THE English have made something of a habit of inventing new sports, enjoying a short period of dominance, and then watching helplessly as other nations proceed to get much better at it than them. Today in 1949 was the day that very scenario happened with football.

The ‘facts’ of the case are that it was on this day that England first lost a home game to a visiting team from outside the UK. Now this particular story is slightly complicated as it was the Republic of Ireland that beat England 2-0 at Goodison Park that day.

England had of course already been beaten by Ireland, notably in the Home Championship in 1914, when a united Ireland were champions, but the 1949 loss came after Ireland had been divided, and the Republic was now classed as a team from outside the UK.



So something of a political technicality admittedly, but we still thought you might be interested. If you are, you may also be interested to know that the England team were captained that day by Wolves legend Billy Wright, and also featured players from Derby County, Stoke City and Portsmouth. How times have changed.

A year later England took part in their very first world cup, where they would suffer another famous defeat by a young upstart nation, losing 1-0 to a semi-professional USA team, forcing the English to accept they were no longer top banana in world football.

In the absence of any footage of the match at Goodison in 1949, have a look at this oft-forgotten match between Greece and Germany:

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