December 27, 1915: English Football's 1st Betting Scandal

Sandy Turnbull

December 27, 1915: English football (soccer) has its 1st betting scandal, a result of a game played the previous season, on Good Friday.

On April 2, 1915, Manchester United hosted Liverpool at Old Trafford in Salford, outside Manchester. United were struggling to avoid relegation from the Football League's Division One to its Division Two. Liverpool, on the other hand, were in mid-table, and neither challenging for honors nor facing the threat of relegation themselves. In other words, they had little to play for other than pride.

Liverpool were willing to accept a loss: Man United were only 33 miles away, and, with transportation costs being what they were, the Scousers didn't want to lose a cheap roadtrip. Imagine Liverpool giving the club that has become their most hated opponents a break that saves them from relegation. Better yet: Imagine Man United being in position to be relegated. A wonderful thought.

The effects of "the Great War" (which we now know as World War I) provided further motivation to perpetrate a fix: Although the season had begun on time on September 1, 1914, a month after the war began, the war did not live up to the expectation -- held on both sides -- that it would "be over by Christmas." By the end of the following March, there was no end in sight.

So the decision by the Football Association to suspend Football League operations after the season was already being predicted by nearly everyone. Since no one knew how long the war would last, it was presumed that would be not merely interrupting, but possibly ending, the footballing careers of everyone then playing in the league: Presuming they survived the war, most players would be too old to resume, and all teams would have to start over with younger players. (It didn't quite work out that way.) Also, the players perhaps thought that the diversion of the conflict would lessen the attention that would normally be paid to a dubious match result.

Old Trafford, shortly after its 1910 opening

The match ended in a 2–0 win to United, with George Anderson scoring both goals. However, the match referee and some observers noted Liverpool's lack of commitment during the game. They had missed a penalty that had been awarded to them, and when Fred Pagnam hit the Manchester United crossbar late in the match, his teammates publicly yelled at him for trying too hard.

On April 24, Middlesex team Tottenham Hotspur -- a redrawing of boundaries for 1965 meant that they were now in North London -- lost 5-0 away to North-East team Sunderland, clinching 20th and last place in Division One, meaning they were to be relegated to Division Two. West London team Chelsea finished 19th, and were also relegated. United finished 18th, and stayed up. The season thus ended, the FA then did indeed suspend League play, and FA Cup play, for the duration of the war.

At first, this relegation for Tottenham Hotspur, a.k.a. "Spurs," wouldn't seem to matter to anyone but them and their fans. But it would. 

Handbills started to appear, alleging that a large amount of money had been bet at odds of 7/1 (or "7-1," as we would write in the U.S.) on a 2–0 win to United over Liverpool. The FA investigated, and found that players from both sides had been involved in rigging the match: For Liverpool, Jackie Sheldon (a former United player, and the man found to be the ringleader), Tom Miller, Bob Pursell, and a man both aptly and inaptly named, Thomas Fairfoul; for United, Sandy Turnbull, Arthur Whalley and Enoch West.

Jackie Sheldon

Anderson, who scored both goals, and Pagnam, who hit the crossbar, knew about the fix, but refused to take part. Had Pagnam scored, that would have made the score 2-1, and ruined the bets: They weren't just for United to win, but specifically for them to win 2-0.

Pagnam willingly testified against his crooked teammates. Billy Meredith, one of the top players of the era, who had previously played for Manchester City and had won the FA Cup with both Manchester teams (as had Turnbull), testified that he didn't know about the fix, but that he had gotten suspicious during the match, when nobody would pass to him.

On December 27, 1915, the FA banned all 7 players for life. They found no evidence that any official from either team had participated in the fix. Neither team was fined, or had points deducted, or was relegated, which United would have deserved to be had there been no fix. West protested his innocence, and sued the FA, but lost.

Four of the players were from Scotland, and returned there to play non-league ball, as that country had also suspended its league, and did not recognize England's ban. Eventually, though, all 7 players ended up serving in the war. Turnbull, one of the Scottish players, was killed at the Battle of Arras in France on May 3, 1917.

After the war, in recognition of their military service, all of the players except West were reinstated, including a posthumous reinstatement for Turnbull. Because the war ended on November 11, 1918, it was too soon to start a 1918-19 season, so the next League season didn't start until August 30, 1919. And Fairfoul retired. So West was the only one who actually missed any League play. His ban, which also covered working for any team in the League, in any capacity, ended up being lifted in 1945, after World War II. At least he was still alive to receive his reinstatement.

Turnbull was survived by a wife and 4 children. Two of Turnbull's sons, Alexander Jr. and Ronald, signed amateur forms with Manchester United in 1932, but neither made a senior appearance for them, equivalent to making the major leagues in North American sports.

There was a weird postscript to this scandal. On March 10, 1919, the Football League held a meeting to reorganize. In the leadup to this meeting, it was suggested -- as it turned out, correctly, even more than they suspected -- that the postwar market for football would be insatiable, and that Division One should be expanded from 20 to 22 teams.

This would seem to have been great news for Chelsea, which had finished 19th in Division One; and for Tottenham, which had finished 20th. Now, in spite of each team's grand ineptitude, they could keep their spaces in Division One and not be relegated, while the top 2 teams from Division Two in the last completed season, 1914-15, Derby County of Derbyshire and Preston North End of Lancashire, could still keep their hard-earned promotions.

But Man U were already one of the biggest clubs in the North of England, and a lot of people didn't want them kicked out. And many other teams' owners liked that they were close, and saved them money on travel costs.

It worked: Chelsea rightly got the 21st spot, and Arsenal got the 22nd, even though they had finished 6th in Division Two in 1915. (A later check of the results showed they should have been listed as 5th, but that doesn't matter now.)

But the subject of the 1915 fix was brought up. By all rights, Chelsea were screwed out of 18th place and safety, regardless of how the 1919 reorganization meeting panned out. By all rights, Man U should have been kicked out of the League. After all, it's not as though people in the Manchester area would be without a team: Manchester City, Manchester Central, Bolton Wanderers, Oldham Athletic,

Bury, Rochdale and Stockport County were all already in business. (Wigan Athletic would come later, in 1932, replacing Manchester Central, who went out of business due to the Great Depression.)

So Sir Henry Norris, chairman of North London team Arsenal, knighted for his work supporting the war effort, had a plan: He would bring several clubs in to vote to keep Man U in the League... if Man U and their allies would vote to bring Arsenal into Division One.

This election would seem to have screwed not only Tottenham Hotspur, but Barnsley (a Yorkshire club that had finished 3rd in Division Two), Birmingham-area team Wolverhampton Wanderers (a.k.a. Wolves, 4th) and Birmingham City (officially 5th) out of that 22nd place. Yet all 3 of those clubs have been in the Premier League in recent years, and while their fans don't particularly like Arsenal (many fans admire Arsenal, but few genuinely like them), they never bring up the fact that "You screwed us out of the first division in 1919!"

Only Tottenham fans do that. To this day, Tottenham fans claim that there must have been bribery, that Norris must have paid off some club chairmen to vote Arsenal into Division One.

It has been over a century. Not one shred of evidence has ever been publicly produced that Norris bribed anyone to make it happen.

Norris' move might have been sneaky, devious, and underhanded, but it was not corrupt. Not until 1987 would the League make a team's promotion be automatic: Until then, it was always by election. Granted, those elections nearly always turned a rightful promotion into a formality and a reality. But not always. Sometimes, it was based on other factors, such as convenience for the clubs' business managers. This was one of the times that it was decided based on something other than finishing position, and, while it may have been odd, it was done within the rules of the time.

Indeed, there is more evidence that Tottenham bribed their way into the League at all in 1908 than there is that Arsenal bribed their way into Division One in 1919. Certainly, no one at the time publicly suggested that Norris had bribed anyone.

Besides, as the team that finished last in the last season, Tottenham had far less right to gripe about Arsenal screwing them over than did Barnsley, Wolves or Brum. Spurs were last, and on merit, too.

It's also worth pointing out that, whatever Norris' motivations at the time, Tottenham had nothing to do with it. He never cared who the opponent was, as long as he made money and Arsenal won.

Yet the story persists, and fans of other clubs who hate Arsenal are more than happy to pass the lie along.

Tottenham did rightly win promotion to Division One at the end of the 1919-20 season. You would think that, since (presuming that they were screwed at all) they were only screwed for 1 year, they would have gotten over it by then. Or at any time in the intervening century.

But since they can't claim to be a more successful club than Arsenal, or a bigger one, or a more admired one around the world, Tottenham fans hang onto this myth that Arsenal were corrupt in 1919 and cheated them, and that all their success since is illegitimate. (Which doesn't explain their own many failures over the same period.)

It makes me wonder why Spurs fans never blame Man United for screwing them over. After all, if United hadn't fixed that game in 1915, Spurs would have been 19th, and thus, after the 1919 reorganization meeting, entitled to remain in Division One, and Arsenal wouldn't have been able to make arrangements, legal or otherwise, to get that 22nd spot. So why don't Spurs fans hate United?

*

December 27, 1915 was a Monday. Baseball was out of season. Football season was over. Professional basketball barely existed. There was professional hockey, but neither the National Hockey Association in the east nor the Pacific Coast Hockey Association in the west scheduled any games.

While England had suspended Football League play for the duration of World War I, there was still competition, including the London Combination. In this, on this day, Arsenal hosted East London team West Ham United at Highbury, and won, 3-2.