Who was the first footballer to score on Christmas Day?

Photograph: D-Keine/Getty Images

“Who was the first player to score on Christmas Day?” asks Sarah Tomlinson.

For a long time, Christmas Day matches were a regular part of the English Football League calendar. The first was played on December 25, 1889, when defending champions Preston beat Aston Villa 3-2 in a, ahem, ding-dong match. The first goal was scored after six minutes by Preston’s Scottish forward Nick Ross, making him the first man to score in the Football League on Christmas Day.

However, we don’t think he will be the first to score in a competitive match. A year earlier, Everton played two matches on Christmas Day: a Lancashire Cup match against Blackburn Park Road, followed by an exhibition match against Ulster FC. The first goal, or “point” as it was called in most newspaper articles, was scored by a Blackburn Park Road striker listed only as “Gargett”. “Mackereth crossed and Gargett scored with a real beauty,” reads the Liverpool Mercury report. “This point was deservedly earned and caused great applause.” Everton won 3-2.

But if you look at the Christmas Day games in Scotland, eight years earlier there was a goalscorer. There were three Scottish Cup matches on December 25, 1880 but, as live scoring apps didn’t exist 143 years ago, the details aren’t so easy to nail down for sure. What we have discovered is that Rangers v Dumbarton and Arthurlie v Vale of Leven did not score goals at half-time, but Campsie Central v Queen’s Park was a one-sided goal fest. A report on qphistory.com shows Queen’s Park winning 10-0 with goals from George “Geordie” Ker (3), John Smith (3), Johnny Kay (2) and Harry McNeil (2).

So, assuming the order is chronological and Ker scored first, he is the first footballer to find the back of the net in a competitive match on Christmas Day. And if not, then we tip our party hats to one of the other three scorers on the list.

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“I vaguely remember waking up on Boxing Day morning a couple of years ago (with a huge hangover) and seeing a legend on Football Focus with an old list of Boxing Day fixtures and a huge number of goals. Did it have something to do with the DTs or did this really happen? asked Ken Davro in 2000.

The story continues

We are not doctors, so our lawyers advised us not to comment on the floaters in front of your eyes. But we can help you with the Boxing Day thing. On December 26, 1963, a staggering 66 goals were scored in the old First Division, leaving some teams wishing there had been a repeat of the previous season’s Great Freeze (which had wiped out almost all football between the Boxing Day and March). Here are the classifieds:

If that wasn’t strange enough, the results two days later, when many of the teams played the “return match,” are incredible. West Ham, who had lost 8-2 at home to Blackburn, won 3-1 at Ewood Park. Manchester United, fresh off a 6-1 rout at Burnley, turned things around at Old Trafford with a 5-1 victory. And poor Ipswich, who had clearly been in the Christmas Day pop, avenged their 10-1 defeat to Fulham with a 4-2 win over the Cottagers at Portman Road. The two points did them a lot of good, yes: they finished last.

“Do you know which soccer club opened their field for ice skating because the field was frozen?” asked Kim Vanderhoven in 2004.

It was the year 1962-63, and England and Wales were experiencing their coldest winter since 1740 (Scotland, by the way, was suffering its worst since 1829). From Boxing Day 1962 until early March 1963, most of the British Isles were under snow, with temperatures five to seven degrees below average.

Not surprisingly, hardly any football was played. In fact, the winter was so severe that Barnsley only played two matches between 21 December 1962 and 12 March 1963. However, in Halifax, they came up with an enterprising idea: why not use the Shay to ice skating?

Ironically, it occurred on March 2, 1963, when, as the Manchester Guardian pamphlet “The Long Winter 1962-63” reports, most of the country was, at last, experiencing a thaw:

The stunt raised a few pennies, but was of no use to Halifax: they only earned 30 points all season and were relegated to the fourth division, along with Carlisle, Brighton and Bradford Park Avenue.

“Has any club ever been cruel enough to kick out their manager on Christmas Day?” asked Simon Briggs in 2006.

As cruel as it may seem, a club has They are known to have fired their manager on Jesus’ birthday, and were even brave enough to ruin the festivities for one José Mário dos Santos Mourinho Félix. “I was nine or 10 years old and my father [Félix] He was fired on Christmas Day,” the Chelsea coach recalled during an interview in 2004. “He was a coach, the results had not been good, he lost a game on December 22 or 23. On Christmas Day the phone rang and he was fired in the middle of our lunch.” Mourinho Jr was close to a festive dismissal: he was fired by Chelsea on December 19, 2015 and by Manchester United on December 18, 2018.

Can you help?

“When Rico Lewis made his England debut against North Macedonia, he became the fourth England full-back in recent history to be born in Bury, Greater Manchester (joining Gary Neville, Phil Neville and Kieran Trippier). Given that the city’s population is only 81,000 (the broader district has 193,000 people), this seems to be a very impressive record. Are there other ‘small towns’ that have provided players for particular positions in the England (or any other national) team more consistently? asks Michael Barlow.

“I follow the top Swedish women’s division, OBOS Damallsvenskan, and I can’t help but wonder about the distance between the top and bottom half of the table this season, in which Hammarby won the title,” begins Jonas Jacobson. “At first there seemed to be a big gulf in class between the top seven teams and the seven in the bottom half, and the distance between seventh-placed FC Rosengård (champions in 2022) and eighth-placed Växjö DFF (newcomers from the second level) was 19 points. So naturally I asked myself: has there ever been a bigger gap between the top and bottom half of a top division table?

“Patrick Kisnorbo was recently sacked at Troyes. During his tenure as manager, his record was three wins, 14 draws and 23 losses, a modest win record of 7.5%, and he led his club to relegation to Ligue 2. Wow. Aside from interim coaches (I’d say he has a minimum of 10 games), does he hold the title of worst coach in the ‘Big Five’ leagues? send an email to Florian Labrouche.

“Over the weekend in Malta, a Brazilian player, André Carlos Penha da Costa, who plays for second division Melita FC, scored his second consecutive four-goal goal for the club (in five days),” writes Jean Pierre Attard. “I was wondering if there is some kind of record for such a feat. I understand that the highest number of consecutive hat-tricks is five.”