hotspur towers 26

During this trip to the archive down at Hotspur Towers we will look back at those Spurs players who have scored five (or more) in one game for the club. This chap (left) hit nine.

Then there is a little pot-pourri of some of the miscellaneous scoring feats well worth recalling. Tottenham have seen a player score five in a competitive game on only four occasions. All of them at the Lane.

Must of us will remember Jermain Defoe being the last to do so at home to Wigan (2009).

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He wasn’t the first player to do it in Premier League history, but he was the first to score them all in one half. That’s the only hat trick we have registered against Wigan. Before him was Les Allen in that record breaking 13-2 win over Crewe in 1960. We looked at Les’s only hat trick for the club previously (1).  Alfie Stokes got his ‘fiver’ against Birmingham City in 1957 as we won the Division 1 game 7-1. That was one of only two hat tricks he scored for us. The first man to achieve the feat of five in a game was Ted Harper and we need to go back to 1930 and another 7-1 win. This time V Reading in Division 2. Ted and Jermain both scored six hat tricks in total for the club (5). We explored four goal hauls and hat tricks before (2,3).

One goal feat that is certainly worth recalling is Jack Gibbons who scored four hat tricks in four weeks. They all came against the same team, Clapton Orient in the 1939 / 40 season. Jack enjoyed his Christmas that year as on Dec 21st  he started with a hat trick in a 9-0 win in the Wartime League game at the Lane. Then on the 27th in the return, which was also played at the Lane, he did it again as we won 7-0. Into the new year and we started the Wartime Cup competition V Clapton. The competition was a two legged affair. On the 4th.   He scored all the goals as we win 3-0. The following week the away game and another hat trick as we win 9-1. In the middle of that series of games we did also play Millwall at home in the League on Christmas Day. Jack only scored once as we draw 3-3.

Sid McCellan (top image) once hit nine in one game. It was on the clubs 1952 trip to North America. Our first time over there. In our second game Sid managed it V Saskatchewan as we won 18-1. That was the tour that we beat United 7-1 and 8-0,  Duquemin with a four in the first game. You may well remember this and the newsreel footage from a previous article (4)

Alex Glenn, The first Euro hat trick

Talking of America, Bobby Smith enjoyed the1957 tour. In the first game he scored 3 V Glasgow Celtic, then 4 in the second game and 5 in the third. Bobby then added another eight in his five other games.
The following season Bobby scored our 1000th home goal in the League.

Beating Arsenal 12-2 must be worth a mention, even if it was the ‘A’ teams. It came in 1927 and our goalkeeper Joe Nichols scored for us, from a penalty. So what can be better than that ?

 Boxing Day 1930 and the A teams met at the Lane and it ended with Spurs winning 15-1 !
G.R. Philips scoring eight times.

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Remembering the records for many of the very early games are lost in time, the first hat trick I could find was from Jack Jull in a 3-0 win over Albion in 1894. The first four goal return came two years later from Billy Randall when we played Rutland. One game of note came that same year as we beat the 1st. Scot's Guards 8-0. Logan and Lanham both having four goals a piece. It was in 1883 that the surviving records show Bobby Buckle scoring the first recorded goal for the club. Three days after his 15th birthday.

Another large personal haul arrived in 1944. It was a guest player and Manchester United’s Jack Rowley popped in seven as we beat Luton 8-1.

Our first hat trick in Europe had come in our first ever game over there. Alex Glen (pictured) scoring it as we beat Vienna 6-0. Another game worth remembering was against Lausanne in Switzerland during our 1925 tour. This is because they are widely believed to be the oldest club on mainland Europe. We won 6- 1 with hat tricks for Handley and Dimmock. On a purely personal note I did not know this at the time but some forty years later I watched my first game on the continent at their lovely little ground. It was of course Jimmy Dimmock who scored a very important goal at Stamford Bridge where we go this week, it was the only one in the 1921 Cup Final.

The next trip to the Towers is a two parter looking at one of the biggest names in our history. It starts next Monday and concludes on the Tuesday.

Notes - 1 - Platform 13,
2 - Goal fest 14,
3- Goal fest 18,
4 - Hotspur Towers 1
5- A hat trick is three or more, some sources don’t register more than three in their figs.

COYS
KPH
t-keith16024542
f-Peter Shearman  (old non de plume).