Trevor Smith (footballer, Born 1936)
Trevor Smith (13 April 1936 – 9 August 2003) was an English footballer who played as a centre half for Birmingham City, Walsall and the England national team. Life and career Smith was born in Brierley Hill, Staffordshire, and attended Quarry Bank secondary modern school. In 1951 he captained the local schools' representative side, Brierley Hill, Sedgley and District, to their first final of the English Schools' F.A. Trophy, in which they lost to Liverpool Schools 5–3 on aggregate. A feature of the first leg, according to the Brierley Hill local newspaper, was the "solid play of the two centre-halves, Parkes for Liverpool and Smith for the home team", while the match programme from the second leg described him thus: When he left school he signed for Birmingham City as an amateur, and played for the team that won the European Youth Cup (later renamed Blue Stars/FIFA Youth Cup) the following year. He turned professional on reaching his 17th birthday in April 1953, a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Brierley Hill
Brierley Hill is a town and electoral ward in the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley, West Midlands, England, 2.5 miles south of Dudley and 2 miles north of Stourbridge. Part of the Black Country and in a heavily industrialised area, it has a population of 13,935 at the 2011 census. It is best known for glass and steel manufacturing, although industry has declined considerably since the 1970s. One of the largest factories in the area was the Round Oak Steelworks, which closed down and was redeveloped in the 1980s to become the Merry Hill Shopping Centre. Brierley Hill was originally in Staffordshire. Since 2008, Brierley Hill has been designated as the Strategic Town Centre of the Dudley Borough. History The name Brierley Hill derives from the Old English words 'brer', meaning the place where the Briar Rose grew; 'leah', meaning a woodland clearing; and 'hill'. Largely a product of the Industrial Revolution, Brierley Hill has a relatively recent history, with the first written ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Own Goal
An own goal, also called a self goal, is where a player performs actions that result in them or their team scoring a goal on themselves, often resulting in a point for the opposing team, such as when a football player kicks a ball into their own net or goal, awarding the other team a point. In some parts of the world, the term has become a metaphor for ''any'' action that backfires on the person or group undertaking it, sometimes even carrying a sense of "poetic justice". During The Troubles, for instance, it acquired a specific metaphorical meaning in Belfast, referring to an IED (improvised explosive device) that detonated prematurely, killing the person making or handling the bomb with the intent to harm others. A player trying to throw a game might deliberately attempt an own goal. Such players run the risk of being sanctioned or banned from further play. Association football In association football, an own goal occurs when a player causes the ball to go into their own team ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ken Green (footballer, Born 1924)
Kenneth Green (27 April 1924 – 7 June 2001) was an English footballer who played as a full back. He played for Birmingham City from 1943 to 1959, making 443 appearances in all competitions and scoring 3 goals, and played in the 1956 FA Cup final which Birmingham lost to Manchester City 3–1. He earned two England B caps in 1954, and was subsequently named in the full England squad which travelled to Switzerland for the 1954 FIFA World Cup. However, he never made a senior appearance for England. Green died in Sutton Coldfield in 2001 at the age of 77. Honours Birmingham City * Football League Second Division runner-up: 1947–48, 1954–55 * FA Cup The Football Association Challenge Cup, more commonly known as the FA Cup, is an annual knockout football competition in men's domestic English football. First played during the 1871–72 season, it is the oldest national football competi ... finalist: 1955–56 References 1924 births 2001 deaths Footballers ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jeff Hall (footballer)
Jeffrey James Hall (7 September 1929 – 4 April 1959) was an English footballer who played as a right back for Birmingham City and England. It was the death of Hall – a young, fit, international footballer – from polio which helped to kick-start widespread public acceptance in Britain of the need for vaccination. Though the disease was generally feared and the Salk vaccine was available, takeup had been slow. In the weeks following Hall's death, and after his widow, Dawn, spoke on television about her loss, demand for immunisation rocketed. Emergency vaccination clinics had to be set up and supplies of the vaccine flown in from the United States to cope with demand. Biography Hall was born in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, and brought up in Wilsden, West Riding of Yorkshire. He had an older sister, Joan. After leaving school in 1945 he played for various junior clubs in the area before joining his local Football League club, Bradford Park Avenue, then in the Second Di ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gil Merrick
Gilbert Harold Merrick (26 January 1922 – 3 February 2010) was an English footballer and football manager. Considered one of the best goalkeepers in the UK during the mid-1950s, Merrick was one in a long line of great Birmingham City keepers which included the likes of Johnny Schofield and Harry Hibbs. Merrick spent his entire career at Birmingham City, playing more than 700 times between 1939 and 1960. He made 170 appearances during the Second World War and 485 in the Football League following the end of the war. He won 23 caps for the England national team, and played in the 1954 World Cup. After retirement as a player, he managed the club for four years. Birmingham City renamed the Railway Stand at their St Andrew's stadium the Gil Merrick Stand for the start of the 2009–10 season. Domestic career Merrick was born in Sparkhill, Birmingham. He signed professional terms with Birmingham in August 1939, and remained with the team until his retirement as a player in 1960 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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RSSSF
The Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation (RSSSF) is an international organization dedicated to collecting statistics about association football. The foundation aims to build an exhaustive archive of football-related information from around the world. History This enterprise, according to its founders, was created in January 1994 by three regulars of the Rec.Sport.Soccer (RSS) Usenet newsgroup: Lars Aarhus, Kent Hedlundh, and Karel Stokkermans. It was originally known as the "North European Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation", but the geographical reference was dropped as its membership from other regions grew. The RSSSF has members and contributors from all around the world and has spawned seven spin-off projects to more closely follow the leagues of that project's home country. The spin-off projects are dedicated to Albania, Brazil, Denmark, Norway, Poland (90minut.pl), Romania, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Inter-Cities Fairs Cup
The Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, sometimes referred to as the European Fairs Cup, Fairs Cities' Cup, or simply as the Fairs Cup, was a European Association football, football competition played between 1955 and 1971. It is often considered the predecessor to the UEFA Europa League, UEFA Cup (now the UEFA Europa League). The competition was the idea of FIFA vice-president and executive committee member Ernst Thommen, Italian Football Federation president and FIFA executive committee member Ottorino Barassi, and the English The Football Association, Football Association general secretary and president of FIFA from 1961 to 1974, Stanley Rous. As the name suggests, the competition was set up to promote international trade fairs. Friendly games were regularly held between teams from cities holding trade fairs and it was from these games that the competition evolved. The competition was initially only open to teams from cities that hosted trade fairs and where these teams finished in their nati ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Busby Babes
The "Busby Babes" were the group of footballers, recruited and trained by Manchester United F.C. chief scout Joe Armstrong and assistant manager Jimmy Murphy, who progressed from the club's youth team into the first team under the management of the eponymous Matt Busby from the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s. The squad most associated with the name "babes" was that of the 1957–58 season, many of whom died in the Munich air disaster, and who, with an average age of 22, had been touted to dominate European football for the next few years. History The Busby Babes were notable not only for being young and gifted, but for being developed by the club itself, rather than bought from other clubs, which was customary then. The term, coined by ''Manchester Evening News'' journalist Tom Jackson in 1951, usually refers to the players who won the league championship in seasons 1955–56 and 1956–57 with an average age of 21 and 22 respectively. Eight of the players – Roger Byr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Manchester United F
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The two cities and the surrounding towns form one of the United Kingdom's most populous conurbations, the Greater Manchester Built-up Area, which has a population of 2.87 million. The history of Manchester began with the civilian settlement associated with the Roman fort (''castra'') of ''Mamucium'' or ''Mancunium'', established in about AD 79 on a sandstone bluff near the confluence of the rivers Medlock and Irwell. Historically part of Lancashire, areas of Cheshire south of the River Mersey were incorporated into Manchester in the 20th century, including Wythenshawe in 1931. Throughout the Middle Ages Manchester remained a manorial township, but began to expand "at an astonishing rate" around the turn of the 19th century. Manchester's unpla ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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1956 FA Cup Final
The 1956 FA Cup Final was the final match of the 1955–56 staging of English football's primary cup competition, the Football Association Challenge Cup, better known as the FA Cup. The showpiece event was contested between Manchester City and Birmingham City at Wembley Stadium in London on Saturday 5 May 1956. Two-time winners Manchester City were appearing in their sixth final, whereas Birmingham City were seeking to win the competition for the first time, having lost their only previous final in 1931. Each club needed to win five matches to reach the final. Manchester City's victories were close affairs, each settled by the odd goal, and they needed a replay to defeat fifth-round opponents Liverpool. Birmingham City made more comfortable progress: they scored eighteen goals while conceding only two, and won each match at the first attempt despite being drawn to play on their opponents' ground in every round. They became the first team to reach an FA Cup final without play ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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1954–55 Football League
The 1954– 55 season was the 56th completed season of The Football League. Final league tables The tables below are reproduced here in the exact form that they can be found aThe Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundationwebsite and in ''Rothmans Book of Football League Records 1888–89 to 1978–79'',Ian Laschke: ''Rothmans Book of Football League Records 1888–89 to 1978–79''. Macdonald and Jane’s, London & Sydney, 1980. with home and away statistics separated. Beginning with the season 1894–95, clubs finishing level on points were separated according to goal average (goals scored divided by goals conceded), or more properly put, goal ratio. In case one or more teams had the same goal difference, this system favoured those teams who had scored fewer goals. The goal average system was eventually scrapped beginning with the 1976–77 season. From the 1922–23 season, the bottom two teams of both Third Division North and Third Division South were required to apply for re-ele ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Football League First Division
The Football League First Division was a division of the Football League in England from 1888 until 2004. It was the top division in the English football league system from the season 1888–89 until 1991–92, a century in which the First Division's winning club became English men's football champions. The First Division contained between 12 and 24 clubs, playing each other home and away in a double round robin. The competition was based on two points for a win from 1888 until the increase to three points for a win in 1981. After the creation of the Premier League, the name First Division was given to the second-tier division (from 1992). The name ceased to exist after the 2003–04 First Division season. The division was rebranded as the Football League Championship (now EFL Championship). History The Football League was founded in 1888 by Aston Villa director William McGregor. It originally consisted of a single division of 12 clubs ( Accrington, Aston Villa, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |