04/23/24
May 10, 2010
Goooaaal! Goooaaal! Goooaaal! Goooaaal! Goooaaal!: Last Wednesday, Hibernian and Motherwell played their penultimate game in the Scottish Premier League. It ended in a 6-6 draw, equalling the record for the highest score draw in the history of professional football. (YT highlights for those who can't get iPlayer.) Although there aren't perfect records for professional matches worldwide, it's believed that this is only the second match ever with this scoreline, with the previous 6-6 score coming in a Belgian match between Genk and Westerlo (warning: terrible Eurohouse). This previous game, however, was a much dirtier affair, with four sendings-off and five penalties. The Hibees and the Well played relatively clean, with no goals scored from penalties and no red cards. Motherwell miraculously came back from four goals down, with a spectacular equaliser in injury time stunning the commentator. Scotland has a history with high-scoring football games; the highest-scoring professional football match in history took place in Arbroath in 1885 - hilariously, the second-highest scoring match took place on the same day, 18 miles away. Australia are the proud holders of the record for biggest win in international football, but perhaps the strangest record goes to the Madagascan club AS Adema, who have the largest winning margin in senior football, 149-0 against Stade Olympique L'Emyrne. Unfortunately they can take little credit for it: their opponents scored 149 own goals (via MetaFilter).
Some cracking examples of old-school Scottish goalkeeping on display there, and am I right in counting seven or eight of them coming from crosses into the 6-yard box? Still, what a leveller.
owlhouse: as someone who remembers the days of the Aussie pools, that's funny and slightly alarming.
posted by etagloh at 12:10 AM on May 11, 2010
And 'Well missed a penalty in the final minutes too.
From the looks of it, that was the only save of the match.
And that 12th goal was a wicked shot!
posted by bender at 08:12 AM on May 11, 2010
Great post! Simply a great post! Should go down as one of the BEST posts on this site! Very well organized and i clicked on every link!
Super game...gonna have to find it and download it. And watch it, of course...
And that goal by Jutkiewicz?! GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!! Thats one of the best goals i ever saw! And he acted like it was no big deal...
posted by StarFucker at 01:38 AM on May 12, 2010
And 'Well missed a penalty in the final minutes too.
Back in 1977, my father was President of a club called Artarmon, which played in the leading division of the Sydney Amateurs competition. My brother and I later went on to play for the same club. Anyway, in those days the British Football Pools (i.e. gambling, mainly on picking score draws) used Australian matches during the northern hemisphere summer. Artarmon's Saturday afternoon matches would feature regularly.
Now Artarmon was a pretty good club, but the standard of refereeing in the Sydney Amateurs was not always up to the same level. Other teams were run out of the boot of a car - while we always had nets and corner flags, half way flags and two linesmen were sometimes a luxury. As a kid, I sometimes ran the line when the ref got desperate.
I'm going somewhere with this, OK?
One Saturday Artarmon appeared on the Pools list, at home against Queen's Park. I was running the line. The match was a beauty, and ended up (I am not joking) 7-7. The only problem was that the ref had lost count, and gave it to us 7-6. Luckily our club officials pointed this out and after checking with me as well, the ref became convinced he must have missed an opposition goal. So, 7-7 it stood, and the millions of pounds waged in Britain that weekend were safe.