CUP, BUS, BAND AND BALL

The Town was relatively quiet this morning as I went into Barnsley. I would have thought the town cleaners would have been gathering up the ticker tape welcome debris and moving the crowd barriers as the open top bus did its tour of the town yesterday, but no! Nothing to write home about. I expect I shall erad the Barnsley Chrinical and find that there was a major celebration at Oakwell and all the top brass were there.

Barnsley were the only club to have won the FA Cup (1912) when not in thre top flight since the Football League began in 1888. Barnsley joined the FL in 1898-9 season in the Second Division. The club eventually made it to the top flight in 1997!

After drawing the first game with WBA 0-0 at the Crystal Palace on 20th April (54,000+ watched this), a replay on 24th April at Sheffield United's Bramall Lane, attracting another 38,000+, they became the only club to have won the cup in Yorkshire. The Tykes had to play 12 ties to win the final, something of a major feat. The team conceded only 3 goals in those ties and scored 11. Four of their matches were against Cup holders Bradford City.

The semi-final against Swindon Town at Stamford Bridge broke the receipts record for a cup tie-it was £2985 from over 48,000 people.

Nicknames emerged for the "Battling Barnsley" players who were deemed to be "Bright Nuts from Barnsley's hard seam....guaranteed to give you a hot time and last well"; a reference to the high quality coal coming from the South Yorkshire coalfield.

The final went to a replay for the fourth year running and Harry Tufnell, the inside right scored with two minutes left in extra time. The WBA captain Jesse Pennington might have brought Tufnell down as the last defender, but didn't and that was the way the game was played in those days.

Back in town, the Territorial Army band played in front of the players' bus and hundreds of people thronged the streets. When the bus reached the club's headquarters at the Clarence Hotel, the Mayor Cotterill was waiting on the balcony to greet the team. As the players tried to get to the hotel there was a massive crush and the cup fell to the ground under a horse, fortunately there was no damage done.

The club presented the Reverend Preedy, who founded the club, with the match ball which he  kept for the rest of his life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e92hZ4mQZXU

The next day, the FA Cup winners played Chelsea at Oakwell (7,000 crowd) in a league game and unsurprisingly lost 0-2. The next Monday was their final league game of the season and Barnsley beat Glossop 1-0 with 2,000 watching.