Third Round
li, J. P. W. MALLALIEU, M.P.
IEXPLAIN at once that emotion will be excluded from this article. I offer you a report which is to be coldly, almost analytically, factual. There is to be no bias. no exaltation. Just the facts. And the first fact is rain.
On Saturday, January 6th, it rained in Huddersfield. It rained like anything. It rained all morning. When I looked from my bed- room window I could hardly see across the road for the rain. I should have been drenched on my way to the office if a friend had not given me a lift: and I should have been drenched again if at any time before 1.30 p.m. I had been able to leave my desk. So you can imagine what happened to Tottenham Hotspur's supporters who had travelled through the night by special train and reached Huddersfield at breakfast-time. They got drenched on their way from station to café. They got drenched again after breakfast as they moved unhappily from doorway to doorway. They got drenched a third time as they trudged to Leeds Road and waited for the gates to open.
The second fact is mist. If there had been no rain I'd still have had some difficulty in seeing across the road. For the mist, which hung thickly on the high surrounding moors, trailed dark wisps down the hillside into the main streets of the town itself. So the rain-soaked supporters of Tottenham, suffering already in body, had in addition the dulling fear in their minds that all this journeying might prove in vain, that the match, in fact, would be postponed. This fear increased after mid-day, when the force of the rain diminished and allowed the wet, clinging mist to press down from the hills in bulk.
On normal days the walk from town to Leeds Road is one of the greatest pleasures of niy football Saturday. I leave the main street where people are sauntering purposelessly, and, in a side street, I join a trickle of men and women who are walking intently. In this trickle I emerge on the old Beast Market and that great slum-cleared waste below Southgate. On to this open space I see other trickles emerging from other side streets and converging on the far corner by the gas-works. If the wind is right, you get the smell from the gas-works, and maybe from the sewerage works as well ; but it's not the smell that makes you hurry. You hurry for excite- ment, excitement which feeds on itself as the trickles converge into a stream and the stream converges into a flood, a flood of blue and white scarves, of clattering feet and, even on the brightest day, of precautionary mackintoshes (for in Huddersfield, during the football season, you never know). On this walk I have no care. The two points seem there for the taking and the world is young, and when the match is the Third Round of the Cup and the favours and rattles are out for the first time, the world is not only young but gay as well.
But there was no walk for me this Third Round. I was kept so late at the office that it seemed I might miss the kick-off ; so I took a taxi. And there were no floods, nor strearnsoor even trickles of men and women. Those who were eager enough to brave the day at all had long since reached the ground, and from the streaming windows of the taxi I could see only a few stragglers swirling through the mist.
The ground itself was appalling. Water trickled off the crown to the surrounding running-track or lay in wide pools. How could anyone play football on such a quagmire ? And if they did play, how would anyone see ? The terraces on the far side loomed faintly through the mist, and outside the ground behind one of the goals a ghostly mill peered for a moment warily and then withdrew. The world, it seemed, had closed in around this watery, silent space. The water, the mist and the space remained throughourthe after- noon, but not the silence.
As soon as the game began the pitch tried to assert itself. Players making a fifteen-yard dash for the ball travelled the last ten yards on their bottoms amid a shower of spray. Sometimes a well-driven pass would catch a puddle and stop dead, yards short of its objec- tive; sometimes, when driven with extra force to beat the water, it would skim over one of the few dryish patches and far outrun the play. Yet from the start is was clear that the Spurs would beat the pitch and play brilliant football. It also seemed likely that they would beat Huddersfield. They gave their attacking passes a split second before a defender tackled, and almost always found their man, so that by thrusting interchanges Bail y and Medley, for example, would take the ball from one end of the field to the other while one after another of Huddersfield's defenders challenged just too late. The Spurs supporters roared their encouragement.
But while throughout the first half the Spurs played football that, in the conditions, was miraculous. I did not feel at any time that they were likely to score—and I am a spectator who always assumes that opponents are likely to score the moment they get the ball clear of their own penalty area. Beautiful, artistic, pattern- weaving football, yes. But goals, no. Not in the first half. But the second half might be a different story. The Spurs, true to the text- books, were making the ball do the work, whereas Huddersfield, pitting enthusiasm against science, were hurling themselves energetically through the mud. At that rate they must soon, wilt and the Spurs stride through them at will. So at half-time, though the score was 0-0, the signs were out for a Spurs victory. During the interval I tried to calculate what chance there was that the game would be abandoned before the finish because of bad visibility.
Because of the mist the interval was cut short, but my calculations continued with increasing urgency, because Spurs continued to flush the ball over the ground just that second ahead of the defenders, whereas when a Huddersfield forward got the ball he held on to it until both he and it drilled themselves into the mud. The Spurs roar continued. But after about ten minutes of the second half there came a perceptible change. Either the Spurs became a fraction slower or Huddersfield became a fraction faster. Anyway, those swift, thrusting passes suddenly were no more. They died at birth against a defender's foot. More than that, Huddersfield forwards instead of trying to beat five men in brilliant solo runs, began to combine, and almost without warning two Huddersfield forwards and the ball arrived in the Spurs penalty area with only Ditchburn to beat. Ditchburn flung himself and just got the ball, but it was a near thing. The greater roar was now coming from Huddersfield supporters, but two minutes later they gave out a sound of another kind. For the first time in the match the Spurs defence was sucked into the mud, and while they laboured with their feet a Huddersfield forward danced like a will-o'-the-wisp towards the empty Spurs goal and shot—just wide. At that I heard a wail, eerie and wolf- like. Turning round to see who had made it, I found I had. Skip- ping all emotion and dealing only with the facts, I could have cried. Two easy chances, both missed, within two minutes. You can't do that against the best club football team in the world and survive.
But by now the Spurs were no longer playing like the best football team in the world. They were becoming short-tempered, if not short-winded—and after one incident the Huddersfield crowd treated them to the loudest booing I have heard outside the House of Commons. A moment later the Huddersfield team Heated them to the sweetest goal I never saw. Who scored it and how, I did not know. All I did know was that there was a sudden, sectional yell from behind the Spurs goal and then, as the Huddersfield players ran back to the centre shaking each other's hand, the yell exploded over the whole ground. We had barely settled in our seats when Huddersfield scored again. I saw Glazzard cut in from the wing.
I saw him twist and fire. I saw Ditchburn crouched, dead in line, as it seemed, with the shot and when for a second or two he, remained crouched I assumed that he had gathered the ball into his. stomach. So, it seemed, did the rest of the crowd for there was
a moment's silence. And then thc silence burst. The shot had been. oblique, had passed into the corner of the net, and for perhaps
half a minute there was no one else on the ground but me. When I recovered to find myself still standing long after the game had restarted I looked round shamefacedly. But everyone else was standing too—except for the grey-faced line of Spurs directors immediately in front.
Oh, the agotiy of the last ten minutes ! Oh, that final whistle's blessed sound ! Did I say facts only ? In the Third Round of the English Cup, Huddersfield Town beat Tottenham Hotspur by two goals (Taylor, Glazzard) to none.
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