by In a 47-year career at the BBC, Nicholas Witchell has covered a number of major events. The list includes the deaths of Queen Elizabeth and Diana, Princess of Wales, the Falklands and Gulf Wars, Lockerbie and Zeebrugge. On Christmas Eve 1983, he had the solemn duty of inform the nation of something less seismic: The final result of the Division Three match between Brentford and Wimbledon.
The five o’clock news, hidden among The Dukes of Hazzard and some mothers Do them, ended with a report from Griffin Park. The BBC had sent a team to west London because it was the only professional match played in England. And although Leeds faced Manchester United in the Premier League on December 24, 1995, it remains the last Football League match to be played on Christmas Eve.
Brentford had originally planned something even more eye-catching: the first Football League match on Christmas Day since 1965. It was the brainchild of their innovative chairman, Martin Lange. “Brentford were having a curiously poor season, near the bottom of the league and struggling to attract crowds,” says Rob Jex, a Brentford historian. “They had a debt of almost £500,000, a large amount for a club of our size, so they were looking for a trick to attract more fans, even if it was only occasionally. “It was a desperate time financially, with one setback after another, and Martin Lange would try anything to stabilize the club and keep it solvent.”
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A Brentford fan since the age of five, Lange was a popular and affable chairman who made money in property. In 1985 he sold one of the Ferraris from his collection so the club could buy striker Robbie Cooke for £25,000. Last month, a similar car sold at auction for £42 million. “Brentford played regularly on Christmas Day from 1906 to 1958 and Martin Lange may have been at some of those games,” says Jonathan Burchill, author of A pub on every corner. “The idea that maybe 10,000 people could get together would have fired his imagination. She was always trying to do something different.”
It was Lange, champion of the lower leagues, who came up with the idea of one of the great successes of English football: the playoffs. Perversely, Brentford failed in nine consecutive playoff campaigns between 1991 and 2020. Lange, who died in 2015, was not around to see them finally end the curse when they were promoted to the Premier League in 2021. He also suggested the use of the squad. Numbers and names on the back of shirts before they were introduced to the Premier League. When the idea was rejected, Brentford put their players’ names on their shorts.
Lange’s plan to play on Christmas Day appeared on the back page of the daily mirrorthanks in part to a dubious sound bite. ““We want to revive the old tradition of the husband going to football on Christmas morning while the wives cook the turkey,” said Eric White, a senior figure at the club who held multiple roles from press officer to vice president.
In reality, Lange’s vision was more inclusive. “There was always a special magic to Christmas Day matches and it’s worth trying to recreate,” she said. “I see it as a tremendous opportunity for the family to enjoy a Christmas morning outdoors. We may be taking a bit of a risk, but the response from fans so far has been extremely encouraging and, after all, what we have in mind are their needs.”
However, the needs of the players were secondary. The game was scheduled for 11 a.m., which would have meant an early start. Player power was a thing of the future and, although the Brentford dressing room was full of robust characters such as Chris Kamara, Terry Hurlock and Stan Bowles, there were probably no more than a few pantomime complaints.
“Footballers don’t really see the Christmas period as a holiday; it’s just another week,” says Bob Booker, a Swiss Army knife of a footballer who was voted fans’ player of the year last season after wearing every number on the team. shirt, except 1 and 11. “I doubt they consulted us. When you are a footballer you are a kind of robot: they tell you where to go, what time to be there, they tell you what to eat. I’m sure some of the families would have been angry. “I was single at the time, so it didn’t really bother me.”
Jim McNichol, a Scottish defender who scored a thunderous free kick in that Wimbledon match, has a similar memory. “You got used to playing during the Christmas period, so you knew not to eat or drink too much. Some families were against it because there is a difference between training for an hour, like we normally did on Christmas Day, and playing a normal game. I don’t remember any locker room disagreements about the idea. I would have had no problem playing on Christmas Day; That’s your job, just do it.”
There were complaints from both sectors, mainly for religious reasons or the lack of public transportation. Lange had also promised that Brentford would never play at home on a Sunday, which is when Christmas Day fell in 1983. That sparked objections from local residents and in late November, three weeks after the original announcement, Lange reversed the decision.
“I certainly don’t remember any uprising from the fans,” says Jex. “I was 24 at the time and it didn’t make much of an impression on our group – it was just a bit of fun. I suspect the most important factor was the reaction of the people who lived around Griffin Park. More fans would have had to drive to the game because there was no public transport, so the streets would have been clogged on Christmas Day. Brentford has always been a community club and Martin Lange would have taken residents’ complaints very seriously. He would not have allowed a business decision to override the feelings of the local community.”
“Santa Stops Playing,” read the newspaper’s headline. Hounslow and Chiswick Informer, below which a local councilor revealed the magnitude of the opposition. “We had a petition with 200 names drawn up,” Bob Stratton said, “but we don’t need it anymore.”
The match was moved to Christmas Eve rather than returning to the original Boxing Day date. Wimbledon, whose nascent Crazy Gang was in the process of taking a shortcut through the Football League, won a ding-dong match 4-3 in front of a crowd of 6,689, almost 3,000 more than the previous league match at Brentford’s home. “Bringing it back on Christmas Eve was perfect – we played and then Christmas Day came. and Day off on Boxing Day,” says McNichol.
Instead of playing two games in two days like everyone else (the second was a long trip to Exeter), Brentford had 70 hours between games. The defeat at Wimbledon was their fifth in a row and they had won two of 19 league matches that season. A relatively new-look team beat Exeter and then Newport on New Year’s Eve. Those matches didn’t make the BBC news, but ultimately made the difference between survival and relegation.
