Alec Forbes

I’m sure most of us are aware that many footballers in the early part of the 20th century played other sports other than football. Many of them played that very English pastime: cricket and did so at a very high level. In the late 19th century it was almost expected, the remarkable story of CB Fry (World record holder in the long jump, footballer, cricketer and even acrobat) gives a fantastic insight into the sport of that era. It wasn’t uncommon for players to play football in the winter and cricket in the winter. Denis Compton is a famous example, a man who represented Arsenal and England, at the same time played for Middlesex and earned 76 test caps in that time.

There are many more recent examples including Ian Botham playing for Scunthorpe United during the early 80s (and becoming the subject of a slightly cheeky “England captains who have played for Scunthorpe?) question. Geoff Hurst played at a decent level for Essex, whilst Steve Ogrizovic bowled at minor counties level before becoming the subject of a bizarre internet rumour in his retirement.

Arsenal's 1950 FA Cup Winning side

But, more interesting (I think) than those who have played the two most popular sports in the UK there’s the case of Alec Forbes who won an FA Cup winners medal for Arsenal in 1950 and played over 200 matches for the London club. From the age of 14-18 Alec Forbes did not play football, he instead worked at his local ice rink in Dundee. He was so good at the sport that he soon became a member of the local side (The Tigers) who were mainly made up of Canadians. During his time playing the sport he broke his collar-bone, his ankle and his leg. So it’s perhaps a blessing that he took up football at the age of 18 with Dundee North End, moves to Sheffield United and then Arsenal followed along with 14 caps for Scotland. However, the red-headed Forbes maintained even whilst playing professionally that ice hockey was his favourite sport.

It is very unlikely that a footballer will ever play at a high level in any other sport, football at the top end is so highly competitive and the training so vigorous for youngsters that it’s not particularly likely they’ll get to play any other sports than football – especially not one as violent as ice hockey.

1000 Football League goals in each division

Bury hold a couple of unique distinctions, they are the team who recorded the largest winning margin in the FA Cup Final of 1903 and they are the only club who have scored over 1000 goals in each of the four divisions of the Football League. In a time where clubs such as Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea dominate the football landscape it’s important to remember the clubs who are the glue of the football league.

The clubs who have scored more than 1000 in three different divisions are Notts County, Blackpool, Chesterfield, Bradford City, Huddersfield Town and Swansea City.

The full results do not include Division 3N or Division 3S, the figures are up to date to approximately the start of 2009

Team Name	Div 1	Div 2	Div 3	Div 4
Preston North End	2701	2497	1120	341
Burnley	3163	2317	643	416
Stoke City	2651	2428	465	0
West Bromwich Albion	4188	2396	152	0
Bolton Wanderers	3997	1821	598	66
Derby County	3766	2615	80	0
Everton	6367	348	0	0
Accrington (old)	226	0	0	0
Wolverhampton Wanderers	3912	2857	153	151
Aston Villa	6246	617	139	0
Blackburn Rovers	4153	2195	299	0
Notts County	1403	2179	1273	838
Sunderland	4762	1897	92	0
Darwen	75	326	0	0
Walsall	0	785	2089	633
Sheffield Wednesday	3918	2038	422	0
Sheffield United	3531	2633	366	94
Lincoln City	0	1740	527	2264
Birmingham City	2974	2921	260	0
Port Vale	0	2208	1682	765
Burton United	0	657	0	0
Crewe Alexandra	0	572	646	1840
Grimsby Town	756	2914	1135	766
Northwich Victoria	0	72	0	0
Manchester United	5694	1433	0	0
Manchester City	4840	1847	69	0
Bootle	0	49	0	0
Nottingham Forest	3013	2783	196	0
Middlesbrough Iron	0	37	0	0
Liverpool	6053	977	0	0
Rotherham Town	0	133	0	0
Arsenal	6040	824	0	0
Newcastle United	4770	1798	0	0
Leicester City	2731	3477	43	0
Bury	1176	2396	1426	1103
Burton Wanderers	0	167	0	0
Loughborough	0	170	0	0
Gainsborough Trinity	0	718	0	0
Blackpool	1733	2545	1319	413
Luton Town	807	2116	888	362
Barnsley	37	3820	972	628
Glossop North End	31	798	0	0
New Brighton Tower	0	194	0	0
Middlesbrough	3388	2421	154	0
Chesterfield	0	1070	1720	1154
Stockport County	0	1221	852	1736
Bristol City	428	2358	1548	129
Doncaster Rovers	0	741	695	1858
Bradford City	584	1620	1107	1275
Leyton Orient	37	1970	808	930
Hull City	28	2983	1152	576
Leeds City	0	592	0	0
Chelsea	4393	1323	0	0
Fulham	1047	2986	877	189
Oldham Athletic	601	2111	1304	499
Tottenham Hotspur	4593	1253	0	0
Bradford Park Avenue	172	1448	159	647
Huddersfield Town	1874	1886	1143	405
West Ham United	2993	2091	0	0
Gateshead	0	489	0	114
Coventry City	1557	1473	403	84
Rotherham United	0	1637	1444	584
Newport County (old)	0	61	672	1167
Reading	93	931	2019	513
Portsmouth	1970	2238	412	153
Swansea City	109	2190	1200	1080
Plymouth Argyle	0	2308	1536	306
Norwich City	966	1950	215	0
Gillingham	0	274	1720	1022
Southampton	1812	2425	258	0
Leeds United	3079	1817	111	0
Exeter City	0	0	798	1822
Brentford	330	588	2129	961
Northampton Town	55	171	986	1915
Cardiff City	865	2118	593	600
Millwall	86	1970	1060	422
Bristol Rovers	0	1162	2044	308
Merthyr Town (old)	0	0	60	0
Crystal Palace	548	1820	489	284
Queens Park Rangers	974	1326	1052	0
Watford	369	1276	1057	387
Swindon Town	47	1039	1824	259
Southend United	0	375	1528	1187
Brighton & Hove Albion	182	953	1371	450
Charlton Athletic	1424	2511	274	0
Darlington	0	151	209	2603
Halifax Town	0	0	697	1387
Barrow	0	0	167	685
Wrexham	0	168	1528	1402
Hartlepool United	0	1	471	2332
Rochdale	0	0	310	2486
Accrington Stanley	0	0	128	220
Tranmere Rovers	0	648	1436	1096
Southport	0	0	219	931
Nelson	0	40	0	0
Bournemouth	0	168	2179	527
Torquay United	0	0	592	2186
Carlisle United	43	787	734	1210
York City	0	90	850	1727
Mansfield Town	0	49	1344	1730
Chester City	0	0	737	1852
Aldershot Town	0	0	289	1806
Ipswich Town	1396	1863	0	0
Colchester United	0	132	1367	1540
Scunthorpe United	0	422	569	2025
Shrewsbury Town	0	415	1611	894
Workington	0	0	180	873
Peterborough United	0	103	1397	1644
Oxford United	150	852	921	474
Cambridge United	0	389	498	1125
Hereford United	0	57	254	1122
Wigan Athletic	140	139	1014	520
Scarborough	0	0	0	697
Maidstone United	0	0	0	188
Barnet	0	0	41	736
Wycombe Wanderers	0	0	546	338
Chester	0	0	0	1
Macclesfield Town	0	0	44	583
Cheltenham Town	0	0	170	348
Kidderminster Harriers	0	0	0	249
Rushden & Diamonds	0	0	60	228
Boston United	0	0	0	268
Yeovil Town	0	0	169	160
Dagenham & Redbridge	0	0	0	96
Morecambe	0	0	0	84

4-3

With my side Cardiff City winning out as 4-3 victors over Sheffield United (the first time they had recorded this score in almost 24 years) I felt it was worthwhile taking a look at the scoreline and its history within the Football League.

At the end of the 2007/2008 season there had been almost 1500 4-3 results in Football League history. The highpoint for the scoreline was the 1889/1890 season where approximately one in twenty matches ended in that scoreline. The worst season, surprisingly perhaps, was 1910/1911 where only one of the 280 matches played that season ended in a 4-3 scoreline (a 4-3 victory for Everton over Bristol City on Christmas Eve).

Here’s the graph depicting the occurrence of the scoreline. Unsurprisingly the score has become less frequent since the free-scoring, early days of the Football League. The last time more than 1% of matches in a Football League season ended in 4-3 was the 1964/1965 season.

COSAFA Cup 2009 – Zimbabwe

African international football is separated into different confederations, COSAFA covers the southern section of the continent and includes sides such as Angola and World Cup 2010 hosts South Africa.

Dynamos FC greet the players of CAPS United.

Each individual confederation has their own cup and COSAFA’s 2009 tournament is currently being played in Zimbabwe. The tournament was due to be held in South Africa, but logistical and local governmental problems in South Africa led to its cancellation before Zimbabwe stepped in. Football in the troubled southern African nation has experienced a renaissance of sorts with the biggest club side in Zimbabwe, Dynamos reaching the semi-finals of the African Champions League in 2008 beating Egyptian giants Zamalek on the way.

Unusually, from a European perspective, the competition appears to be bankrolled by a cigarette company (Savannah) who also sponsor Dynamos FC. Tobacco advertising appears to be ubiquitous in Zimbabwe. Savannah almost pulled the plug on their sponsorship of Dyanmos when the club competed in a tournament sponsored by a rival brand of cigarette. In fact they have provided a “range of T-shirts and tracksuits, which the fans will wear during the Cosafa tournament.”

The first round of matches have already taken place with the host nation and Botswana making it through the initial group stages (with the likes of Lesotho and the Seychelles) to the quarter finals to play “the big six” of South Africa, Angola, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia and Zambia. (Angola and South Africa have sent U23 or U20 squads to the tournament, it’s a practice quite common in these sorts of tournaments to make the games a little more competitive).

Zimbabwe, Zambia, Angola and South Africa have all won the competition on three occasions each, and it will be a big surprise if any country from outside these four wins the trophy this time around. Zimbabwe face Botswana in the Quarter Finals. in Harare. The final is on the 1st November.

Ninian Park is falling down

Cardiff City moved to a brand new soulless dome this summer so now the time has come to knock down the old home Ninian Park (unsurprisingly to be replaced by houses).

Demolition of Ninian Park

One of the more interesting aspects of the ground demolition has been the removal of the cladding from the main Grandstand, the demolition crew have exposed an old AFC CARDIFF CITY sign.

Exposed signage

It’s quite sad to see the old ground in the state it’s in, though some jokers may say “What’s changed?”, but as soon as a football team no longer plays in a ground it loses its purpose and magic. It’s just a shell.

Further pictures here:
Mike Morris
Jon Candy

Finland 2 Wales 1

Any slim hopes Wales had of finishing third were dashed with another disappointing loss in their World Cup qualification campaign. They have now played Russia, Germany and Finland home and away, failing to take even a point from six matches.

Jari Litmanen - 128 caps

As a Wales fan I do not expect us to qualify, in all honesty I don’t really expect us to get even close. However, I do expect us to show a little bit of attacking ambition. Playing three centre halves against Jonatan Johansson, a man who hasn’t currently got a club (on trial at St. Johnstone I believe?), was hard to understand, but ever so predictable from a Toshack Wales side. Further frustration was caused by multiple squad withdrawals. Wales were left in the embarrassing situation of only having three outfield players on the bench, this led to the odd sight of Toshack bringing on fullback Neal Eardley for centre-half Lewin Nyatanga when Wales were chasing the game late on. Surely the Welsh set-up has contingency plans for such situations?

Finland’s side appeared many familiar names, Jusi Jaaskalinen between the sticks, Hyypia and Tihinen in defense and Kolkka and the evergreen Litmanen pulling the strings in the Finnish midfield. It’s interesting to note that Litmanen has now won 128 caps, that’s twice as many as Ryan Giggs, it shows the differing attitudes of the two footballers to their national sides. Glen, who runs vivarovers used an excellent turn of phrase when he described Litmanen’s performance at the MillStad – “he stood us ragged”, which summed up just how inept our midfield were that day.

A wholly disappointing performance from Wales, even the normally fluent Ramsey looked out of sorts playing in a very deep role where his talents were never shown. When Wales play like this you start to think of the players who are missing, Danny Collins would be a very welcome addition into defence, John Oster and Paul Parry would be useful options from the bench at the very least. I’m even starting to think that a 34 year old Robbie Savage would be good to have around the place. That’s how bad it’s got.

The FAW in their infinite wisdom recently awarded John Toshack an extension to his contract, so we have to put up with this dirge for another qualification campaign (at least). When will he realise he’s not up to the job? The side looks low on morale and confidence, something needs to change. Sack Tosh, bring in Flynn, I don’t see how it can get any worse! Wales play Liechtenstein in Vaduz on Wednesday evening.

Saturday Evening Football Newspapers

In the early 90s, for me no Saturday evening was complete without getting the Football newspaper, giving a comprehensive match report on Cardiff City’s latest embarrassing away defeat. This was before the internet so the only news you could find on the match came from the vidiprinter on Grandstand (just the result) or fifteen or so lines on Ceefax/Teletext. But like Ceefax and Teletext, these newspapers are becoming a thing of the past and have effectively been replaced by the internet and rolling news footage from Stelling and co. on Sky Sports News.

Norwich, Pink Un

There are very few of these brightly coloured rags (often pink or green) still running in the UK, and those that are – by some fluke of fate – still operating are often included as a supplement in the Monday paper. Which, almost defeats their purpose.

I have a great anthology called “The Footballer’s Fireside Book” that was originally published in the early 60s. It has an article written in 1905 about the production of Saturday evening football newspapers in it. There’s some great info in there. For starters, many newspapers used to use carrier pigeon to deliver their match reports to HQ, though the writer does describe the pigeon as a slow, uncertain and clumsy messenger.

The article mentions the ease at which “provincial” towns such as Sheffield, Glasgow and Nottingham produce papers as there’s only one club in the city (as when one is home, the other is away) so it concentrates on the difficulties of producing the London paper. Before the use of telephones were widespread cyclists used to take the match reports from one side of London to another. Fleet Street being anywhere between 6 and 12 miles from all the London grounds. The writer of the article also bemoans the fact that on the date the article was written (Christmas 1905) one ground in London still didn’t have a telephone. He refused to name which ground it was, but bemoaned the Government’s lack of foresight in not building a telephone exchange in the area.

The loss of these newspapers is sad, they are part of the fabric of football that we all know and love. I still remember a trip to Old Trafford in ‘91 where men would print the scores of today’s matches on an empty part of the newspaper, in the back of white vans before selling them to supporters leaving the stadium from the back of the same van. It’s a shame that these papers are disappearing, but totally understandable considering the way we are bombarded with football information from all quarters these days – there’s no way the Likely Lads would have been able to avoid the score of even the lowest of league matches these days!

Part Two: Manchester United Head to Head

I have far too much information to put into one post regarding head-to-heads so I’m probably going to write a series of articles on the subject. I apologise in advance if this sort of stuff bores you.

As you can see from the table in the earlier blog post there are two sides who Manchester United fail on a head-to-head basis against, and they aren’t who you’d expect. The first side is Burton Wanderers, a side not to be confused with the now league side Burton Albion. United and Wanderers shared six fixtures with one another in the second division near the end of the 19th Century, Burton winning three, one draw, with Manchester United winning the other two. Burton Wanderers finest hour coming in March 1893 when they won the match 5-1.

The other side with a better head-to-head record against Manchester United come from the unlikely location of the Essex coast. Southend United beat Man United 1-0 in the League Cup in 2006 with a solitary Freddie Eastwood goal. It is the only time the two clubs have faced one another.

The only current league side that Manchester United haven’t come out on top against is Swansea City (over sixteen fixtures). Other clubs that are no longer with us that disappeared from existence whilst holding United head-to-head are Accrington and Leeds City.

Nelson FC

The remaining club are Nelson, who won at Old Trafford in the 1924 (and lost the home fixture a week before). It’s interesting to note that FCUM, the fan owned club, have also played Nelson twice, dispatching them by 8 goals and 6 goals to 0 in their two matches against the Lancashire team. Nelson’s big claim to fame is that they have not only won at Old Trafford but they’ve also won at Real Madrid, 4-2 in a tour match during1923.

Part One: Head To Head

Before most Sky televised matches the all time head-to-head results of the two competing teams are splashed across the screen in bold graphics. Now, I understand, like most football fans (I’d hope), that these statistics don’t actually mean anything in the context of the match to be played. But I still felt these stats required a bit more investigation.

So, I whacked all 133 football league sides into the super-computer to find out who had the best head-to-head results against the other ex-football league sides. And here are the results, specifically the top 10:

Team W-D-L

Manchester United	93	4	2
Liverpool	92	4	4
Arsenal	89	1	9
Tottenham Hotspur	74	4	11
Aston Villa	73	3	15
Chelsea	79	9	12
Everton	68	7	14
Newcastle United	73	6	17
Leeds United	73	7	17

I’m sure that most won’t find the above table too surprising. All the big clubs are there, including the current big-four of Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea.

Manchester United	92	5	2
Liverpool	92	4	4
Arsenal	89	1	9
Tottenham Hotspur	74	4	11
Aston Villa	73	3	15
Chelsea	79	9	12
Everton	68	7	14
Newcastle United	73	6	17
Leeds United	73	7	17

Carl Robinson

I’ve probably watched 90% of the 52 matches (and a solitary goal in a 3-2 win at Windsor Park) that Carl Robinson played for Wales in. A battling central midfielder who kept things ticking over in the midfield. He was never a superstar for Wales, always in the shadows of players such as Ryan Giggs, Craig Bellamy and even Simon Davies. But when the squad was announced you could always be sure that Carl would turn up, the same can not be said of the stars that Wales had during those years.

Carl Robinson celebrates with his teammates

He has now retired from international football and plays in Major League Soccer for Toronto FC (I’m not sure if I’m pleased or appalled that they didn’t choose a nickname like other sides, unless they think their nickname is “FC”). He has been their MVP in both of the seasons he’s played at the club and is an influential player at the club alongside another Brit, Danny Dichio. I’m glad that unlike so many other British footballers he made the move abroad, I doubt the wages are better than what he could have picked up at a Second Division club. Honourable mentions in this section to the likes of Matt Derbyshire, who’s currently in Greece.

I’ve always quite liked Robinson as he’s almost the epitome of a honest model pro, as I’ve already mentioned, he’s always shown himself for Wales when required and always applied himself as well as he could. With Carl Fletcher also retiring this summer Wales are left with a dearth of Carls in the midfield, though Aaron Ramsey and Jack Collison are more than adequate replacements. Robinson has recently started up his own website Robbo33 (his number at Toronto is 33) containing a blog, some details on the man and some great wallpapers. There are also some great little pieces of writing on the site that I enjoyed, for example this one is on his time with the Welsh national team (or TEAM WALES as it’s described on the site:

Mess with a Dragon, get the fire. For every one of his 52 caps with Wales, Carl made sure players from all over the world understood that. Over the course of a decade, he fought tooth and nail to protect his country’s back line and create chances going forward.

Every minute he stepped onto the pitch in Welsh colours was a proud one. Because for a man from Powys, it’s always Cymru am byth.

This excellent piece is accompanied with a quite depressing, but probably accurate, picture of Carl in front of swathes of empty Millennium Stadium seats.

He also has a twitter account, that you can’t quite believe is real at times, where he imparts interesting insights into his life such as the fact he’s enjoying the Tom Hanks film “Big” or that “I wonder what tomorrow holds? Ups? downs? Highs? lows? Just live for the moment…….. Dont let things pass you by.” Good advice Carl.