Following on from recent footballers v animals v other people......On February 9th 1974 Johan Cruyff was a great footballer but he was also a persuasive husband! When his wife was expecting their third child, he persuaded her to have a caesarean so the child could be born early when his club Barcelona, had a fortnight's break from competitive football. This was long enough leaving him time to prepare for the club's next match, against RIVALS Real Madrid! On 9th February 1974 his only son was born in Amsterdam and was named after the patron saint of Barcelona and Catalonia, Sant Jordi (Saint George in English). Jordi became a Dutch international footballer and played for clubs as prestigious as Manchester United and Barcelona. Against Real Madrid, Johan was man of the match in his first El Clásico and scored a goal in Barcelona's 5-0 win at the Santiago Bernabéu. Not a bad week for him.
Forty years after the end of the conflict the Second World War 1945, there was a postponement of a Football League match in 1985, due to the discovery of an unexploded Second World War bomb, near Sheffield United's Bramall Lane ground. This brought the postponement of their Second Division fixture against Oldham Athletic. After the bomb was safely disposed of the match was played 3 days later. Another bizarre postponement - the Torquay v Portsmouth, Worthington Cup First Round fixture which was due to be played at Plainmoor on Wednesday August 11th 1999. It was the date of a total eclipse of the sun which was visible in the Torquay area, the first in Britain since 1927. Despite the fact that the date and location of the eclipse was probably known about for hundreds of years the local police left it until shortly before the match to request a postponement. They decided that they didn't have the manpower to police both the match and the influx of visitors expected in the area to witness the eclipse. They couldn't put off the eclipse so a postponement of the match it was! The match was eventually played on Tuesday 17th August.
Here are some more animals.......
AND thankfully many serious infectious diseases spread by person to person contact are a thing of the past in this country. But there was a time when football matches were postponed to prevent large crowds gathering and spreading disease. Past examples of this were at Blackburn in 1965/66 due to a polio outbreak and Middlesbrough in 1897/98 because of smallpox. And now we have COVID to interfere with our national game....
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