January 13th 1923 was the day that Worksop Town played at First Division, Tottenham Hotspur's ground. Members of the club will have remembered their last visit to London for an FA Cup First Round tie, because almost exactly 15 years earlier (11th January 1908) they had played Chelsea at Stamford Bridge…and lost 9-0.
This FA Cup tie though was different. The Midland League champions put on a great display against Spurs at White Hart Lane, with many home fans in the 23,928 crowd cheering on the non-leaguers with Worksop recording a memorable 0-0 draw. Worksop didn’t consider their Central Avenue ground as being suitable for the replay and Spurs immediately accepted a request to stage the replay at White Hart Lane.
Worksop stayed over in London and the clubs re-assembled in north London two days later on the Monday afternoon. This time the 23,122 crowd saw a very different match. Spurs were 6-0 up at half time and finished 9-0 winners. Such is life! Scorers were, Lindsay (4), Handley (3), Seed and Dimmock. The non-league side faced the hard facts of football life and in the second half conceded a further three goals scored by Lindsay, Handley and Dimmock.
A number of years ago an article was written in the Tottenham programme about the FA Cup tie with Worksop Town and it described how Tottenham felt about that result at the time.
“The Worksop match remained an embarrassment to Spurs for a long time but the Midland Leaguers had no complaints. They took home about £1,000 – big money in those days.”
Worksop made the most of their London weekend and on the Monday afternoon the same eleven players ran out to face Spurs a second time. Spurs’Alternative only change was Bob Brown for Jock Pearson at left-back.
Spurs knew they could not afford to miss their second chance and a more determined team played a more open type of game from the start. It was what the crowd expected from a Spurs' team, and after fifteen minutes Tich Handley broke the deadlock with the first goal.
Two minutes later Alec Lindsay dribbled through to net the second and Jimmy Seed made it three. Worksop were by now facing the hard facts of football life and before half-time Lindsay, twice, and Handley had added further goals. Five of those goals had been scored in the space of eight minutes and Brown had saved a penalty from Fanny Walden.
The cheering and even the laughter was now over and the second half was a formality. Spurs added three more goals from Handley, Dimmock and Lindsay to bring the tally to 9.
The gate figure for the first match was 23,928, paying £1,445 and the replay figures were 23,122, paying £1,420.
In the next two rounds Spurs beat Manchester United (home) 4 – 0 and Cardiff City (away) 3 – 2 but were knocked out by Derby County at White Hart Lane in the quarter finals.
The Worksop match remained an embarrassment to Spurs for a long time but the Midland Leaguers had no complaints. They took home about a £1,000 – big money in those days – and were brought down to earth the following Saturday, when they lost 1-2 away to Denby United in a league match.
Tottenham went on to beat Manchester Utd 4-0 at home, then Cardiff away 2-3, losing to Derby in the quarter-final 0-1. Derby then were walloped by West Ham 5-2 in the Semi-final, who went on to meet Bolton Wanderers, at the first ever Wembley Cup Final on April 28th, losing 0-2.
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