“Who were the first football club to have an official website?” wonders Chris White. “And how about an unofficial website? I noticed that TWTD, Ipswich Town’s unofficial fan site, has been going since 1995, so surely must be one of the first. Also, who were the first clubs to start using social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter?”
“I can help,” yells Martyn Amos, thrusting his arm in the air. “Ipswich Town were, indeed, the first club to have a website (unofficial or otherwise). In fact, I used to help maintain it. It was set up in 1990 by Phil Clarke, who worked at BT in Martlesham (near Ipswich) when the web was still very much experimental. He then passed it on (1993-1995) to Paul Felton, who was a student at UEA in Norwich (boo, hiss).
“After Paul graduated, he passed it on to me, as I was, at the time, a PhD student at Warwick (1995-1996). Paul then took it back in 1996, and ran it until 2001, when the club finally woke up to the potential of the web, and got a local company called AWS to run it … There used to be some discussion with Sheffield United fans about our claim to primacy, but I believe that it was decided in our favour.”
As for unofficial websites … “Very likely to be Reading’s Hob Nob Anyone which has been knocking around since November 1994,” reckons Peter Sorrill. “Although the distinction between ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ was moot in the early 90s as most clubs weren’t that tech savvy. Here’s the Evening Post’s report on its 20th anniversary from 2014.” In it, founder Graham Loader explains that “I did computing and then I found out about the internet and realised you could do email and all that stuff. I didn’t think it would get big but it got quite big quite quickly. People would contact me and say how exciting it was that they could read about Reading in places like Canada and Australia.”
But Alex Lopez-Ortiz thinks he can go earlier. “The ‘What’s New, September 1993’ NCSA web page lists: ‘Information on the Sheffield Wednesday Football Club at Nottingham University [website] is online.’ This is very early in the life of the web. NCSA mosaic, which was what popularised the web, was introduced in January of that year.”
Tetris on the terraces
“While watching the Faroe Islands getting thumped by Portugal last Monday, I realised that the annoyingly catchy chant the Faroese fans gamely kept up throughout the majority of the second half was actually the theme tune from the computer game Tetris,” emails Andy Ballard. “Is there any particular reason for this choice of anthem? And are there any other examples of fans appropriating songs/music (or any characters/imagery) that originated in computer games at matches?”
We’re not certain of why, beyond its inherent catchiness, but this tune appears to be sung around the world. The theme to Tetris originated from a Russian folk song, Korobeiniki, about a peddler and a girl haggling over goods, it says here. The basic tune has popped up on football terraces in a few places, starting in Chicago.
“Section 8, the supporters’ group for Chicago’s MLS team, the Chicago Fire, has used the song from Tetris as one of the regular chants for years,” notes xtomx. “Why, you ask? Guapo, one of the great Section 8 supporters, could play it on his trumpet, that’s why. Despite suffering the past few seasons under a terrible owner, the Fire do maintain a small group of dedicated fans, who remember better times with formerly great players (Piotr Nowak, Lubos Kubik, Hristo Stoichkov, Eric Wynalda, Tomasz Frankowski and Arne Friedrich).
“We are now reduced to: making cracks at management; hate-watching the laughable players signed for the team; drinking Malört (Chicago’s “hometown” bitter spirit); and talking about the raccoon that invaded the upper deck of the stadium during a cup game two years ago, and has become the emblem of how far we have fallen. We laugh at ourselves, as it is the only thing that keeps us going.”
Here’s the Chicago Fire fans in happier times:
On the other side of the world, it’s also an anthem for Western Sydney Wanderers:
Back across the Pacific, and MLS side Portland Timbers use the same tune and similar lyrics, but throw in a bit of mass choreography for good measure:
Know any more instances, or other 8-bit inspired chants? Get in touch.
Fuming
Last week’s column looked at physios getting injured running on to the pitch. But reader David Hopkins reminded us of another.
“In the 1930 World Cup semi-final between Argentina and the USA, the American team doctor Jack Coll ran on to treat an injured player, dropping his bag on to the pitch as he arrived to do so,” he emails. “This caused a bottle of chloroform inside the bag to break, leading to Coll being overcome by fumes … and being carried off himself.”
Wandering players: a follow-up
Also last week, we had a section on players who have appeared for more than four clubs in a season, and while it doesn’t trump the seven of Jefferson Lewis, Mark A Thomas has another nomination. “Ray Wilkins played for five in the 1996-97 season. He started as player-manager at QPR (one of the reasons he left I believe was because he was picking himself too much), played under his mate Alan Smith at Wycombe for one game, headed to Hibs for a few games, then came back down to Millwall and Leyton Orient.”
Meanwhile, Mitchel Ankers has a correction: “Whilst reading this week’s Knowledge, I spotted a minor inaccuracy regarding John Burridge’s career history.
‘It should be said that he didn’t play all that much. Of the 19 clubs he’d signed for, he only played a total 29 games for half of them. Interestingly, he was listed as player-manager of his final club Blyth Spartans without actually playing.’
“I have a vivid recollection of attending a first round FA Cup tie between Blackpool and Blyth Spartans in 1997 where John Burridge featured in goal for Blyth. As a nine-year old Blackpool fan at the time I knew nothing about him but I remember there being a lot of fanfare surrounding the return of a club legend, so I was convinced my memory was right. I then found this blog article which suggests that he did play in the match. I think the issue here is that Wikipedia only records league appearances so it’s not a reliable source on whether or not a player played for a club in any competition at all.”
Wikipedia? Inaccurate? Surely not.
Knowledge archive
“Who is the shortest goalkeeper to have played for a major European club?” mused Daniel Koytchev three years ago.
Immediately we shall dispense with the “major European club” aspect of this question, Daniel, because there aren’t that many wee keepers to go around. Only one gets close to satisfying your criteria, and that’s Bert Williams, who played for Wolves during the finest period in their history, winning the FA Cup in 1949 and the league title in 1954. Later that year Williams, who stood 5ft 9in tall in his socks, played in goal when Wolves beat Honved 3-2 in one of the ”floodlit friendlies” that inspired the European Cup. In the Pathé News footage you can see him making a double save at the end of the first half, leaving Wolves with just the two goals to make up in the second. Roy Swinbourne’s second goal, Wolves’ third, in the 78th minute, is a belter. Also in the late 1940s/early 50s, Wilf Chisholm stood between the sticks for Grimsby Town – all 5ft 8in of him.
If we were playing Mallett’s Mallet, chances are you’d respond to “short goalkeepers” with “Jorge Campos” (or, if not, get biffed on the bonce). It’s been suggested that Campos was as short as 5ft 6in, but most sources put him at 5ft 8in – either way, he didn’t loom large in the penalty area, but he more than made up for any lack of height with his fashion sense (all goalkeepers should be asked to design their own shirts, please) and athleticism. Campos was always charging off his line, and even if he had committed himself going the wrong way, he often managed to wriggle back in to position to snaffle the ball away from the toes of attackers. Mexico have also had Óscar Pérez in goal, measuring 5ft 7in and known as the Rabbit for his leporidine agility.
Also 5ft 7in was the Reading goalkeeper Steve Death (is this the only time anyone can have been “saved by Death”?), the man who went 11 matches without conceding a goal to set a then-record English total of 1,103 minutes without picking the ball out of the back of the net. In the promotion-winning 1978-79 season, he kept 26 clean sheets, conceding in only a quarter of Reading’s home matches. He wasn’t much of a kicker, but he was quick off his line and a great shot-stopper. After his debut for Reading, a 1-0 win over Brighton, one report called him “an insignificantly built bundle of daredevil energy”, a description we think rather lovely.
- For thousands more questions and answers take a trip through the Knowledge archive.
Can you help?
“After the recent death of the King of Thailand it was announced that the current standings in the Thai football leagues will stand with three rounds of games still remaining,” reports Robert Davies. “This means that whoever was in the relegation zone at the time were relegated, whoever was leading the league was pronounced champion, etc. Has something like this ever happened before in any other leagues?”
“A couple of evenings ago some friends and I realised that the exciting new Watford player (and nominative determinist) Isaac Success has only two unique consonants in his first name and surname combined,” cheers Jack Webb. “A friend later realised that Dele Alli also has only two. A whole series of questions flowed from this, none of which we got very far on. Are there any other world footballers who have only two consonants in their name, and who has the longest name with only two consonants? Do any have just the one consonant? And who has the fewest unique vowels in their name? For our discussion we disallowed footballers with only one name (Pelé, Kaka, etc) as that felt like cheating.”
“The current Sligo Rovers goalkeeper, Michéal Schlingermann, hails from County Mayo and his dad is German,” reports Liam Maloney. “And he has the word ‘German’ as part of his surname. Are their other examples of players’ surnames containing a word that directly connects to their nationality or that of either of their parents?”
Here’s Steve Dodds: “On discovering that the Bulgarian side, Ludogorets, who suffered a hiding at the hands of Arsenal the other night, have a name which is an anagram of ‘good result’, I was wondering if any readers of The Knowledge could suggest any other football-related anagrams of club names?”
“Gareth Bale is the most expensive Welsh player at £86m and Joe Allen is the second highest at £15m,” writes Justin Anderson. “This must be the biggest difference in actual amounts but can any other countries boast a greater proportional difference between their first and second most expensive players (Bale’s fee is 5.7 times more than Allen’s)?”
Send your questions and answers to knowledge@theguardian.com or tweet @TheKnowledge_GU.
