“Has any club ever been cruel enough to give their manager the boot on Christmas Day?” wondered Simon Briggs in 2006.
Heartless as it sounds, Simon, a club has been known to sack its manager on Jesus’s birthday, and they were even brave enough to ruin the festivities for one José Mário dos Santos Mourinho Félix. “I was nine or 10 years old and my father [Félix] was sacked on Christmas Day,” recalled the now Manchester United manager, during an interview back in 2004. “He was a manager [of Rio Ave], the results had not been good, he lost a game on December 22 or 23. On Christmas Day, the telephone rang and he was sacked in the middle of our lunch. So I know all about the ups and downs of football, I know that one day I will be sacked.” Correct, José.
SKATING ON THIN ICE
“Do you know which football club opened its ground for ice-skating because the pitch was frozen?” asked Kim Vanderhoven back in 2004.
The year was 1962-63, and England and Wales were experiencing their coldest winter since 1740 (Scotland, incidentally, was suffering its worst since 1829). From Boxing Day 1962 to early March 1963, most of the British Isles was under snow, with temperatures five-to-seven degrees below average. Not surprisingly, hardly any football was played.
Indeed, the winter was so severe that Barnsley only managed two games from 21 December 1962 to 12 March 1963. Up the road in Halifax, however, they hit upon an enterprising idea: why not use the Shay for ice-skating?
Ironically, it happened on 2 March 2 1963 when – as the Manchester Guardian booklet “The Long Winter 1962-63” reports – most of the country was, at long last, experiencing a thaw. “Troops relieved a farm on Dartmoor which had been cut off by 20ft snow drifts for 66 days. With only 14 Football League matches postponed, soccer had its best day for 11 weeks. There was still no football at Halifax, but the local club opened its ground as a public ice rink and hundreds skated on it.”
The stunt pulled in a few pennies, but it didn’t do Halifax any good - they scraped just 30 points all season and were relegated to the fourth division, along with Carlisle, Brighton and Bradford Park Avenue.
BOXING NOT-SO-CLEVER
“I vaguely remember waking up on Boxing Day morning a couple of years ago (with a massive hangover) and seeing a caption on Football Focus with an old list of Boxing Day fixtures and an awful lot of goals. Was it something to do with the DTs or did this really happen?” asked Ken Davro in 2004.
We’re not doctors, so our lawyers have advised us to make no comment about the floating spots in front of your eyes. But we can help you with the Boxing Day thing.
On December 26 1963, an amazing 66 goals were scored in the old First Division, leaving some teams wishing there had been a repeat of the previous season’s Big Freeze (which had wiped out nearly all the football between Boxing Day and March). Here are the classifieds:
Blackpool 1-5 Chelsea
Burnley 6-1 Man Utd
Fulham 10-1 Ipswich
Leicester 2-0 Everton
Liverpool 6-1 Stoke
Nottm Forest 3-3 Sheff Utd
WBA 4-4 Tottenham
Sheff Wed 3-0 Bolton
Wolves 3-3 Aston Villa
West Ham 2-8 Blackburn
If that wasn’t weird enough, the results two days later - when many of the teams played the “return leg” - beggar belief. West Ham, who had lost 8-2 at home to Blackburn, won 3-1 at Ewood Park. Manchester United, fresh from a 6-1 thrashing at Burnley, turned the tables at Old Trafford with a 5-1 win.
And poor Ipswich, who had clearly been on the Christmas Day pop, avenged their 10-1 defeat by Fulham with a 4-2 victory over the Cottagers at Portman Road. Much good the two points did them, mind you: they finished bottom.
Explore our previous Christmas specials in the Knowledge archive, including: Which football teams appear in the Bible? What happens when football’s Christmas parties turn bad? And who were the first team to use the Christmas tree formation?
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NEXT WEEK
The Knowledge is off on holiday, but will be back on 4 January. Happy Christmas!
