Aroundtown Magazine May June 2023 edition

SPORT
Beloved
and
Betrayed
This year marks 100 years since the FA Cup final
was first held at the original Wembley Stadium.
And it also marks 100 years
since one of the most catastrophic
and irredeemable betrayals made
in footballing history.
Non-league Worksop Town
FC sent shockwaves through
the sporting world when they
drew 0-0 during the first round
of the 1922/23 FA Cup against
Tottenham Hotspur, one of
the most glamorous teams in
the country.
Spurs had been humiliated on
home turf by a bunch of amateur
footballers who’d travelled to the
capital for the very first time from a
northern mining village nobody had
ever heard of.
The champions of the south
had wrongly presumed that victory
would be easy. But Worksop were
champions of the Midland league,
used to playing the reserve teams
of some of the strongest clubs in
the country.
It was the biggest game in
Worksop’s history, starting as
equals against legends of the
English game like Arthur Grimsdell,
Fanny Walden and Jimmy
Dimmock; they had nothing to
Worksop Town directors
from 1920
42 aroundtownmagazine.co.uk
lose and everything to gain. The
Worksop squad, the majority of
whom had come straight off the
back of a shift down the pit, put
up a strong fight to make it a
goalless draw.
Fearful of another mauling by
the Tigers, Spurs didn’t want to
leave anything to chance. They
were so desperate to be the
first London team to play at the
inaugural Wembley final that their
directors deployed dirty tactics
on Worksop to ensure their run
of success.
Bribes, backhanders, and a
boozy pre-game night put paid to
what could have been a once in
a lifetime chance for Worksop to
reserve their place in the history
books as giant killers.
The directors at Tottenham
convinced the Worksop subcommittee
to stay in London and
have the replay at White Hart Lane
instead of back at Worksop’s
home ground, Central Avenue.
Worksop were thought to be in
financial difficulty at that time and
some believe they were swayed
by the prospect of a lucrative
Goalkeeper Jack Brown
payoff – something that’s never
been confirmed.
Either way the decision proved
disastrous. The evening before
the replay, the Worksop players
were wined and dined on an allexpenses-paid
trip around London
with a posh meal followed by a
show at the Palladium. The players
did too much wining, staggering
back to the hotel blind drunk.
Goodness knows how they got up
for the game the next morning.
The team were spent, both
physically and mentally. Someone
remarked afterwards how it
was like trying to climb Mount
What lie inside
“
the pages was a
revelation to Liz,
with one of the first
chapters dedicated
to her Grandad Bill.
The book uncovered
many aspects of Bill’s
life that she’d never
known before. ”
Everest twice in three days.
Disappointment and anger at
being denied the chance of giving
Spurs the run-around back home
turned into resignation.
Worksop gave a shadow of the
spirited performance the 21,000
spectators had witnessed just days
earlier and were battered 9-0. Only
their keeper, Jack Brown, put up
any sort of resistance, his efforts
preventing the score from being
19-0.
After the first-leg draw, fans
back in Worksop had waited
eagerly at the train station to give
the players the hero’s welcome
they deserved. But they never
arrived. When the defeated team
finally arrived back home, the
Worksop fans were seething,
knowing their team were incapable
of being beaten by such a margin.
But their disgust was directed
at the sub-committee, mainly
the chairman AJ Tomlinson. This
was, after all, not the first time he
had agreed to switch a cup tie for
financial gain. In 1908, Worksop
had been drawn at home against
Chelsea but Tomlinson agreed to
travel to Stamford Bridge where the
Tigers lost 9-1.
It became a PR disaster. Fans
lost trust in the club’s management
and many supporters vowed
to never step foot in Central
Avenue again.
The story of that fateful
day in January 1923 has been
infamously retold throughout
generations of Worksop fans. But
the granddaughter of one of the
Worksop strikers knew nothing
about it until she chanced upon a
book called Beloved and Betrayed
written for the centenary of that
notorious game.
Liz Crowcroft’s grandfather
William ‘Bill’ Lilley was a striker
for Worksop Town in their 1920s