“Has there ever been a player who scored a hat-trick in a match and those three goals became their only goals scored for that club?” ponders Sean McConnon.
Alex Richman’s hand flew straight up. “An answer I knew off the top of my head,” he exclaims. “Step forward teenage prodigy Jermaine Pennant, whose only goals for Arsenal weren’t just a hat-trick, but a first-half hat-trick on his league debut, against Southampton. He was never going to top that, really … ”
Alright, alright but what about some more recent fun and games. “This actually occurred as recently as 21 May as teenage striker Scott Wright scored a hat-trick in Aberdeen’s 6-0 win at Patrick Thistle,” tells Ali MacManus. “A product of the Dons’ youth academy, these were Wright’s first and only goals for the club in only his second start after a handful of substitute appearances.”
Step forward Tom Colyer with another tale. He references “the deadly former Arsenal man Yaya Sanogo”, as he bagged his only three goals for Charlton while on loan in a 4-3 defeat by Reading in 2015-16. “What a man,” he indulges. Further north Nick Moore has more. “David Ferrère has done this for Motherwell, scoring a hat-trick against Hibs in February 2002,” he says. “What made it even more incredible was that he came on as a second-half substitute and it was his debut. So all were scored within his first 45 minutes on the pitch.”
“Former Slovenia international Robert Koren scored a hat-trick against Newcastle Jets in his first start for Melbourne City, and failed to score (or do much of anything, really) in any other game of his underwhelming stint in Australia,” argues Ciaran Hannigan-Purcel. “Twenty-six games in all, and just those three goals.”
We have all heard the stories of the failed next big thing. Zakaria Bakkali still has time to readdress his rapid descent but Sean DeLoughry remembers him becoming “the youngest ever hat-trick scorer in the Eredivisie”. He was 17. “He scored three for PSV in a 5-0 win over NEC Nijmegen,” he recalls. “He soon fell out of favour and failed to find he net again before departing for Valencia in 2015.” The Belgian has scored just three goals since.
Here are a few more curious cases. Antonio Marreiros suggests Carlos Bueno, the former Paris Saint-Germain striker who went above and beyond the perimeters of this question in 2006-07 on loan at Sporting Lisbon. “In the time he spent at the club he scored four goals in 14 appearances, all the goals in the same match, a league game against Nacional da Madeira,” he offers up. “Weirdly enough, he scored all four goals in just 20 minutes.”
An honourable mention must go to the former Norway international Kåre Ingebrigsten, who struck three for Manchester City against Leicester City in 1994, courtesy of Steve Doohan. “A lightweight and underwhelming midfielder who only made six starts, he was part of a team who had been outplayed by their then-second tier visitors in a goalless opening 45 minutes,” he recalls. “However, he rattled in a second-half hat-trick to help his team win 4-1 in a game also memorable for a stunning 40-yard chipped strike by the similarly maligned Alan Kernaghan. They were to be Ingebrigsten’s only official goals during his brief stay in England. He had also scored against Ipswich Town in the Premier League five days earlier but in a classic outbreak of ‘Typical City’ the match was abandoned before half-time due to a waterlogged pitch with the Manchester club leading 2-0. That meant his ‘goal’ was expunged from the records.”
More? “Chris Templeman marked his debut for Dumbarton with a hat-trick in a 3-1 victory away to East Stirlingshire on 18 September 1999,” writes Robin Paxton. “Then 19, Templeman went on to become a prolific goalscorer in the Scottish lower leagues (he was banging them in for Montrose in the season just ended). But these three goals at Firs Park were his only strikes for Dumbarton.”
Here’s Duncan Monro. “I was in attendance for diminutive Frenchman David Ferrer’s debut where he came on as a half-time substitute for my beloved Motherwell,” he says. “He proceeded to bang in three practically identical goals, cutting in from the right wing and bending it around Hibs’ goalie, helping us to a 4-1 win (one of very few that season, where we finished bottom and were only spared relegation because the SPL deemed Falkirk’s stadium inadequate). Ferrer went on to make only a few more appearances, where I don’t recall him coming remotely close to scoring again, and he left not long after, following our descent into administration. Fortunately for the Fir Park faithful, it wasn’t all doom and gloom – it was James McFadden’s breakthrough season, and as such I remember it fondly.”
Luca De Angelis, meanwhile, is back for round two. “Since I am a Bologna FC 1909 fan, I can remember this feat being accomplished by a young striker who played the game of his life against us,” he remembers. “In the last match of the 2010-11 Serie A season, Francesco Grandolfo – a promising 18-year-old forward, who had debuted two weeks earlier and had only played for a total of 45 minutes in two appearances as a sub before starting the match against Bologna – scored three goals for Bari in less than an hour (in the 28th, 46th and 54th minute). This was his third game of the season, and he played only six more Serie B matches for Bari in the 2012-2013 season, without finding the back of the net. Since January 2013, he has only played in the third and the fourth tier of Italian football.”
And finally, here’s Tim Hoult’s hearty voice. “You thought David Nugent or Francis Jeffers were unlucky never to play again after scoring a goal for their country?” asks Tim. “England have had a grand total of five players manage three goals in their solitary appearance, never to play again. Seeing as the most recent of these was in 1908, it’s understandable that there was probably less backlash from the fans that they never appeared again. Scotland, meanwhile, had two players who went one better with four goals in their only appearance in the 1880s.
“Back to the question in hand though, which definitely mentioned something to do with clubs. Step forward Newcastle United in 1939. With official league matches suspended shortly after the outbreak of the second world war, and many players enlisting in the armed forces, regional leagues were formed to keep up morale at home. With many sides losing players to the war effort, guest players regularly featured to more than make up the numbers. On 28 October, Newcastle hosted York in the NE Regional League, featuring three such guests. Two of them, Don Howe (no, not that Don Howe) and England international Raymond Westwood, were registered with Bolton. Howe opened the scoring for Newcastle on this, his first appearance for the side, as the two teams went in level at half-time a goal apiece. Shortly after the interval Westwood himself scored to match his fellow club-mate, soon followed by another from one of Newcastle’s regular players.
“After this, it seems to all have got a bit out of hand. Westwood scored another two to register a hat-trick on his first appearance for Newcastle. York managed a reply somewhere before a late burst from Howe saw him add another four goals – he’d hit five on his debut. The Magpies ran out 9-2 winners. Howe and Westwood appear to have moved on without appearing for Newcastle again. Between them they notched up more than 600 appearances for Bolton, as well as serving their country in the 53rd Field Regiment in France.”
Hat-trick hat-trick hero
With goals all the rage this week, Harry Sullivan got in touch to tell the tale of Kris Trajanovski, now 45, who had quite the goalscoring record at international level.
“While I don’t have an answer for that specific question, I should probably bring Australia’s own Kris Trajanovski to your attention – in 16 matches for the national team he managed either 10 or 11 goals – it’s disputed,” he starts. “While this isn’t hugely impressive on the surface given this was in our Oceania days, all of those goals came in the form of three hat-tricks. Two of those came in the 1996 OFC Nations Cup final round – over two legs against powerhouse Tahiti, he scored four in the first leg and three in the second, enough to make him the tournament’s top scorer.
“In the same tournament two years later, he repeated the trick against the mighty Cook Islands in the group stage, scoring four (or three depending on the source). Every single goal Trajanovski scored for the Socceroos was part of a hat-trick! This weird record of Trajanovski’s brings up another question – he scored three hat-tricks in 16 appearances, giving him a hat-trick-to-cap ratio of 0.1875. There’s no way this isn’t a record, surely? Can anyone top that for club or country?”
Respectful stoppages
“Following the John Terry farewell, have any other games been subject to pre-planned interruptions, either officially sanctioned or not?” asks David Gibson.
“That question immediately brought this game to mind,” Conor McMenamin notes, jumping out of his seat. “It was played four days after Hillsborough. The pre-planned stoppage was after one minute for ‘reflection’ but the moment that brought a tear to the eye was the Milan fans’ rendition of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ which you can dimly hear in the background. Milan went on to win 5-0.”
Phil Kayes adds that Terry’s antics reminded him of the proper send-off given to a Dutch great. He says it was more dignified “when the Holland v France match was halted in the 14th minute for applause in honour of the great Johan Cruyff who had died in March 2016. A similar interruption had occurred in the Feyenoord v Sparta Rotterdam friendly game the day before.”
Knowledge archive
“Fabien Barthez’s recent comical goalkeeping stirred some half-forgotten memory of the Peruvian goalie in the 1978 World Cup finals,” wrote Jonathan Key back in 2001. “I seem to remember him straying so far out of his goal that he managed to get booked for a foul in the opponents’ half of the field. Is my memory playing tricks or was he really the most random goalkeeper of all time?”
Jonathan’s memory served him well. The player he was looking for was the infamous Ramon “El Loco” Quiroga, booked for fouling Poland’s Grzegorz Lato. As Gareth Price remembered: “Lato received the ball on the left-hand side just inside his own half, he turned to advance upfield only to find El Loco in his face. The goalie retreated, with head bowed in contrition, as the ref showed him the yellow card. Quiroga’s infamy was furthered after he played in the famous 6-0 defeat to the Argentinian tournament hosts later in the group. That emphatic victory ensured that the team going through to the final was Argentina – the land of Quiroga’s birth.”
Can you help?
“Do retired players still buy pubs? Who was the last top-flight player to do so?” asks Matt Braithwaite.
“I notice from the team sheet from England’s U-20s victory v Italy that they had four players in their starting XI with double-barrelled names: Jake Clarke-Salter, Kyle Walker-Peters, Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Ainsley Maitland-Niles. Is this some kind of record?” wonders Jeremy Orbell.
“In the 2013-14 A-League season, Melbourne Heart finished the season with the longest winning, losing, unbeaten, and winless runs. Has any other team ever done this?” ponders Oliver Robinson.
Whatever happened to halfway line flags??? When did they disappear from common usage?
— 1895Barry (@1895Barry) June 13, 2017
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