“Anthony Ujah’s rather rough celebration with Hennes VIII at the weekend got me thinking,” begins Ben Miller. “Is this the first incidence of a player celebrating a goal with an animal?”
Poor old Hennes VIII. We’d like to see Ujah try that sort of nonsense with Eintracht Frankfurt’s Attila the Golden Eagle. Thankfully Hennes is said to be fine after his unfortunate meeting with the striker. “Hennes is used to such stuff,” said sporting director Jörg Schmadtke. “He may have a bit of a sore neck.” For more information on the history of Hennes the goats, here is a handy Guardian video.
If we play (very) fast and loose with the definition, animals of a sort have been involved in goal celebrations before. For example here’s Finidi George celebrating a goal at the 1994 World Cup:
And here’s Hoffi the Moose getting over-excited at Hoffenheim last season:
One actual animal-based celebration, though not a goal celebration per se, occurred in 1909 and sadly went tragically wrong for the furry friend concerned. Manchester United took Billy the Goat along to the post-match celebrations following their FA Cup final victory over Bristol City. Poor old Billy died from alcohol poisoning.
Benfica, meanwhile, often bring out their eagles, Victory and Glory, during title celebrations. Though the club president, Luís Filipe Vieira, was less than impressed when he was attacked by one of them at a Christmas party a few years back.
TWO TROPHIES, ONE DAY
While reading a glib comment on an internet message board that Manchester City’s defeat to Liverpool had effectively meant that Chelsea won two trophies on one day, I had a thought … has that genuinely ever happened? Teams can obviously win a league if other results go their way and they could, theoretically, be playing a cup final in another competition on the same day. Does anyone know if this has ever happened?” wondered Eoin Byrne last week.
“There is a recent example from Northern Ireland’s Championship (second tier),” writes Neil Coleman. “Carrick Rangers won the NI Intermediate Cup final on 2 May 2011 (beating Harland & Wolff Welders 1-0), while on the same evening second-placed Limavady United could only manage a draw with struggling Ballymoney United to concede the league title to Carrick who were promoted to the Premiership.”
And the same thing happened a mere 118 years ago in the English top flight. “When Aston Villa won the double in 1896-97 they won both trophies on the same day,” writes Malcolm Warburton. “The FA Cup final took place on 10 April, and Villa beat Everton 3-2 at Crystal Palace. Meanwhile, at the same time, Derby County lost 1-0 at Bury. The defeat left them seven points adrift with only three games remaining, thus (in the days of two points for a win) clinching the title for Villa.”
NOT YOU AGAIN …
“I am a Celtic supporter. This month we are playing Dundee United three times in a row in separate competitions (Scottish Cup, League Cup and Premiership),” writes Pat Jordan. “Have two teams ever played each other three times in a row in separate competitions before?”
While it felt like that is precisely what Liverpool and Chelsea did during the beloved shit-on-a-stick era, Denis Hurley has an answer for us from the 1998-99 season. “Tottenham Hotspur and Wimbledon did exactly that in early 1999 – in fact, they played each other in four out of five games and five out of eight games across 32 days,” Denis writes. “The FA Cup fourth round and Worthington Cup semi-final draws pitted them together and there was also a league game during that period. The FA Cup game was a draw, necessitating a replay.”
Denis is correct. It finished Tottenham 0-0 Wimbledon at White Hart Lane in the league on 16 January 1999, Wimbledon 1-1 Tottenham at Selhurst Park in the FA Cup on 23 January and Tottenham 0-0 Wimbledon in the first leg of their League Cup semi-final on 27 January. Exciting! The sequence was then broken up by a round of league fixtures, before Tottenham won their FA Cup replay 3-0. That was followed by two more rounds of league fixtures, before Tottenham ended the worst mini-series of all time by winning the second leg of their League Cup semi-final against Wimbledon 1-0 thanks to a goal from Steffen Iversen at Selhurst Park. Tottenham then beat Leicester City 1-0 in the final.
KNOWLEDGE ARCHIVE
Is it true that Falkirk (or another Scottish side) were once shipwrecked on the way to a game?” wondered Dan Palmer back in those sepia-tinged days of 2012.
It is indeed, Dan, but the side who took a dip in the briny deep came from further down the Firth of Forth. Kirkcaldy’s Raith Rovers can justifiably claim to be pioneers of the Scottish game – they had enjoyed a successful trip to Copenhagen in the summer of 1922 and fancied repeating the trick at the end of the following season, but this time taking in the sunnier climbs of the Canary Islands. So in the summer of 1923 they boarded the Highland Loch, which was calling in at the Canaries en route to Buenos Aires with its cargo of passengers and, apparently, chilled meat.
The Stark’s Park party had reached northern Spain and were off the coast of Galicia, negotiating Cape Finisterre, in violent weather when the ship ran aground. The players and other passengers were roused from their beds, lifeboats were manned and the group was towed to the village of Villagarcia by local fishermen.
The following day a passing liner bound for the Canaries picked up the 20-strong squad and were, according to Rovers player Tom Jennings, invited to eat at the captain’s table because of their chivalrous behaviour during the rain-swept abandoning of the Highland Loch. A few days later they were safely deposited at their destination – and the traumatic journey did not seem to adversely effect the players. They won all four games on the tour, although history does not report another European adventure in 1924 …
For thousands more questions and answers take a trip through the Knowledge archive.
CAN YOU HELP?
“Have any other managers brought themselves on to score and/or save a penalty, in the style of Grays Athletic’s Mark Bentley?” ponders Jenny Ridings.
“Impressive though the lists of achievements of your Maldinis, your Messis and your Giggses are, are six Premiership winners’ medals any more exciting than five?,” begins Michael Hunt. “Or even two experiences of pogo-ing on the Champions League podium better than one? (For the record, they weren’t actually the questions I was trying to ask. That was scene-setting rhetoric.) More interesting is who has won the most diverse collection of winners’ medals – a World Cup here, an Estonian Second Division title there, each gets you one point, but your second World Cup success counts for nothing?”
“I was recently looking at Spurs’ run-in to work out those tricky games against relegation-threatened sides who are playing for their lives,” writes Nick Pettifer. “In the penultimate game Spurs play Hull at home. The final game sees them play Everton away. It is not likely, but it is feasible that both of these teams could be relegated after results against Spurs (despite the fact the schedulers were probably hoping for a top four battle on the last day). Has a team ever been responsible for putting the nail in the coffin of all three relegated teams?”
“I want to know if a player (or indeed manager) has ever won a Champions League on more than one continent?” writes Jack Kirby. “So the CAF and Uefa Champions League or the CAF and the AFC?”
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