Pilgrims, Addicks and Christmas Come Late

Tags

1960/61, Boxing Day, Charlton Athletic, Division 2, Football League, Home Park, Plymouth Argyle, The Valley

Football is full of peculiarities that run throughout its history; a whole host of coincidences that beggar belief and puzzle even the most logical of minds. Seldom do those minds settle on two consecutive meetings between Charlton Athletic and Plymouth Argyle however, and (usually) with good reason.

In 1960/61, when both were in the Second Division, they were set to meet one another twice over Christmas. The first game would be at the Valley on Boxing Day, while the following day, both sides would hurry over to Home Park for the return fixture. It might not be the easiest of journeys, but there were signs during the early part of the season that it might be worth keeping an eye on.

If we take Argyle first of all. They had made a promising start to the season, winning three of their first four games, the only defeat coming at an already impressive Sheffield Utd. After a blip, including defeats at Norwich and Lincoln, the Pilgrims picked up, most evidently in front of goal. September brought a pair of improbable 5-1 wins, against Portsmouth and at Huddersfield respectively, while later on in the year, a 4-0 defeat by Liverpool (albeit with five changes to the side) was dwarfed by Stoke City’s 9-0 walloping of the West Country side. Plymouth were a side who could score, but would also concede.

This image came from LFCHistory.net.

The Addicks had been less consistent, but had also shown they were good value; another heavy win against Portsmouth (7-4 this time) was bettered by a 6-6 draw with Middlesbrough, and that came directly after a 3-5 win at Brighton and Hove. In short, by the time Christmas came around, you would likely favour goals in a meeting between Charlton and Plymouth.

At 2.15pm, on Boxing Day 1960, all would be revealed.

Johnny Summers, no stranger to high scoring games.

By half time, Charlton led 3-2 and unusually after a high-scoring first half, the goals continued to flow in the second period. Plymouth, to add insult to injury, finished the game in the knowledge they would be without forward George Kirby the following day, meaning that Wilf Carter, who had disappointed so far that season, was allowed a stay of execution in the side. While he might not have had much effect on the 6-4 defeat that Charlton inflicted on the Pilgrims at the Valley, his hour to shine was coming.

It came early the following day, in a pulsating battle on a muddy Home Park pitch. Restored to the more usual 3.15pm kick off, by four o’clock, Plymouth led 4-2 and Carter had scored all four. A penalty on the hour mark afforded him the opportunity to make it 5-3 and though Charlton battled gamefully to reduce the deficit to one again, a fine strike from Alex Jackson ensured the scoreline ended the same unlikely 6-4 again.

Neither side was able to push on after their victory, and both ended the season in mid-table. Charlton were 10th, with a ludicrous 188 goals scored (97/91) in their 42 games, while Plymouth were 1 point behind, their season producing a far saner 163 strikes. It was, its fair to be said, a high-scoring time. Division 2 produced 3.48 goals per game, which was out-played by Division 1’s mammoth 3.73; Chelsea’s games saw 198 goals (100/98) that campaign, while Division 3 South Champions Peterborough racked up 85 home goals alone in their debut Football League campaign. A bad year for goalkeepers, then.

Charlton, it has to be said, must have ended up sick of the sight of Carter. Although he was somewhat out of form earlier in the 1960/61 season, he had scored for Plymouth in both games against the Addicks the previous campaign, a 5-2 defeat at the Valley and (believe it or not) grabbed a hat-trick in the 6-4 victory at Home Park. He went on to score another hat-trick in 1961 (a 6-1 win) and got one of the Pilgrims’ three in a 6-3 defeat.

That meant the run of results, when Plymouth were promoted to Division 2 in 1960, between them and Charlton went as follows; 6-4, 5-2, 6-4, 6-4, 2-1, 3-1, 6-1, 6-3 – an average of 7.5 goals per game. Football is full of peculiarities that run throughout its history, and Plymouth and Charlton’s turn of the 60s shootouts were a fine example of just that.

 

Bologna v. Juventus – 1931/32

Tags

1931/32, Bologna, Juventus, Statistical Posts

Just a short one demonstrating something I was thinking about the other day. Its strange how the same set of figures can manifest itself so differently when represented from another perspective.

I’d been looking through the results of the 1931/32 Serie A season; it was Juventus’ 4th title, they finished a wee way ahead of a Bologna side who led the way most of the campaign.

You can see, can’t you, that Bologna started a little better than Juventus, then went on a bit of a run just after the two sides met in December, while the meeting in Turin at the end of May was terminal to their season. That is clear, but it is also fairly tight and difficult to read. I was looking at that graph dissatisfied with it, when I happened upon the idea of the same numbers but in terms of the percentage of points won. I like it for 2 points for a win, because you’re either getting 0%, 50% or 100% of the points on offer. Its neat like that. 3 points for a win might be a little messier.

This graph is a lot more satisfactory, it actually looks as though the seasons is settling down, like a bottle of lemonade that has been shaken and calms. The two meetings between the sides were crucial, clearly, but taken this way it looks as though Bologna’s season was propped up by their good start and then gradually got worse and worse – I suppose that’s inarguable, but the relentlessness of that Juventus run at the end is far more evident seen this way.

Time and Christmas in 1918 Austria

Tags

Austrian Football, Historical Football, Time, World War I

If our paths have crossed recently, you’ll likely have heard me talking about Austrian time-telling.

It started before Christmas but my confusion remains and, despite asking as many people as I’ve been able to, I have yet to find a satisfactory answer.

Everything began when I found that there is an excellent archive of Austrian newspapers available online – the appropriately titled AustriaN Newspapers Online. They are broad in their scope and even though I have only scratched the surface, I cannot recall being more impressed with an archival project.

My attention, and thought, naturally, turned to football. I believe I was initially drawn to the archive looking for information for some games played by the likes of Torino against Austrian opposition in the early part of the 20^th Century, but that’s not where this particular tale ends up.

Such times bring visions of the Wunderteam, naturally, and one can read much about Mathias Sindelar amongst the papers, though precious little about his demise, which I had considered might be a subject for speculation in the press of the day. The looming presence of Adolf Hitler in those self-same volumes perhaps accounts for the lack of idle hypotheses.

Yet the Nazi jackboot for all its many detriments is not the thing I have taken most interest in throughout these newspapers. My eyes and mind have been drawn in by the festive competitions arranged in the cities of Austria in the immediate aftermath of World War I.

Played on Christmas Day and Boxing Day 1918 and featuring in the Vienna-based SPORTBLATT AM MITTAG (archive is here), you will note the round-robin nature of the tournament and the teams involved.

You will also note the time of the games, which is where my mystification comes in. Should ¼2 be 13:45, then the game would finish at 15:30 (allowing a 15 minute half time, but no injury time) which would tally with ½3 being 15:30. Why is the quarter to the hour it is affiliated with, in this case, and the half past? This must be the case, because the other eventualities would not pan out.

If the fractions were always ‘to’, then the first game would finish an hour after the second was due to start (impossible) and if it were always ‘past’, then the overlap time would be half an hour – see the table below for representation of that.

There is a second issue here. Sunset in Austria at this time is around 16:00 (a little after, if recent years are any guide). As far as I can tell, the W.A.C. Platz was no illuminated at this time, and so games would have to finish before dark.

In this context, I wonder if the two games were just 45 minutes long – one half of football in each; as a friendly tournament this is perfectly possible and allows the continuation if the times are ‘to’, as the two games would run into one another fairly exactly (there would be a half hour gap in ‘past’ – see above).

There was another Weihnachts-Rundspiel in Vienna that week, at the W.A.F.-Platz, which throws no more light on the situation (though this was better reported in the Sportblatt am Mittag the following week – they arranged it, as you can see below.

I’m fairly the problem there is self-evident. ¾3. Again, applying the same criteria to the games, it is tricky to work out exactly what was going on, and exactly what time games were kicking off, but using the same style of chart as above, it seems reasonable to assume that ¾3 was actually 2:15 – three quarters of an hour to three.

Those kick-off times, if we assume they are in the green column as above, allow for a forty-five minute encounter between each set of teams which seems about right. If you, like me, are wondering who won, I’ve done a little chart of each set of matches for 1918, allocating them points as they would be today, though I have no doubt that they were decided another way (probably on a straight ‘who won both their games’ rubric) so at least I can cover that.

The Christmas games were quite a feature of Austrian football at this time. I’ve found evidence of them going forward a fair few years – the snowy photographs of 1920 are something to behold and read, or at least looked through reports of a number of them.

There is, however, one thing that still troubles me. In one of the 1918 reports, there is a reference to a first half and a second half. On the basis that I’m assuming a 45 minute game, I wonder if they were actually 2 halves of 20 minutes.

Whichever way it went, and I’m going to continue trawling this fascinating archive, I think the only possible option is that, in Austria in the early part of the century, one would always work ‘to’ the next hour.

Anyway, its three quarters to six here, so I’ve got a train to catch.

Disclaimer and serious bit here in praise of ANNO. I cannot recommend their site highly enough – there are newspapers and journals going back as far as 1568, back to the days when they were hand-written, and currently as far forward as 1945. Its not just Austria, too, I’m sure I’ve seen some Czech and Hungarian titles in there. I hope I haven’t violated anything by excising two adverts from one of their titles – it was done out of love.