On This Day no 15 in an occasional series

By Dave P
October 30 2004

Up until now we have not played Londons oldest club (Fulham can trace their roots back to 1879) on October 30th so once again we take to the history books

Up until now we have not played Londons oldest club (Fulham can trace their roots back to 1879) on October 30th so once again we take to the history books to find matches of note that took place on this day in years gone by.

The first time we played a competitive game on 30th October was in the FA cup against the 2nd Coldstream Guards away. We won that match 7-0 with goals from Black, Crump, Meade (2), Joyce (2) and Tannahill only to be knocked out in the following round by Luton Town.

In the last article in this series I mentioned a friendly fixture against Cambridge University. Well on October 30th 1930 we sent a team to Oxford University for a friendly. A game we won 3-0. Unfortunately I have no record of the scorers on that day. We also sent a team to Oxford University on 30th October 1947, the scoreline that day being 4-1 to the Spurs. Once again I have no other record of this game apart from the result.

Looking in particular for London derbies we can look at 30th October in 1943 during the war years. As I have mentioned before, normal competition was suspended at this time and we competed in The Football League South. Our opponents on that day were Chelsea at home and we won the game 5-1 with goals from Beasley, Rowley (2), Smith, Jones. Of those four players only Beasley was actually on Tottenhams books. The others were guest players (a practice common during the war years). Smith played for us twice scoring 1 goal, the one in this game, Jones made 16 appearances in our colours scoring 7 goals and Rowley made 18 appearances scoring 19 goals. Not a bad record for a guest player. We won the Football league South that season finishing ahead of West Ham in 2nd place and QPR in 3rd.

One other season of interest that we will take a look at was the 1948/49 season. On the 30th October that year we played a League Division Two fixture at home against Bradford Park Avenue winning 5-1. Goals on this occasion came from Ron Burgess (2). Len Duquemin, Les Bennet, and W.E.A Jones. This was the last season in charge for our first post War manager Joe Hulme. A man who had played in five wembley cup finals for Arsenal and Huddersfield during the 1930s, he never quite got the blend of old and new players in his side right and at the end of the season Arthur Rowe took over and created the famous Push and Run team that won Division 2 the following season and then the Football League Championship the season after that.

By co-incidence, the 48/49 season League Division Two Champions were todays opponents Fulham. We succeeded them as Div 2 Champions the year after.