“Have any footballing thespians ever treaded the boards in panto?” mused Chris Callaghan back in 2011.
Manchester United run an annual pantomime, which is written by and stars the club’s youth players. According to no lesser a source than The Sun, 2011’s panto included skits on Wayne Rooney and David de Gea. One youth player appeared in a Rooney shirt with a Shrek mask and gave a mock interview about how his hair transplants had changed his life. Anderson was teased about his weight, while De Gea’s run-in with the doughnut police was also recreated.
In years gone by, the Newcastle United favourite Peter Beardsley has appeared in Sleeping Beauty (“he impressed as King Pedro of Gallowgate in a part written specially for him,” in 1999, according to Observer Sport Monthly’s account), and even though he has returned to the stage since, he seems to be in the minority. Vinnie Jones shunned pantomimes for bigger things (like Midnight Meat Train, we assume), declaring as he set off for Hollywood: “I want to be a big player. I’ve been offered pantos and turned them down – they didn’t do Frank Bruno any favours.”
Ian Botham has also appeared on the festive stage – he played professional football for Yeovil and Scunthorpe, lest we forget, scoring for Yeovil too – with the one-time centre-back and er … Ashes legend making his panto debut at the Alhambra, in Bradford, on 21 December 1990 alongside George and Zippy from Rainbow. The Daily Express reviewed his performance thus: “The expressionless Botham is the only wooden thing on stage apart from the beanstalk – and even that projects itself better.” Cruel. But it didn’t hold Beefy back, mind. He also appeared in a 1992 production of Dick Whittington, in which he played ‘Silly Midoff, The Mate’ (geddit?) alongside June Brown’s ‘Fairy’. Yes, that’s right, Dot Cotton as a fairy. Crazy stuff, but then again she was starring alongside a cricketer-cum-footballer who once loved combining a mullet with a stubby ‘tash. Given that, a Cotton-fairy almost makes perfect sense.
WHICH FOOTBALL TEAMS APPEAR IN THE BIBLE?
“It is often said that Queen of the South is the only team mentioned in the Bible – but I can find many mentions of Bury (starting in Genesis 23) and Reading (Acts 8:28), and, stretching a point, Hearts and Wolves also get some space. Are there any others I’ve missed out?” asked George Chilvers in 2005.
There are biblical references aplenty so best to get the most tenuous ones out of the way first. Psalm 80:13 mentions: “Boars from the forest ravage it and the creatures of the field feed on it”, while Genesis 12:15 notes, “And when Pharaoh’s officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace.” Isaiah 41:7 even manages to (sort of) cover two Premier League clubs: “The craftsman encourages the goldsmith, and he who smooths with the hammer spurs on him who strikes the anvil.”
But we can do better. Jeremiah 50:25 reads: “The Lord has opened his arsenal and brought out the weapons of his wrath, for the Sovereign Lord Almighty has work to do in the land of the Babylonians.” There are also the three mentions of Bolivian club The Strongest: in Samuel 11:16, Chronicles 5:2, and Daniel 3:20, while Brazilian outfit Corinthians even share their name with two books in the Bible.
“There are a few occurrences, discounting the use of place names in Israel that still exist and teams or place names in Latin America named after biblical references,” adds John Morrow. “In the New International Version you can find Grasshoppers [Zurich] a number of times (eg Numbers 13:33), while Aurora (a club in Guatemala) occurs a number of times in the Spanish language Nueva Versión Internacional (eg Job 3:9), as does Uruguayan side Defensor (eg Proverbs 23:11).”
But our favourite has to be this – somewhat dubious – suggestion from Bill Wright, relating to Proverbs 13:23: “A poor man’s field may produce abundant food, but injustice sweeps it away.” Something Stags fans will probably get quicker than most.
THE TRUCE MATCH
“Did the Christmas football matches between British and German troops in the First World War trenches really take place?” wondered a sceptical Sandy Brook in 2012.
As implied in Sandy’s question, most folk raise an eyebrow nowadays at the thought of Tommy and Jerry getting together for a spot of festive soccer on a patch of no-man’s land so churned it made the Baseball Ground circa 1972 look like the gardens of Tresco. It seems highly improbable, especially to modern minds conditioned by social media, that petty grudges could be set aside in the name of peace and goodwill to all men. But some contemporary reports suggest that’s exactly what happened on Christmas Day 1914.
To borrow (and then misuse) one of the oldest football zingers in the book: in the middle of a fight, a football match broke out. A report in the Guardian on Boxing Day 1914 described how in one region “every acre of meadow under any sort of cover in the rear of the lines was taken possession of for football”. In their letters home, British soldiers told of shaking hands with their German counterparts and swapping cigarettes. A Scottish brigadier described how the Germans “came out of their trenches and walked across unarmed, with boxes of cigars and seasonable remarks. What were our men to do? Shoot? You could not shoot unarmed men.”
While there was undoubtedly continued gunfire along many sections of the front, most soldiers appear to have laid down their arms and called an unofficial truce that day, with fußball uppermost in the minds of many. A letter published on New Year’s Day from a British officer reads: “I hear our fellows played the Germans at football on Christmas Day. Our own pet enemies remarked they would like a game, but as the ground in our part is all root crops and much cut up by ditches, and as, moreover, we had not got a football, we had to call it off.” A letter in the Times, meanwhile, from a major reported that a German regiment “had a football match with the Saxons [regiment], who beat them 3-2.”
One match appears to have started between the Germans and a regiment from Cheshire, one of whom years later explained how a ball suddenly came hurtling over the top from the German side. “I should think there were about a couple of hundred taking part. I had a go at the ball. I was pretty good then, at 19. Everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves. There was no sort of ill-will between us. There was no referee, and no score, no tally at all. It was simply a melee – nothing like the soccer you see on television.”
Nevertheless, the young men were organised enough to arrange a festive feast of a hare for the winners. “The grey-tunicked Germans the one side, and the kilted Jocks the other. The game was won by the Germans, who captured the prize. But more was secured than a hare. A sudden friendship had been struck up, the truce of God had been called, and for the rest of Christmas Day not a shot was fired along our section.”
Still, that all said, others are a little more sceptical...
NO BREAK
“When was the last time football matches in Britain were played on Christmas Day?” asked Kevin Liepins in 2005.
It’s not as far back as you might think. As David Ross’s website scottishleague points out, in Scotland, the last scheduled round of Christmas Day league fixtures was in 1976. However, a combination of reluctance to play and poor weather reduced the card. No Scottish top division matches were played, and these were shifted to Friday 24, Sunday 26 and Monday 27.
Of the two games that were played on Christmas Day, Clydebank and St Mirren drew 2-2 in a top-of-the-table First Division clash and Alloa beat Cowdenbeath 2-1 at home in the Second Division. In addition, Dundee’s official history lists them as winning 1-0 away to Montrose on Christmas Day – but another source suggests that this match was in fact played on Monday 27th.
The last time a full set of Christmas Day fixtures was played in Scotland was in 1971. Celtic beat Hearts 3-2 at home, Dundee United beat Dunfermline by the same score at Tannadice, and Kilmarnock overcame Morton 4-2 at Rugby Park. Other results that day were: Airdrie 1-1 Clyde, East Fife 1-1 Motherwell, Falkirk 0-3 Aberdeen, Hibernian 0-1 Rangers, Partick 0-1 Ayr, and St Johnstone 0-0 Dundee.
The last Christmas Day professional match in England took place in 1965, when 20,851 saw Blackpool beat Blackburn 4-2 in a First Division match at Bloomfield Road. Though Brentford made an ill-advised attempt to revive the tradition in 1983, scheduling their Third Division match against Wimbledon for 11am on Christmas Day in an attempt, a club spokesman rather quaintly put it, to ”revive the old tradition of husbands going to football on Christmas Day while the wives cook the turkey”.
Having been told their place, west London’s wives had other ideas and fan protests prompted the club to bring forward the match to Christmas Eve, a date on which the club offered no thoughts on what it expected the nation’s wives to be doing. A 6,689 crowd - the second highest league crowd at Griffin Park that season - saw the Dons win 4-3. They were promoted that season while Brentford narrowly avoided relegation.
Here is a description, by a young boy, of the atmosphere as he watched Sheffield United play Bolton at Bramall Lane on Christmas Day, 1948. “The match kicked off in the morning and, as there were no trams running, my dad and I made an early start and walked to Bramall Lane from Millhouses. Once inside the ground it was clear this was no ordinary occasion, for the atmosphere was something special - particularly to a nine-year-old. The band played Christmas carols and many of the crowd sported their presents. New scarves and gloves were much in evidence, whilst the aroma of cigar smoke hung everywhere. Spirit flasks were passed among groups of friends and swigged with a slightly furtive air.” Lovely stuff.
CAN YOU HELP?
“When Roy Keane served as Paul Lambert’s assistant at Aston Villa, his managerial achievements were greater than his boss,” begins Chai from Atlanta. “In comparison to Keane’s one Championship title, Lambert had won a lower-division League One title. Though ways to gauge footballing success differ, have there been other instances of a No2 being more successful than his manager in terms of titles or trophies won?”
“I was looking through Ajax’s history recently and noticed that during the 2010-11 season their top goalscorer, Mounir El Hamdaoui, netted a mere 13 goals on the way to securing the Eredivisie title and it got me thinking: what’s the lowest number of goals scored by the top goalscorer in a league-winning side (let’s arbitrarily restrict this to leagues where the teams have to play at least 34 domestic matches per season)?” emails Steve Boden.
“According to Wikipedia’s listings, Enfield were the first team drawn in each of the first three rounds of the 1981-82 FA Cup, beating Hastings and Wimbledon before losing to Crystal Palace,” notes Colin Bell. “They then managed it again in round one the following year (losing to Newport County). Is this unlikely feat true and has any other team managed something similar?”
“I discovered the other day that Cristiano Ronaldo has only played one game at the Britannia Stadium, and he didn’t do much in a 1-0 Boxing Day win in his last season at Manchester United. It was a sunny Friday afternoon. So that begs the question – who is the best player to have actually done it on a wet Tuesday night in Stoke?” asks Liam McGuigan.
• Send your questions and answers to the lovely people at knowledge@theguardian.com.