September 11 – FA Cup Stolen
ANYONE who watched the 2001 FA Cup final will know that Michael Owen and Liverpool robbed Arsenal of victory in the competition that year, but even the Scousers went to the trouble of playing the match to get their hands on the trophy.
It seems that not everyone can be bothered with the whole rigmarole of actually winning the cup because it was on this day in 1895 that the FA Cup trophy itself was half-inched.
Aston Villa had won it that season, having beaten local rivals West Bromwich Albion 1-0 in the final.
Villa were quite rightly proud of this achievement and decided to show off their spoils by displaying the cup, known as the Little Tin Idol, at a local football equipment shop on Newtown Row owned by William Shillcock.
Old Shillcock must have been as proud as punch when he locked up the shop that night and went home to Mrs Shillcock, happy in the knowledge that he had the most coveted cup in football in his charge.
Shillcock’s pride was sadly short lived, as when he arrived to open up the next morning, he discovered his shop had been burgled with the thief or thieves not only making off with some cash but also, shock horror, the Little Tin Idol itself.
Despite a £10 reward on offer to anyone with any information about the cup’s disappearance, it was never recovered and the FA were forced to fine Villa £25 to pay for a new trophy.
That is not quite the end of the story though. Some 63 years later in 1958 an 83-year-old man named Harry Burge told a reporter from a Sunday newspaper that it was he who had stolen the cup all those years ago. Harry, a local petty criminal who was, in 1958 living in a homeless hostel in Birmingham, claimed that he melted the cup down to make counterfeit half-crown coins.
Being so long after the event this was of course impossible to prove, so we will never know if Harry was indeed the culprit or if the cup still remains intact somewhere, perhaps adorning the mantel piece of one of his contemporaries in an unremarkable Birmingham terraced house.
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renrut on March 21st, 2012
I have completely, totally, utterly no interest whatsoever in football and the theft of the cup of no consequence to be but the idea that it still exists is intrigueing. The idea that a petty criminal had access to such sophisticated resources to make coins takes some believing so we plump for it being extant and reappearing one day.