Football over Easter 1950

That was Bill Shankly’s first full season as a manager; finishing 9th, with Carlisle in Diviii North.

Just two seasons later, he’s at Grimsby and we’re rejecting his job application, for our vacant manager’s position, and appointing a “safe pair of hands” in Walter Rowley - which didn’t work out.

Shankly had really wanted to come here and manage a club in a “proper football town”.

Maybe another huge sliding doors moment in our past.
 
Hap said:
They must have been. They don’t represent capacity crowds; our two home games being 25k and 42k respectively.

Also playing three games in fours days surprised me.
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They played three games in 4 days in the 60s as well. Also in the 1950s Christmas Day and Boxing Day at games.
 
The thing that always strikes me about the old North South divide in the third division is how many of the South teams became upwardly mobile once it went to Division 4, whereas a lot of the old North teams are still stuck pattering around the Second and Third divisions, and Conference and below now. I think only Oldham of that time became a Premier League team, briefly, and as far as I can tell, only Rotherham are currently in the top two divisions; again, briefly. I think there's four current Premier League teams in the South, plus about five others who've been in the top tier.
 
NorthumberlandBoro said:
Some very interesting crowds.
Compare notts county to Forest for example.
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It tells you how fortunes have changed in Nottingham over the the years. The same goes for Liverpool and Everton, until the 60.s Everton was the most successful club on Merseyside if you include the FA cup, both Evertons attendances are bigger than Liverpool's on the above results.
 
The Easter Monday fixtures are the reverse fixture of the Good Friday fixture. I guess this was to reduce travelling with them playing 3 times in 4 days. They all tend to be local(ish) fixtures as well except Chelsea v Bolton.
 
B_G said:
The Easter Monday fixtures are the reverse fixture of the Good Friday fixture. I guess this was to reduce travelling with them playing 3 times in 4 days. They all tend to be local(ish) fixtures as well except Chelsea v Bolton.
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Travelling north - south by road in those days took twice as long. Trains were not much quicker and i don't think flying was possible. I was born 3 months after those fixtures.
 
atomicloonybin aka ALB said:
The thing that always strikes me about the old North South divide in the third division is how many of the South teams became upwardly mobile once it went to Division 4, whereas a lot of the old North teams are still stuck pattering around the Second and Third divisions, and Conference and below now. I think only Oldham of that time became a Premier League team, briefly, and as far as I can tell, only Rotherham are currently in the top two divisions; again, briefly. I think there's four current Premier League teams in the South, plus about five others who've been in the top tier.
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I read an interesting article about that once. Basically, the Football League started in the North and Midlands and for the first thirty years featured hardly any teams from the South. Most of the Southern professional teams were in the Southern League which was a strong league in itself (Spurs won the FA Cup as a Southern ie non-League club and Southampton reached the final). After the First World War the Southern League clubs became subsumed into the Football League as the new Third Division. This was seen as unfair by the North who demanded that clubs from their area should also be brought into the League and so, a season later, the Third Division (North) was formed. But, given that all the best clubs from the North were already in the Football League, the clubs that were brought in were a bit of a rag-bag from the various Northern non-League competitions and were often poorly-supported because they were from areas where there were already Football League clubs. And that has pretty much remained the case ever since, with exceptions obviously. If you look at the third divisions from 1921-22 which was the first year there was a North and South division you will see that only two teams of the twenty in the North division have remained in the League ever since while only one has ever made it to the top level. On the other hand, 14 of the clubs in that year's Third Division (South) have subsequently played at the top level. And as regards Oldham, they were already an established League club long before and finished second in the First Division in 1915.
 
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