15 of the Wackiest Records & Accolades in Football
A Brazilian goalkeeper reached an impressive milestone this week in a way that few would expect.
His bulging tally will slot nicely amongst the fifteen records and accolades set out within this slide show.
Included are goal scoring heroics, seaside themed occurrences and the occasional naughty moment! In essence they act as a reminder of the weirdly wonderful side that can be a game of two halves.
No. 15: Mind If I Join You Lads
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The FA can sometimes get themselves worked up over very little can't they. Long before Sian Massey (pictured here) came along, female referee Janet Fewings decided after an Exeter Sunday League match to take the plunge into the boys changing rooms.
She was dismayed at the lack of separate facilities offered to women and hopped into the after match showers with the Exeter players. It was 1996 and shows about "Friends" sharing each others lives was common place, so it made sense.
Jealous WAG's (yes Sunday Leaguer's have WAG's) and the Devon FA saw differently however and charged her with bringing the game into disrepute.
She found herself £15 out of pocket as well as finding her refereeing career effectively ended. Yet I am sure the players didn't mind that much—they were the ones not complaining after all!
Rumour has it she was offered money for some nude photos which she respectfully declined.
No. 14: A Jail Bird on Pitch
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Some footballers such as Craig Bellamy and Joey Barton pick up convictions as often as they score goals.
The game of football was first subjected to a known offender in January 2000 when Gary Croft came on for Ipswich Town as a second half substitute in their First Division match against Swindon Town.
Part of his armoury was an electronic tag, making him the first player in a league match to brandish one.
His crime in case your interested was a four month stretch for driving whilst disqualified mixed with perverting the course of justice. The tag was a requirement of his release and available for all to see.
Working on a GPS signal as well opposition fans would do well to distract his tag with phones at the ready!
Additionally to make sure he stuck to a seven am to seven pm curfew Croft was disallowed from any evening kick offs until his tag was released. It was in time thankfully for him to help Ipswich defeat Barnsley 4-2 in the end of season play-off.
No. 13: Run of Successive Hat-Tricks
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Right after World War 2 ended Jack Balmer became the last player to hit three hat-tricks on three successive match days.
In November 1946 the Liverpool player smashed in three against Portsmouth, with four the following weekend at Derby and a finale of three against Arsenal at Anfield.
It didn't just stop there as he totalled 15 goals in seven consecutive league matches.
In total he would come agonisingly close to a century of goals in his career, as he finished with 98 in 289 games for the Merseyside club.
Still his tally is undeniably one we would all like to replicate.
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No. 12: Most Goals in a League Season (in the UK)
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It would generally appear that the lower down the league rostrum you are the more goals that come your way.
This may be due to the lack of quality in goal, defense or generally throughout the pitch as games can become one big scrap heap of mediocrity.
In League terms Scottish side Raith Rovers hold the highest goal tally for a season. In their 1937-38 season they netted 142 goals in just 38 league games. Anyone who follows the Scottish League games will notice a frequency for high scoring fixtures.
Peterborough remained the most consistent before they reached the League by scoring over 100 goals in every one of their Midland League games in the five seasons before joining the Football League.
Their highest tally reached 160, but they were beaten by Chester who totalled 170 goals in their 1930-31 season in the Cheshire County league. That whole division was a goal fest with at least eight teams scoring and conceding over 100 goals in their campaigns.
The only team to have ever achieved the same feat of scoring and conceding a century of goals in one season was Manchester City who did so in 1957-58.
Wouldn't it be marvellous to see such a thing in the Premiership!
No. 11: An Own Goal Based on a Dream
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Most players would like to avoid scoring for their opposition through an own goal. You would expect of all people Jamie Carragher would agree—especially after his double blow in a fixture against Manchester United in 1999.
Thankfully for Liverpool, his deliberate own goal was in a testimonial match at Anfield in 2010. In a Merseyside "derby" between Liverpool and Everton, he agreed to taking a penalty for his boyhood club Everton and in doing so fulfilled a lifelong ambition.
It is just a shame that he has still scored more goals for opposition in competitive action that he has done for Liverpool themselves.
No. 10: The Rules of Abandonment
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Sometimes it's bad enough to break a sweat for a game that gets abandoned. Even worse is when your fixture gets abandoned, but then is requested to restart only a few minutes after.
In an FA Cup third round fixture in January 1927 Brentford were losing 2-1 to Oldham Athletic before fog forced the match to be abandoned after 73 minutes.
Brentford's manager Harry Curtis sent his players to the changing rooms for a bath, but the fog outside lifted and the referee decided to ask for the match to be resumed.
Harry Curtis declined citing the players health as the reason (from a hot shower to a cold pitch—nice thinking!) and the match was re-staged two days later.
In a bitter twist for Oldham it was Brentford who came out on top winning 4-2.
No. 9: A Record Attendance for a Game of Unfinished Business
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Colchester United left their ground Layer Road in 2008 to move to the Colchester Community stadium.
Their highest recorded attendance at their former ground came in November 1948 in a first round FA Cup tie against Reading.
Sadly for their fans the match lasted only 35 minutes as it was abandoned due to fog (again!). They never bettered that attendance to the dismay of the fans who turned up on the day.
No. 8: The Lost Goalie
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To complete a trio of abandoned themed occurrences, next comes the event of one player not realizing a match had been stopped.
Of all days, it happened on Christmas Day in 1937 (before the day was made a non-footballing day). Chelsea were entertaining Charlton Athletic, but the match was called off due to fog. Yet this was no ordinary fog.
It was so thick that Charlton's keeper San Bartram was left to look special as he remained on the pitch for ten minutes after the rest of the field had disappeared. It was only when a policeman informed him of the match being halted that he left the pitch and his story would then become infamous.
No. 7: A Player Tweets Too Much
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Despite footballs rejection of one technological advance (goal line technology) one thing the FA were able to do was to fine a footballer for a Twitter comment.
Ryan Babel seemingly went one step further after Liverpool's FA Cup defeat to Manchester United. Two decisions were made that brought the referee and the game into disrepute. First Ryan Giggs converted a second minute penalty and then Steven Gerrard saw red, effectively ending Liverpool's chances of gaining a result.
In response Babel produced a mock picture of referee Howard Webb in a United shirt and posted it on his Twitter feed.
The entire event seemed farcical as how many of us have made jokes or posted comments on Facebook about random or controversial decisions by referees?
Yet the FA saw red and fined Babel £10,000 for his "improper conduct" No footballer has fallen foul since that event in January of this year.
Let's just give it time shall we!
No. 6: A Shared Own Goal
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One own goal is an embarrassment, but when two players are credited with the same own goal at least they can share the humiliation.
In a game between Leicester City and Chelsea in December 1954, Leicester defenders Jack Froggatt and Stan Milburn both struck the ball at exactly the same time. The result was a ball which flew past their own keeper which would then be defined as a shared own goal.
Chelsea would go on to triumph 3-1 with five names on the score sheet!
No. 5: The Player with the Most Goals in One Match
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In English football the accolade of most goals scored by one player in one match went to "Ten Goal Payne,"—real name Joe Payne.
He played for Luton Town and hit the net an impressive ten times in a 12-0 victory over Bristol Rovers in 1936. What created more of a legend out of it was the fact is was his first outing for the side in seven months after injuries and a loan spell in non league had halted his performance tally for Luton.
Eventually he scored 83 goals in 72 games for the Hatters and earned a transfer to Chelsea as well as a few appearances for England. If it had not been for the outbreak of World War 2 it could have been more, but sadly his career ended with injury.
Yet it is not he who holds the world record for the most goals in one game. This is a joint record between a French player Stephan Staniso in 1942 and here's a tongue twister for you, Olympos Xylofagou of Cyprian side Panagiotis Pontikos in 2007.
Both players scored 16 goals for their sides with the latter netting 12 in the second half against third division rivals SEK Ayios Athanasios FC.
No. 4: Most Players to Miss the Same Penalty
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Sometimes freak events happen on the pitch that you know won't be repeated in a hurry.
Such an event occurred in 1973 in a Division Two match between Portsmouth and Notts County. The visitors were given a penalty and eventually had three attempts for the same penalty, but even more bizarrely with three different players.
First Kevin Randall attempted, but the penalty had to be retaken after the goal keeper moved. Don Masson then had his effort disallowed because he struck the ball before the referee had given the signal.
Then finally Brian Stubbs adhered to all the rules before missing the goal completely and thus ending Notts County's goal scoring opportunity.
It couldn't have been a story they would each tell their grand children!
No. 3: Beach Balls at the Ready!
13 of 15If ever there was a way to offer your opposition a ludicrously strange goal it's to have one of your own supporters throw a beach ball onto the pitch and leave it lying there ready for a deflection from the actual football.
Such was the fate faced by Liverpool after a Kop fan thrust his beach ball onto the pitch only for Darren Bent to slot in for Sunderland after the football came off of the beach ball and put Liverpool keeper Pepe Reina into a bout of confusion.
Sunderland would go on to win the game 1-0 in a result that would go on to define Liverpool's somewhat disastrous 2009-10 campaign.
The only thing that didn't go down was the beach ball itself and the aftermath of taunts from rival clubs. Liverpool's club shop then reported a surge in the beach balls with opposing fans wanting a piece of football history.
The fan who threw the beach ball onto the pitch however left a little deflated.
No. 2: The Biggest Win & Most Ridiculous Tantrum
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For over 115 years, Scottish side Arbroath had a stranglehold on the biggest victory record. Their Scottish Cup triumph over Aberdeen side Bon Accord 36-0 held firm as a feat unmatched for the whole 19th Century.
The occurrence itself was slightly misleading in that the Bon Accord side who turned up were in fact a cricket team who decided to play the game anyway despite their appearance being a mistake. When the correct team turned up two years later, they were still hammered 18-0 by Arbroath.
This record was finally broken, and in reality smashed in 2002 when Madagascan side AS Adema beat close rivals SOE 149-0 in a match that saw two goals per minute.
To get to such a score line could not have been achieved in open play—instead the SOE players were making a protest against a refereeing decision and proceeded to score own goal after own goal in protest. The Adema players just looked on in bewilderment, but the scoreline was left to stand as the highest in the world of football.
No. 1: The Goal Scoring Goal Keeper
15 of 15And finally, the news that came to the forefront this week was of Brazilian goal keeper Rogerio Ceni's 100th career goal when he netted for Sao Paulo against Corinthians.
Not content with being a goal keeper, it would seem Ceni wants it all and now has it all with his accolade.
Watching the link included, it's not hard to see why as his technique could rival David Beckham on many occasions.
As you would do he took his jersey off in celebration, for which he was given a yellow card.
Ceni's tally of goals added to the various free kicks and penalties he has scored throughout his 900 plus featured games, making him the highest scoring goal keeper in history.
2005 proved to be his golden year as he found the net on 21 occasions. At 38, the experienced goalie must surely now be looking towards reaching one thousand games for the club he has played for in the entire duration of his professional career.
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