The Christmas Football Match

The legacy of the WWI football truce continues:

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/fo...First-World-War-Christmas-truce-lives-on.html

http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...eral-1914-christmas-day-truce-walter-congreve

 

As part of the centenary commemorations I listened to a debate on R4 by historians and they all agreed its almost certain there was no football match on Christmas Day. They said its likely some pockets of players kicked rags about whilst chatting but there was no match of one side vs another.

 

Sad ****.

 

Who? What?

Are you suggesting a) taking an interest in history makes me a "sad ****". b) sharing the views of historians on here makes me a "sad ****" or c) both?

 

Gwillam Lloyd will no doubt claim they were playing rugby league.

 

I am sure there was a photo of the ball they were said to have used in the papers recently.

 

Dont shoot the messenger, it's not my opinion but that of a panel of historians.

 

Or d) listening to radio 4.

 

Oh aye, it's really sad and c**ty to listen to informative and entertaining radio that gave us Alan Partridge, The Day Today, Mitchell and Webb and s**tloads of other brilliant comedy.

Plus it's the best news channel by far. Today is simply brilliant hence them being the pick of the media for all interviewees and Eddie Mair on PM is the best news presenter.

 

Of course we want to be informed and many of us are fascinated by WW1, look at the numbers who visited the magnificence poppy display at the Tower. The trenches were as grim as it gets and if the story of the Christmas Day truce and football matches breaking out 100 years ago are slightly romantesized where is the harm, no one imagines there was a full sized pitch with goal posts and a ref etc.

 

I do, and if there wasn't, then I wouldn't call it a football match.

UNLESS they used jumpers for goal posts and played rush goalie.

 

WWI Christmas Truce letter on Antiques Roadshow
A previously unknown letter describing the famous Christmas Day soccer/football game between German and British troops held in No Man’s Land on the Western Front was revealed on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow last month. It was written by Clement Barker of Ipswich, Suffolk, to his brother Montague on December 29th, 1914. A staff sergeant with the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, Barker wrote:

A messenger come over from the German lines and said that if we did not fire Xmas day, they (the Germans) wouldn’t so in the morning (Xmas day). A German looked over the trench – no shots – our men did the same, and then a few of our men went out and brought the dead in (69) and buried them and the next thing happened a football kicked out of our Trenches and Germans and English played football.

Night came and still no shots. Boxing day the same, and has remained so up to now.

This is an important contemporary eye-witness account of an event that even today is still questioned. Some historians have suggested that the football game was a later romanticization of the Christmas Day Truce events, that it never really happened. Soldiers’ letters testify that the match really did happen in the No Man’s Land between the trenches near Armentières, France, and that the Germans won 3-2. http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/22394

You can watch the Antiques Roadshow programme at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p011ffck

So the Germans won 3-2 - probably on penalties!

 

Another WW! football story appeared on Antiques Roadshow.

The tatty brown leather ball belonged to Sergeant Frank Edwards who hid it from his commanding officer by stuffing it up his tunic moments before going into battle.

He booted the ball into No Man's Land where the men from the London Irish Rifles fanned out like a line of forwards and passed it between themselves while under fire.

Sgt Edwards was shot and wounded but his ball ended up in the German trenches after a successful but bloody attack at the Battle of Loos in 1915.

It was found later wedged in barbed wire and taken back to headquarters.

The ball is on display at the London Irish Rifles Association museum but has been lent to Sgt Edwards' granddaughter Sue Harries who took it to the Antiques Roadshow's First World War special programme to be broadcast this Sunday.

Mrs Harries also presents expert Graham Lay with a bronze statue of her grandfather dressed in uniform holding the ball along with a watercolour painting of the extraordinary charge.

The historic football used by Frank Edwards to kick off the Battle of Loos during the Great War [BBC]

Mr Lay values the ball at between £10,000 and £15,000 and tells Mrs Harris: "You haven't just got a football here, the football is testament to the bravery, the courage and the morale of your grandfather."

The Battle of Loos took place on September 25, 1915. The regiment's football team had planned to dribble six balls across No Man's Land to help distract them from the deadly mission but to also shock the enemy.

Officers shot five of the six balls when they heard of the game plan but the sixth survived up Sgt Edward's jacket.

Sgt Edwards is said to have dribbled the ball 20 yards before he was shot in the thigh. One of his footballing comrades applied a tourniquet to the wound which saved his life.

There's a story on You Tube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bq4da4cAP7E

 

I am sure there would have been a dubious off side decision and a dodgy red card?

 

If anyone thinks there was an actual leather ball then they're frankly a buffoon.

The debate wasnt about that at all, of course there werent bloody goal posts! What they said was there wasnt anything even remotely resembling a match with 2 sets of teams attacking different targets. They said it was more likely there were small pockets of men who might have kicked something - rags perhaps - between them in a group keepie-uppie style.

Basically none of us were there and nor were the historians, but as the topic came up I just thought I'd share what the panel said. I dont know a fraction enough about what happened to have any kind of informed opinion.

 

Brilliant You made my morning!

 

It was an adidas ball.