SuperSub’s Article Number 1

This is one of a series of short articles, that were originally written for a local football club’s matchday programme. They’re simply stories from around the wonderful world of football & a million miles away from the glitz & glamour of the televised ‘product’ that we see today.

Football as a pure sport is for many, a thing of the past at the highest levels today, but the beautiful game existed long before Sky TV came a-knocking & football transformed from a spectator sport that allowed cameras in to televise it, into a TV production that allowed paying customers in to watch it being filmed.

Football is (& always has been) a fascinating sport at it’s heart & there’s a multitude of reasons why it’s the most popular spectator sport on the planet & is played by billions of people from all around the globe.

As a great man once said, “It’s a funny old game”.

This one is set in Bonnie Scotland and, at the centre of it, a moment of pure honesty that changed what we see in the footballing record books, right up to the present day

THE BEST POLICY…?

You may not have heard of a football club called Dundee Harp FC. They were formed in 1879 & the club was dissolved in 1894 and, in their 15 years of existence, the club didn’t compete in a national league, mostly playing in local & regional competitions in the East of Scotland. Yet, If it hadn’t been for a moment of sincere honesty by the club’s secretary, Dundee Harp would hold a world record & have been regularly appearing in the Guinness Book of Records, whilst their name would resound in the annals of Scottish football and beyond. Instead, all the plaudits from arguably the most incredible day in Scottish Cup history went to the club’s biggest local rivals.

In September 1885, Dundee Harp faced Aberdeen Rovers in the 1st round of the newly formed Scottish FA Cup. To say it was a mismatch would be an understatement. Harp gave Rovers a resounding thrashing that day & the referee, who admitted to actually losing count of the score at one stage, declared after the final whistle, that the final score was 37-0 to the Harps.

On hearing that, the secretary of Dundee Harps approached the referee & told him that there’d been a mistake & he’d kept a note of all the goals & the actual final score was 35-0. The referee was only too happy to accept what he was told to be the correct score & went on to inform SFA headquarters in Glasgow that the game had ended: Dundee Harp 35, Aberdeen Rovers 0.

Far from being upset at the revised scoreline, the record breaking Harps went out that night, happily knowing that their place in footballing history was assured. Their popular full-back, Tom O’Kane, who the Harps had recently poached from their local rivals & had been making his debut that day, treated his new team mates to a celebratory tripe & potatoes supper (washed down by a few beers) in their local pub, the Dundee Arms.

O’Kane was especially delighted with this record scoreline & persuaded club officials to send a telegram to his former club, boasting of his new team’s record breaking achievement. What everybody at Harps was unaware of at the time, was that O’Kane’s former club, Arbroath, had thrashed Bon Accord in the same competition that very same day & had recorded a victory of 36-0. They would learn about that very soon.

On receiving the telegram from Dundee Harp, Arbroath officials took great delight in sending a reply, boasting about their 36-0 victory & commiserating with their rivals, on narrowly missing out on setting a record scoreline.

Just a few short years later, Dundee Harp were suspended by the SFA, for the inability to pay match guarantees to visiting clubs & they then disappeared from the footballing scene.

The two scorelines achieved on that same day in 1885, have now stood as world records (or 1st & 2nd) for over140 years. That they should have happened within such close geographical proximity of each other, been on the same day & have such a strong link via Harps signing Tom O’Kane from Arbroath is surely one of football’s most staggering coincidences.

Many football fans are aware of Arbroath’s record 36-0 victory over Bon Accord, but not too many know how close their local rivals, Dundee Harps, came to overshadowing that & the main reason for this, was a moment of complete honesty, from the club secretary. I wonder if he’d have reconsidered, if he was aware of the scoreline at Arbroath..? I’d like to think that such an obviously honest man, would rather not have his team seen as record holders if it involved lying, but I guess we’ll never know.