The Diary

25 August 2005: Two Bad Backs, A Chelsea Pasting - And A 1936 Funeral.

Oh, whoops ? I think I got it wrong, Betty! Not just Frank Spencer, me. And our favourite football team, if Chris Kamara, of former Stoke City claim-to-maim, now of Sky TV, is to be believed. In fact, I suspect it?s been a pretty awful evening for just about everyone, this column included, but unlike our Stamford Bridge combatants, I went one better this morning. As I mentioned last night, I had planned to spend this morning safe in the welcoming arms (or bookshelves?) of our local library, but it didn?t quite work out that way. Sure, the alarm went off, I got out of bed OK ? but no sooner had I introduced foot to floor, my back started playing up again, so a drastic change of plan had to be substituted instead.

The upshot of it all was a rapid postponement of my library visit until this Friday, and the hasty substitution of an evening?s close perusal of the Albion News, season 1935-6 instead. An excellent displacement activity when sitting, ears cocked, for that all-too familiar ?Now let?s go over to Stamford Bridge, where there?s been a goal. What?s happened, Chris?? sinking feeling; try as I might, that all-pervasive sense of ?I should have gone to that one?..? was immensely acute. Flies completely in the face of all financial wisdom and common sense, of course, but once a Baggie, always a? Aw, you know the rest.

It?s always difficult to get a proper feel for what?s going on when you?re effectively listening to a ?diluted? account of a game?s varying fortunes, and it?s a state of affairs that isn?t helped by Kamara?s tendency to let the excitement of the proceedings run away with him. In some ways, I was heartened by his opening remarks, that we were containing Chelski quite efficiently, and, at times, having a go in their half as well, but come the 23 minute mark, the writing was well and truly on the wall, the ?tag? of the graffiti-merchant concerned being none other than that of Chelski?s Lampard. Clearly, there was more to come, but The Pensioners desisted from doubling their tally until around three minutes from the interval, when it was the turn of Joe Cole to get in on the act. From then on in, there could only be one realistic outcome to the venture; ?when? and not ?if? could only be a matter of time.

Their third, a Drogba effort, flashed up on our screens around the 68-minute mark; as Kamara remarked, by then, all our energies were confined to damage-limitation, a state of affairs that didn?t surprise me in the slightest. Hell, if anyone went to West London this afternoon in honest expectation of a ?result? for us, then all I can say is: ?Can I have some of that funny-smelling stuff you?re smoking?? Ten minutes before the end, it came as no surprise at all to hear ?Lamps? had lit up their scoreboard once more, making it four and out for us. Mind you, we weren?t the only ones getting a pasting tonight; so did Fulham, at The Arse, although they did eventually rally enough to get one back. Was Tommy G that badly at fault the first goal was down to him? Did our rearguard simply give up the ghost during that second period, as Kamara seemed to imply? And, was it really the brilliance of Kirkland that denied the champions a cricket-score? No doubt our little ?spies? ? Norm ?B? among others - will be providing us with intelligence in heaps come the morrow; let?s face it, everyone expected us to crash and burn on this one, so we haven?t really been disappointed, have we?

Still, my last-minute change of plan concerning the library was not completely devoid of its own just reward. As I?d threatened last night, while jotting down notes concerning the varying fortunes of the players we were looking at around that time, I also culled various other footballing gems from those closely-printed programme pages ? and, my, my, what revelations. If there?s one thing I?ve learned during tonight?s quest it?s the fact that there?s nothing radically new under the sun as far as footballing controversy goes. As my old mum would have said, while attentively ploughing through all those pages, my eyes ?cum owt loike orgin-stops, aer kid!?, so just for a change, let?s all travel back to the wonderful world of West Bromwich Albion, 1936-style!

And what a wonderful world it was, a time when players didn?t wear shorts on the field of play, they wore ?knickers? instead. Clearly, there were no ?girly? connotations of the word in use back then, otherwise I fancy there would have been a thick lip or two landed, and right on target, too. Indeed, I came across a nicely-worded account of the time W.G. Richardson scored the last three of a four-goal one-man hammering of poor Middlesbrough (final score 5-2, to us) that Boxing Day. Apparently, ?W.G.? was involved in a bit of a tussle with one of their defenders, the result of which was that the Boro lad had to go off, ?his knickers badly torn?. It was while the poor sod was changing into another pair (leaving Boro temporarily down to ten, of course) that our man then struck his second, third and fourth!

And then there were those wonderful half-time entertainment staples, Brass Bands. Not just any old brass band at The Shrine, mind ? The West Bromwich Borough Prize Band, no less. Looking back upon their repertoire with some amusement ? hindsight?s always like that, isn?t it? ? one of the five tunes they performed during the interval of one game in particular was a romantic ditty entitled (and I kid you not) ?Love Is Like A Cigarette?! Now hang on a minute ? I?ve heard of people catching all sorts of hideous things as a result of some unfortunate romantic encounter or other, but lung cancer? Emphysema? Bronchitis? Coronary heart disease, and/or circulatory problems? Blimey, where?s Marjorie Proops just when you need her?

Mind you, looking at the attendance figures for games taking place during and around the festive season of 1935-36, I did happen to note that there was a 27,505 attendance for our FA Cup Round Three tie with Hull City, but gate receipts of only ?1,482, a sum which wouldn?t keep any one of our current finest in a morning?s wages, even, these days. Mind you, using the formula I gave you in my previous day?s post, a quick whooftie on my trusty calculator tells me that such a sum would equate to around ?59,000 these days. Wouldn?t even keep ?em in beer money, come to think of it!

It was around that time that the Albion News recorded the recent death of the then-monarch, King George the 5th. Famous as the bloke who in 1935, when convalescing after medical treatment for what sounds suspiciously like lung cancer to me, and asked if he wanted to spend time in Bognor Regis, where he?d overcome a vicious attack of pleurisy (inflammation/infection of the lining of the chest wall) back in 1929, rounded upon his quack with the tetchy retort: ?Bugger Bognor!? Speak as you find, that?s what I always say ? but, Bognor or none, the crotchety old sod had finally croaked it, and, as they did things in those days, the mourning was taken extremely seriously indeed. Albion contented themselves with what is the usual form now, a two-minutes? silence immediately prior to kick-off, but other clubs ? surprisingly, the full League programme still went ahead ? really went to town on the old mourning bit, black armbands everywhere, sombre half-time music, the works. And there was a very strong Albion link with the new incumbent, Edward the Eighth; in 1931, when just a plain old Prince Of Wales, he?d visited The Shrine, admired the FA Cup, which we?d won that year, of course, and had his happy-snap taken with all the players, and everything. The club expressed the hope that the new monarch would visit The Hawthorns again, but this time, in his kingly capacity. A shame, then, that a certain Mrs. Wallis Simpson put the mockers on that one, wasn?t it?

Unsurprisingly, bad weather loomed large in match reports at the time; unlike today?s globally-warmed world, the weather, 1936-style, seemed to possess an amazing capacity to wreck whole League programmes, but even so, by means both fair and foul, the show went on. Sometimes. Apparently, some 7-800 of our followers tried to get to Bradford City for our cup-tie there, but on arrival, they found the game had been postponed. Our lot weren?t exactly best pleased, but their Bradford counterparts went one better, they staged a demo outside the ground (tell me again about that universal respect for/deference to authority back then?), and only dispersed when their chairman spoke to their lot personally. In fact, it took no less than three attempts to get the game on in the end; the first two postponed very late on, heavy fog, the third because of heavy snowfalls. Mind you, in those pre-Clean Air Act 1955 times, when the winter fog came down, because of an unfortunate combination of heavy air pollution and lack of wind, it could remain there for days, causing killer smog. Just ask your granddad.

It was while I was trolling through those old Albion programmes that I came across what amounted to a real tragedy for one footballer in particular. Not one of ours, thankfully; the lad played for Sunderland, between the sticks. James Thorpe was his name, and his age 23. He?d been a Sunderland player since the age of 17, and left behind a widow and a small child. What happened? Well, it all boiled down to the complete lack of protection keepers had in those days, when either going for high balls in the six-yard area, or diving headlong into a goalmouth scramble; the case was a tragic one, and, in my opinion, one taking place under circumstances that the resultant inquest failed to properly explain.

It all started when Sunderland played Chelsea (I?m not completely sure as to whether the game took place at Roker Park or away; no doubt some ?Statto? or other will enlighten me before too many moons have passed). Kicked on the head rather badly during a goalmouth scramble, he appeared to recover and carried on with the game - nobody particularly worried about head injuries in those days, of course - but was taken ill shortly after the final whistle, then carted off to hospital, where he sank into a coma from which he never recovered.

Now this is all where it becomes very strange, medically speaking. According to the Albion News around the time the poor sod died, James Thorpe had been, at one time, diagnosed with diabetes, but his club had then reported him as being discharged from hospital treatment ?permanently cured?. And that?s my first sticking-point; there is NO cure for diabetes, as such. Sure, you can control it, and very well, too, by the use of insulin (or diet, in older people), but ?cure?? No chance back then; in the sort of diabetes I suspect he had, the problems are all caused by the insulin glands in the pancreas packing up completely. In fact, at the time this happened, insulin was a relatively new kid on the diabetes block; prior to its discovery in the early 1920?s, (and the condition?s subsequent treatment by regular injections of the hormone) diagnosis usually meant a death sentence for the individual concerned, sometimes quick, sometimes, if partially-controlled by diet, relatively slow.

A couple of issues later ? 19.2.36 - the Albion News reported on the inquest. Again, it gets very mysterious; according to them, the coroner returned a verdict of ?death from diabetes aggravated by ?rough usage? during the game?. This, mind, about a player who?d been previously regarded by the medics has having been ?cured?! Doo wot? The referee, who, for some strange reason, was never even summoned as a witness, didn?t come out of that inquest very well at all. In his summing-up, the coroner commented that the official had exercised a ?very lax control over the game?, and in effect, told the FA to get their act together regarding their referees, the implication being that there were searching questions to be asked about the competence of some, I suppose. These days, of course, such a verdict would result in the instant engagement by the relatives of Messrs. Sue, Grabbitte And Runne; back then, things were very different indeed.

As you might expect, the whole sorry tale stirred up a bit of a hornet?s nest in the game, and much was said about our FA doing what the ?Continentals? did, and introducing a rule banning the charging of the keeper. The Albion News writer actually wondered as to whether it might be better to have TWO referees on the pitch, in order to ensure such incidents were supervised more closely. Certainly, the consensus seemed to be that the keeper should be getting far more protection than he?d had in the past. I can only assume that the whole thing eventually died a death (to use an unfortunate turn of phrase), because even I can remember keepers being charged (people like The King doing the charging, and the ref quite happily letting it go!) as late as the mid-sixties. Even so, I can?t believe the matter was simply laid to rest. Anyone reading this and following Sunderland care to let me know ?what happened next??

And finally?. Yet another wonderful example of the brute savagery of our local rivals, but this time, it?s the claret-and-blue persuasion upsetting the local rozzers. What happened? According to the ?Albion News? dated the 22nd of February 1936, there was crowd trouble at the recent home game with Villa ? or rather, at the home game we should have played, had the referee not unsportingly called off the encounter due to heavy snowfalls earlier that day. Apparently, the moment the match official decided to put the kybosh on the afternoon?s proceedings, our near-neighbours, objecting strenuously to being deprived of their footy ration at the last minute, went and staged something of a demo inside the ground. According to the account given, the trouble was largely incited by ringleaders among the stamping-and-clapping tendency, described, quite rightly, by the programme editor as: ?A handful of visiting spectators of a rather undesirable type??? Me? I rest my case, M?Lud.

 - Glynis Wright

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