James Hamilton on Sport History and Psychology
(UPDATE: Thanks Matt – taking earnings into account, the price of that 1920 pint would have come to c. £4.21. See the comments for more details. I’ll have a half…) Nick Booth at Peter Watts’ Big Smoke Blog comes up with a piece of pure genius: Could a crap football team be transformed into winners,…
<UPDATE>: Thanks to Matthew I’ve now access to all of Burnley’s 1920-21 results via this remarkable website – for which much gratitude. It was a 2-0 defeat away to Bradford City. In general, league tables don’t make a great deal of sense until 3 games have been played, but here we are putting a modern…
(UPDATE: As FA Cup Final Freddy says in the comments: FAIL – it’s Sheffield United, not Sheffield Wednesday. I’ll get me coat..) They shut Pathe News out of the Wembley Final in ’36 – so the journos hired a gyrocopter, made their wills and took off… It wasn’t altogether worth their while: Alex James scored…
Whatever else might be said about “Will Rubbish” remember this: he created a superb group blog that had Terry Glavin and George Szirtes on board, real luminaries of whom you have heard, to say nothing of a substantial chunk of the real left-wing blogging talent. Peter, Shuggy, Eric, Hak, Spirit, Bagrec.. If things went downhill…
For some of us, the name “Robbie Blake” still means Bradford City, and Bradford, remember, beat 1920 Burnley in their opening game. His goal, and the class and courage on display from Clarke Carlisle and Brian Jensen in particular, have made it all the more important that the 1920 team assert themselves. But the great…
Correct me if I’m wrong, but Burnley have the honour of being the last side from Division Two to lift the Charity Shield. The annual game was having dog days at the time, as the accompanying extract shows, but the result ties in with Burnley’s other distinction of being the only club to win every…
One of the many subjects that come up for debate whenever the Ashes begin slipping away from England is the utility of the County Cricket set-up. Can it produce Test-level cricketers in sufficient numbers, does it work for its audience, is it dying? And all this in the reformed County set-up, one in which Mark…
Not that John Cameron; another one. But delighted etc. Our thanks to John Cameron, and our commiserations to Burnley. From the Penny Illustrated Paper of 2nd November 1912. He looks and sounds like Alf Ramsey, but he was right about baseball.
Burnley have history against them. But this is not another of those articles bemoaning the failure of promoted sides to establish themselves in the Premiership. Because if we’re going to be following their fortunes throughout the term, and alongside them, the fortunes of Burnley 1920-21 and Burnley 1959-60, it makes sense to put all three…
If we’re going to follow Burnley through the year, and throw their last Championship season up for comparison, I thought it might be just as well to involve their first title year as well – 1920-1. There’s what must be all of the surviving Burnley footage, save the 1940s pioneering colour film of Turf Moor,…