Incident that led to football being suspended until end of first World War, writes RICHARD FITZPATRICK

Manchester United played Liverpool at Old Trafford on Good Friday, April 2nd, 1915, in the old First Division. United were in the relegation zone. Liverpool hovered above them, in the days of two points for a win, by four points.

The first World War was in full, bloody, swing. Russian and Austrian soldiers were mired in knee-high snow shooting at each other in the Carpathians. The Second Battle of Ypres, in which 6,000 French army soldiers died within 10 minutes of assault from chlorine gas poisoning, was a few weeks away.

On the Monday evening before the match, a group of players from both sides met up in The Dog and Partridge pub in Manchester and arranged to fix the match, placing bets in bookies around the country at odds of 8 to 1 and 7 to 1 that the game would end in a 2-0 score line. The conspirators reconvened on the eve of the match in another pub, agreeing a goal would be scored in each half.

Illegal betting on football was rife at the time, a vice the country’s elders tried in vain to curb. The Football League were so disturbed at how widespread it had become that in 1902, like a man wrestling with the waves, they tried to ban everyone who attended a match from betting on its result.

Betting Bill

In July 1913, the House of Commons debated a Ready Money Football Betting Bill. The Right Honourable W Hayes Fisher told his peers in parliament: “The FA has long been determined to endeavour to free this game from the excrescences which have grown upon it in connection with betting and gambling.”

Liverpool, ominously, were involved in two recent football scandals. In 1911, a drawn game against Newcastle United led to an inquiry by the FA, which turned up nothing. In March 1913, Liverpool lost 2-1 to Chelsea, a defeat which helped preserve the London club’s First Division status.

Henry Norris, Arsenal’s chairman had gone to the match and wrote a huffy letter afterwards to a London newspaper, maintaining: “Had the Liverpool team, as a whole, desired to win the match they could have done so quite readily.” The FA sprung into action, but their inquiry again failed to land any convictions.

The players who fixed the match were doubtless influenced by the war, which was dragging on interminably. The government hadn’t introduced conscription when war broke out in August 1914, and it was decided to let competitive football continue in an effort to preserve normal life; to serve as a distraction for soldiers on leave or those left at home.

The mood was changing, however. There was a growing sense play should be halted to support the war effort, a suspension which would have left many players too old or too dead to make a living from the game again when the league resumed. A few days before the infamous Good Friday match at Old Trafford, Colonel CF Grantham, a commander of the 17th Battalion, otherwise known as the Footballers’ Battalion, noted bitterly that only 122 professional footballers of an estimated 1,800 available had enlisted.

The historian AF Pollard rowed in, writing to the Times: “We view with indignation and alarm the persistence of Association Football clubs in doing their best for the enemy – every club that employs a professional football player is bribing a much needed recruit to refrain from enlistment and every spectator who pays his gate money in contributing so much towards a German victory.”

Join the army

Even the Athletic News, a sports paper, exhorted players in front page stories in the months before Easter 1915 to join the army, and applauded those who did. And on the day of the match, the official programme, amidst advertisements which argued that “a bottle of Manchester Brewery Milk Stout contains more nutriment than a glass of milk”, noted on page six: “The continuance of the war may prevent the opening of the season next September. In the result of the military situation taking a turn unfavourable to the Allies, football will be out of the question.”

Reports vary as to the attendance at the match. Some newspapers offer a figure of 15,000; others 18,000, both above the average attendance for a game that season of 11,950.

The game kicked off under a blanket of low, dark clouds and gushing showers. The weather was “wretched,” according to the Liverpool Daily Posts correspondent, but brightened up after the first quarter of an hour. United played in customary red shirts. Liverpool wore their away strip – white shirts and black shorts. The home side, which was captained by Dubliner Patrick O’Connell, won the toss and elected to play with the breeze in the first half.

Liverpool’s goalkeeper was Elisha Scott from Belfast. His brother Billy was Everton and Ireland goalkeeper. Scott was 20 years of age and 5ft 9in tall, but was such a promising goalkeeper Liverpool forked out £1,000 for him two years previously. He was overrun in the first half. United’s goalkeeper, Bob Beale, was so redundant he had time to spark up a cigarette and walk up to Scott’s goal and share it with his counterpart. Scott finally yielded five minutes before the break when United’s striker George Anderson met a cross-field ball and whipped a volley past him.

Liverpools dressingroom was in disarray at the break. Some of their players were so furious they threatened not to return to the field for the second half. There was effectively two matches being played – one by the players in on the fix, and the others, which included Liverpool and England captain Ephraim Longworth, who tried to get on with the game.

Missed penalty

Some minutes into the second half, United won a penalty, according to the Sporting Chronicles correspondent, “for hands against Pursell”, or handball in modern parlance. Anderson, the team’s regular penalty-kicker, stepped aside to let O’Connell take it. The Irishman blazed his shot “ridiculously wide”, reported the Liverpool Daily Post.

The crowd, who had grown agitated by the listlessness of play from both sides, smelt a rat, “and said so in unmistakable Lancashire fashion,” one of the match’s linesmen Fred Hargreaves later testified in court. Boos echoed around the stadium. The referee, John Sharpe, conferred with Hargreaves about the dubious spot kick, but waved play on.

Manchester United’s manager John Robson was so disillusioned he left the ground before the final whistle. United bagged their second goal, Anderson again hitting the target, although Liverpool nearly scored when Fred Pagnam rattled the bar with a shot. He was upbraided by a team-mate for his effort.

Newspaper reports about the shenanigans in the match afterwards were muted, although the day after the match the Manchester Football Chronicle quoted “one famous old player” in attendance who was aghast: “You don’t need the War to stop the game, football of this sort will do it soon enough”.

Two weeks after the match, the Sporting Chronicle, convinced the match had been “squared”, offered a reward of £50 to anyone who provided information that led to punishment of the offenders. A week later, the Football League launched an investigation, which was headed up by a three-man commission, including two former referees. On April 20th, it was announced the football league would be suspended until the war was over.

The Football League’s inquiry dragged on until December 1915, having hauled players in for questioning as they billeted themselves in hotels in Manchester and Liverpool. It concluded there was “a conspiracy to defraud bookmakers”, but exonerated both clubs, who helped with the investigation. Eight players received life suspensions from football.

Liverpool’s Jackie Sheldon, who was part of Manchester United’s league-winning team in 1911, was pinpointed as the ringleader. He denied his part in the plot in a peculiar letter he sent from the trenches in April 1916, pleading: “You will understand how difficult it is for me to explain while doing my bit somewhere in France.”

Three United players were suspended, although only one of them, Enoch James “Knocker” West had played in the match. O’Connell, who worked with West at the Ford Motor Works factory in Trafford Park during the war, escaped censure but he took the stand during two quixotic cases West brought against the Football Association and several newspapers for libel. When questioned about the penalty he mishit, O’Connell replied brazenly: “I have missed dozens in my time.” The response drew raucous laughter in the courtroom.

Sheldon, who gave his evidence to an examiner, having returned to the front, did a U-turn and confessed to the fix. His ban was lifted after the war. Clemency was also granted to the other barred players, although Sheldon’s old teammate, the Scot Alexander “Sandy” Turnbull, who joined the Footballers’ Battalion in November 1915, never kicked a ball in professional football again. “Turnbull the Terrible,” as he was known because of his fearsome shot, was killed during the Arras offensive in the spring of 1917. His body has never been found.

Drumcondra's 'Don Patricio' who played key role in survival of Barcelona FC

Patrick O'Connell, or "Don Patricio", as he was known in footballing circles in Spain, was born in Drumcondra, Dublin, in 1887. He was part of the only all-Ireland team to win the British "home" championship in 1914. He played the final match in the series against Scotland on a waterlogged pitch at Windsor Park while injured; some newspaper reports claim he had a broken arm.

After his playing days finished, he left his Irish wife and four children in Manchester to take up a manager's job at Racing Santander in Spain in 1922. He later married another Irish woman, unbeknownst to his family in Manchester. After leading Real Betis to their only league title win in 1935, he was headhunted by FC Barcelona.

Despite the onset of the Spanish Civil War in the summer of 1936, O'Connell returned to Barcelona from his holidays in Ireland, took a wage cut and, as the league had suspended, led the team on a fundraising tour to Mexico and the United States. The funds from the trip, which were deposited in a Swiss bank account, beyond the clutches on General Franco's administration, were used to revive the club after the civil war. O'Connell died destitute in London in 1959.

A century of British football scandals

Leeds City (1919)

Charlie Copeland had been on the books at Leeds City since 1912, but, disgruntled that the club wouldnt meet his £6-a-week pay demands, he started to sing about irregular payments (a widespread practice in the league) the club made during the first World War. Following an inquiry, Leeds City were thrown out of the league and disbanded. Leeds United rose from their ashes. Herbert Chapman was one of five club officials banned for life, but had his expulsion overturned on appeal and, of course, went onto greater things with Huddersfield Town and Arsenal.

Jimmy Gauld (1964)

Journeyman pro Jimmy Gauld's career came to an end, aged 29, with a broken leg in December 1960. He became consumed by an elaborate betting syndicate which rigged matches. When he got rumbled by a journalist from the People, he agreed to gather evidence against crooked footballers, the most famous of which – Sheffield Wednesday's Peter Swan, Tony Kay, and David Layne – could have expected to be in the reckoning for Alf Ramseys World Cup-winning squad in 1966 were they not handed prison sentences, with Gauld and six other players, in 1964 for match-fixing.

George Graham (1995)

A bung is a financial incentive paid by an agent to help smooth the passage of a transfer. George Graham took £400,000 from Norwegian agent, Rune Hauge, when Arsenal bought Pal Lydersen and John Jensen. Graham, who won a clutch of trophies as Arsenal manager over a nine-year period, denies he ever received a bung, although he did get "unsolicited gifts", he says, in his time. He was found guilty of misconduct by the FA in 1995 – in footballs original bung scandal – and banned for a year. He returned to management with Leeds United and later Tottenham Hotspurs.