faith before glory.