The Knowledge: heavy FA Cup upsets and long-distance journeymen
“What is the heaviest defeat inflicted on a top-division side by lower-league opposition in the FA Cup?” asks Lindsay Davis. “The best I can discover is Scunthorpe United (2nd Div) 6-2 Blackpool (1st Div) in the 1961 third round.”
Scunthorpe’s six-goal slaying was a hell of an effort all right, but not quite the best of its type. Robert Salter has trawled back to the prewar years to unearth Everton 0-6 Crystal Palace from January 1922. Thomas McIntosh’s Toffees, who would go on to avoid relegation from the old First Division by the skin of their teeth, were given a drubbing in front of their own fans by a second-tier Palace side whose goalscorers included the magnificently named Bertie Menlove.
The win was orchestrated by Edmund Goodman, Palace’s longestserving manager, whose playing career was cut short after a serious injury led to him having a leg amputated. “Coincidentally the two clubs met again in the FA Cup in January 1931,” Robert informs us, “and that time Everton won 6-0 at Crystal Palace.”
Malcolm Warburton weighs in with a marginally narrower win, albeit achieved by a non-league side over first-tier opposition. “In February 1906 Southampton, of the Southern League, beat First Division club Middlesbrough 6-1 in the third round.”
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A couple of weeks ago we were asked about clubs owned by breweries. Chris Williams chips in: “When Alton Town Bass FC was formed in 1991 it was as a result of a merger between sides Courage & Co FC – the works side of the local Courage Brewery – and Alton Town FC. The ensuing years led to a number of name changes – Bass (Alton) FC, Bass Alton Town FC, Alton Town FC – before settling on their current name of Alton FC.”
Rit Nanda has another example from India: “Two of the most storied clubs from Kolkata, Mohun Bagan and East Bengal, were both owned by breweries or distilleries until very recently, with East Bengal terminating its partnership only this year.
“To enter into international competitions, these two clubs had to form companies. So in 1998, the two partnered with United Spirits and United Breweries (which were owned by the same person, Vijay Mallya). The clubs then changed their names to McDowell’s Mohun Bagan (McDowell being
a United Spirits brand) and Kingfisher East Bengal (Kingfisher being a United Breweries brand).”
Footballing journeymen
Last month, @TheTinBoonie asked us whether any player could top Clayton Lewis’s 11,252-mile transfer from Auckland City to Scunthorpe United.
Phil Lacy has us nodding in agreement from the start: “While I dearly wish that the record could belong to the gloriously named Argélico Fucks, who in 2007 travelled 11,910 miles from Canoas, Brazil to play for Zhejiang Greentown in the Chinese Super League a grand total of 22 times, sadly it does not. There are many football wanderers who left Buenos Aires for China, breaking the 12,000-mile barrier. The longest I could find was the transfer on 23 July 2013 of Pablo Nicolás Caballero, who left Almirante Brown of La Matanza Partido for Qingdao Jonoon – an incredible 12,324 miles. He played up front for them 13 times, scoring twice, before returning to Buenos Aires to sign for Ferro Carril Oeste, a journey of 12,306 miles. He’s since moved on to Spain.”
James Clarke picks up on the same theme: Carlos Tevez moved from Boca Juniors to Shanghai Shenhua in December 2016, scored four goals in the single season he played there, then went back to Boca in January this year on a free. Each way that’s a 19,641km journey (12,204 miles), so he racked up an impressive transfer distance of 39,282km in barely more than a year.” Knowledge archive
“Is it true that a Newcastle United player invented the windscreen wiper?” posed Warren Rose, rubbing his eyes in incredulity back in 2009.
Almost, Warren, almost. Football can indeed claim for itself a part in the invention of the windscreen wiper, but it was a Newcastle fan rather than a player who came up with the idea.
It’s now more than 100 years since Gladstone Adams drove his Darracq car to Crystal Palace Park for the 1908 FA Cup final between Wolves and his beloved Newcastle United. Adams’s side were the overwhelming favourites against second division Wolves, but the underdogs ran out 3–1 winners, handing Newcastle their third final defeat in four years.
It’s fair to suggest then that Adams wasn’t in the best of moods on the journey home. And his disposition would have deteriorated further when he found himself in the middle of an unseasonable snowstorm. Back then, windscreens had to be cleared by hand and it was on one of these frosty-fingered breaks by the side of the road that Adams came up with the idea of a mechanised blade that could run while the car was in motion.
Unfortunately, Adams has a fairly lonely place in the pantheon of football’s inventors. Generally, the sport has borrowed ideas from elsewhere. Turnstiles, for example, were originally used in agriculture, allowing ramblers and farmers to access fields while keeping the sheep and cows in. Shinpads, permitted in the FA rules as early as 1874, were a ripped off, cut down version of the cricket pads of the time.
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“Cédric Soares scored his first goal for Southampton in Mark Hughes’s first game managing the club, and scored his second in Hughes’s last,” notes Ciaran Hannigan-Purcell. “Have there been any other instances where normally goal-shy players have scored to both welcome and wave goodbye to a manager?”
“Hope Solo made over 200 international appearances for the USA, but ‘only’ 134 club appearances (according to Wikipedia),” says Nick Williamson. “Are there any other players who have played many more times for their country than for their clubs? Perhaps a perennial third-choice club keeper who represents a low-ranking nation in all their fixtures?”
“I was wondering, what’s the longest sequence of competitive matches a club (or country) has played in the same kit?” wonders Gareth from Milton Keynes.
“Real Madrid recently lost 3-0 to Eibar in a stadium that holds just 7,000 people,” begins Robin Tucker. “That got me thinking: have any former European champions lost a competitive match in a smaller stadium? This would be only counting results after their first European success, so games such as Liverpool’s 1959 defeat to Worcester City would not count.”
“If Shakhtar beat Lyon by one goal in the final round of Champions League fixtures in December, they will qualify for the knockout stage with a goal difference of -7. Has any team ever qualified, or even won their group, with a worse goal difference record?” wonders Oscar Clarke.
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