International Football History and Statistics

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On this day in football history

1923 The ten First Division matches played produced only ten goals between them; all scored by home sides.

1923 Bolton Wanderers beat West Ham United 2-0 in the first FA Cup Final to be staged at Wembley. The crowd was officially declared at 126,000 but many thousands broke in delaying the start for 40 minutes and a more realistic estimate is 200,000. The match became known as the White Horse Final after valiant attempts to clear the pitch by a mounted policeman on a white horse.

1934 Coventry City beat Bristol City 9-0 in Division Three South thus creating a club record victory and a club record defeat repectively. Coventry's goals came from Vernon(3), Young, Temple, Stevens, Bingham and Gabriel.

1941 Gordon Smith signed for Hibernian. Known as the Gay Gordon or the Peter Pan of Scottish football he was a fine outside-right and remained in top-flight soccer until he was 40. His first honour was to play against England in a wartime international in 1945 and he also played in two "Victory" internationals in 1946. With the War over he was able to gain full honours and was capped 18 times between 1947 and 1957 and played nine times for the Scottish League in representative matches. He won three Championship medals with Hibs (1948, 1951, 1952) and a Cup losers medal when they were beaten by Aberdeen in 1947. In the same year he became the first Scottish player to score five goals from the wing in a First Division match. He played for Hibernian in the inaugural European Cup (1955-56) and later appeared in the same competition with Hearts (1960-61) and Dundee (1962-63). He thus became the first player to appear in the European Cup with three different sides. Hibernian gave him a free transfer in the summer of 1959 after 310 peacetime League games with them (125 goals) and he joined Hearts. They were Champions at the end of his first season with them and won the Scottish League Cup in the same year. In 1961 he was again freed and joined Dundee and, remarkably, they too were League Champions by the end of his first season. He finally retired in 1964 after 423 Scottish League matches and 146 goals as well as almost 20 in the Scottish Cup and over 30 in the League Cup.

1951 Newcastle beat Blackpool 2-0 in the FA Cup Final

1962 Two goals from Crawford steered Ipswich Town to a 2-0 win over Aston Villa and the League Championship at their first attempt.

1970 Arsenal win the Fairs Cup 4-3 on aggregate against Anderlecht after a 3-0 secong leg win at Highbury.

1970 Arsenal won the Fairs Cup; their first trophy for seventeen years.

1989 Fourteen Liverpool fans are found guilty of manslaughter in a Brussels court in relation to the Hysel stadium disaster.

1990 Liverpool lift their tenth title in fifteen seasons after a 2-1 home victory against QPR.

1993 In a tragic accident four of he Zambian national team are killed in a plane crash on the way to a World Cup Qualifying match.

1999 Sir Alf Ramsey manager of the 1966 World Cup winning team dies.