It is a schoolboy question

It is a schoolboy question – what is the highest score in a firstclass British football match.  Supposedly the answer is Arbroath 36 Bon Accord 0.

This is how it shows in the record books…

Arbroath 36 – 0 v Bon Accord, Scottish Cup 1st Round 12/9/1885

And so it appears in every history book ever since.  But did it really happen?

Sadly the answer is no.

You would think that with all the marvels of the internet etc finding out the details would be easy.   But in fact this is not the case.  The local papers gave no coverage to the event at all, and the Scotsman simple wrote the result with no comment at all

What we do find in on the internet are comments about “The day was wet and dreary across Angus, as rain fell for ten hours” and so on.  But what is the source of these comments.  Certainly they were not contemporary, because there are no contemporary records.  To their eternal credit the modern day Arbroath club have not gone in for this inventing of history, since their records as shown on the internet begin later.

Latter day commentaries talk of Arbroath scoring early on – which of course they would have to do if they were going to get 36 goals – but what no one does is actually mean.  36-0 means a goal every 2.5 minutes.   

It was when I realised this that I began to wonder if it could be true.  And so, on a rather dismal day in November 2005 a group of us tried to replicate the score on a full size football pitch in Desborough, Northants.   We had a ref, and two teams of 11 each, and an argument.  What was the off-side rule at the time of the supposed 36-0 victory.  We knew that football started with the rule that whereas today one outfield players has to be between the attacker and the goal when the ball is kicked, and we knew that originally it was three.  But what was the rule in the days of Bon Accord?

We thought it was two, but our linesmen protested that they were never going to get this right – so we decided to go for current rules, but in case of doubt the benefit goes to the defender, as it certainly would have done.

The idea was that “Bon Accord” had to try and play, but had to lose.  They couldn’t just lie down or go off for a pint, and they had to keep 11 players on the pitch.

The long and the short of it is that it is not possible to run up this score.  There are too many tactics that can be used to stop the other team scoring – not sophisticated modern tactics, but tactics like kicking off with 8 players around the ball, and shielding it from the opposition from all sides.  Tactics like putting your defence on the goal line.  Tactics like kicking the ball out of the ground – they certainly didnt have replacement balls all over the place in those days.

And even if these tactics were avoided, the fact is that it can readily take a minute to retrieve the ball from the goal and bring it back to the centre, and get the game going again.  Bon Accord were hardly likely to want to kick off quickly – not at 25-0 down anyway – and so a minute would stretch further and further.  

This means not just one goal every 2.5 minutes but rather by the second half, one goal every minute.  You kick off and have a minute to score.   Certainly it is possible but not 10 or more times, and not if the opposition are trying to stop you.

In short, we realised very quickly, that the only ways Arbroath could have got 36 were

a) Bon Accord were very short of men – in which case the game was not a game of football in any real sense – 11 against 6 for example can’t really be football.

b) Bon Accord did not try – that is in (for example) the second half, they kicked off, sat down in the mud, let Arbroath run up the pitch and tap it in, let them bring the ball back, and then repeat the pointless exercise.   Not only is that not football, and not only is that unlikely, it also seems pointless.  If such a thing happened then more likely Bon Accord would have wandered away to the pub.

Which brings up the next point.  We tried to recreate this game as a game of football in the sense that we know it.  But go to a park and watch the kids play.   They might start out fairly seriously, but quite often, often 20 minutes, one or two are tired or bored, and they are just mucking about.  Scores of 20, 30 or 40 are recorded as the game degenerates into 4 against 2.

What really makes the whole thing seem utterly impossible is that on the self-same day in the self-same country in the self-same cup (the famous Scottish Cup), Harp – a team from Dundee beat Aberdeen Rovers 35-0.

So we are left with two conclusions.

First, it is probably all nonsense – after the games, which were not reported anywhere other than by result, one Aberdonian said to another “Rovers got beat 35-0” and the other replied “Bon Accord lost 36-0”.  

And it is this little invented sentence that brings home the nonsense.  Same day.  Same competition, two impossible scores differing by just one goal.  And – both beaten teams from Aberdeen – Aberdeen Bon Accord and Aberdeen Rovers.   You might believe in coincidence – but this much.

Second, if anything remotely like this ever did happen, then it was not football as we know it.    If you doubt it, try it yourself.  11 against 11 for 90 minutes, and the defeated side allowing the goals in, but still trying.   While just up the road the same thing happens again.

Sorry, but it is a fairy tale.