IT was, said one of the director of Darlington FC as he stepped off a train at Bank Top station 100 years ago, “a most wonderful performance which will astonish the football world”.
All around him that evening on January 19, 1920, was a throng so exuberant and joyful that there were fears for the safety of the Quakers players as they returned in triumph having humbled Sheffield Wednesday in the first round of the FA Cup in front of a record crowd of 52,388.
It was all the more remarkable a result because Wednesday were a First Division side whereas the Quakers were non-leaguers. Indeed, just a couple of years earlier the club had collapsed and in the first season of peacetime had been reborn as the Darlington Forge Albion - a pub team.
The pub landlord, JB Haw, had hurriedly called in some old pros, including an ex-Sheffield United player Jack English who’d become manager, to bolster the local youngsters.
Just to reach the first round, they’d had to beat South Bank, Bishop Auckland (a 9-2 thrashing) and then Norwich City before Wednesday came out of the hat – at Feethams.
But the first game, in front of 12,106, was a poor quality but feverish 0-0 draw, leaving the Quakers with some hope that if they sharpened up front of goal at Hillsborough the following Monday afternoon.
“Both Darlington and Sheffield went on holiday for the event,” reported The Northern Echo. “From Quakertown, some 3,000 persons journeyed to Steelopolis, and upon arrival, they found the city in a positive fever.”
Its sister paper, the Northern Despatch, reckoned there were 8,000 Skernesiders present, and said: “It was a gay outing; the colours of the Quakers were in great evidence and the vendors of penny favours did a great sale.”
The Echo then said that just prior to kick-off, 85,000 people were milling around the stadium, 52,000 of whom paid to get in, providing record FA Cup replay receipts.
Wednesday won the toss, and chose to play with the wind, meaning the Quakers – in their change white strips – had their backs to the wall for the first 40 minutes. They defended stoutly, and then broke up the other end of the pitch, with the nippy Dick Healey – who played for Middlesbrough before the war – skinning McSkimming, a Wednesday defender with a wonderful name who had poor match, and won a corner.
Tommy Winship, a former Arsenal player from Byker, swung it over dangerously and it bobbled menacingly around the Wednesday box until centre half George Malcolm, from Thornaby, delivered the coup de grace with a “deft heel-tap”.
“It was a clever goal,” said the Echo.
It stunned the crowd.
“For a moment there was a tense silence and then as the Quaker contingent realised they had scored, a deafening roar of applause burst forth. Bugle calls, wild whoops of delight, “Henry the Eighth” and women’s screams – all were mixed up in one discordant medley,” said the Echo. “Among the spectators, men hugged each other in the excess of their pleasure. It was quite five minutes before the hubbub died down, and then it arose afresh as the players trooped off for the interval.”
This is a marvellous and revealing description. Women were obviously among the flat-capped crowd and there is a reference to the Quakers’ new theme tune: Henry the Eighth.
This was a music hall song, written in 1910 and made popular by Harry Champion – another of his hits was Any Old Iron. The Darlington fans are first recorded singing it six days earlier at Feethams during the 0-0 draw with Wednesday, and it stuck for 50 years.
Indeed, from 1928 to 1961, the club paid Cockerton Silver Band £5-a-match to lead the fans from the Market Place down to Feethams in time for kick-off. It drew them them out of the pubs like the Pied Piper of Hamelin by playing the Post Horn Gallop and then a special arrangement of Henry the Eighth:
I'm Henery the Eighth, I am!
I'm Henery the Eighth, I am!
I got married to the widow next door,
She's been married seven times before.
Every one was a Henery.
She wouldn't have a Willie or a Sam (shout: “No Sam”).
I'm her eighth old man named Henery.
I'm Henery the Eighth I am.
The bandsmen were allowed into the ground free – so lots of Quakers fans would go to matches bearing bugles, whether they could play them or not, in the hope of getting in without paying, and the Cockerton band’s numbers would swell enormously (and no doubt cacophonously) the closer it got to the ground.
Did the fans rewrite the music hall words to make them more appropriate for the Quakers? We’d love to hear more about this tradition which began exactly 100 years ago. It fizzled out in the 1960s – probably because Joe Brown popularised the song and then Herman's Hermits took it to No 1 in 1965.
During the half time interval at Hillsborough, the weather deteriorated, and the home side kicked off playing into the face of a blizzard - “Wednesday were against Darlington and the weather”, said the Despatch.
After about 25 minutes, the ball flew out-of-control off McSkimming.
“The Quaker horde was up in no time, Blair upsetting Healey and going down himself,” said the Echo. “Birch (Wednesday’s goalkeeper) and Stevens raced to the ball. The latter reached it first and had shot by the time Birch met him. The ball ran easily into the net and the Quakers were two up.”
The goalscorer George Stevens was a fairly new signing from Dundee who stayed with the Quakers for five years, making 142 appearances and scoring 38 goals.
The home side now desperately sought a way through the snowstorm and back into the match, but Darlington’s defence, with goalkeeper Andy Greig behind it, held out.
“The Wednesday pressed in the latter stages and Greig had to save quickly by throwing out,” said the Despatch. “It was only a flash in the pan, however, on the part of the Wednesday, for they very seldom got within shooting distance.”
Greig is another fascinating character. He was from Aberdeen but joined the Forge Albion side immediately after the war. He stayed with the Quakers, starring regularly between the sticks and breaking his arm against Stockport, until 1925 when the club – guess what – was a parlous financial state and he returned to Scotland, taking his new Darlington bride with him.
And he was deaf.
So he didn’t hear the tumult on the final whistle.
In those pre-floodlight days, the Monday replay was played in the afternoon and so the triumphant Quakers arrived home on the 9.30pm train.
“Paeons of cheers rang out from the dense crowd, and grave fears were entertained in the authorities for the well being of the players,” said the Echo.
All agreed that the Quakers had been the better team.
“Despite the handicap of the weather, it was a great game, and one which Darlington fully deserved to win,” said the Despatch.
“The ground churned into a quagmire, but the Quakers skimmed about with ever increasing energy and showed plenty of stamina and speed,” said a magnanimous Sheffield Telegraph. “There was a directness about their attacks like a rapier thrust.”
Greig was a contender for the man-of-the-match accolade, although most commentators gave it to full back Dick Taylor, who had played before the war for Bristol Rovers – although many of the match reports note how his appearance had changed considerably since then as the years had caught up with him.
For example, the Sheffield Telegraph said his “tackling was clean and sharp, admirably timed. He kicked like a machine. The bald patch on top of his head did not prepare people for the speed he could show at need.”
The second round of the Cup was played on January 31, 1920, with the giant-killers travelling to Birmingham City, high-flying near the top of the Second Division. Healey could make the trip due to his wife’s “critical illness”, and the Quakers were one down after 14 minutes when Greig’s fumble allowed the ball to trickle a foot into the goal.
It wasn’t just Birmingham’s football skills that troubled the non-leaguers. “Very early in the fame, Winship collided with Roulson and received a staggering blow in the face from the Birmingham right half’s elbow,” said the Echo. “Tommy never played quite his old game after this.”
The paper’s football writer, who signed himself “Blackstaff”, was shocked when Winship, clearly shaken, was allowed to take a penalty, which he dribbled wide. In the second half, Birmingham took out another Darlington player, Hugh Dickson, leaving him “practically helpless”. As no substitutes were allowed, he hobbled on uselessly, as Birmingham ran out 4-0 winners.
“The game was full of thrills, and Darlington have nothing to be ashamed of,” said the Echo. “The Quakers live to fight another season, and we may hope to see them better fitted for the fray after these experiences.”
Blackstaff was right. Under manager English – for whom the victory over Wednesday must have been particularly sweet as he had won the FA Cup in 1914 with their deadly rivals Sheffield United – the Quakers were entering a golden period. They finished second in the North-Eastern League that season, and then won the title in 1920-21. This led to them joining the Division 3 (North) of the Football League for the first time, still with many of the players who had triumphed over Sheffield Wednesday. In 1925, they were promoted as champions to Division 2, where they finished 15th – their highest ever position.
Then, inevitably, it all went wrong, and relegation followed financial collapse as surely as I Am Henery the Eighth, I Am, I Am…
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