More of the “Beautiful Game”
The following year saw the first-ever Premier League match played on Christmas Day between Aston Villa and Preston North End. It was a momentous occasion, drawing some 9,000 spectators. It was also completely civil; more than can be said for future Christmas Day fixtures. There was little festive cheer in the air, for example, in the match between Blackburn Rovers and Darwen at Ewood Park on Christmas Day 1890. The teams’ reluctance to field their best for the match resulted in a full-scale riot that saw crowds burst onto the pitch, dig up the turf and smash up the goalposts.
Even the First World War wasn’t enough to kill this tradition. On Christmas Day, 1914, sporadic groups of British and German soldiers met in no man’s land, at various points up and down the Western Front, to fraternize, exchange gifts and kick a makeshift football around. Football fever has continued well in our time, though technological advances have changed its nature considerably. Most notably, the invention of the TV and its widespread dissemination into houses up and down the country from the mid-1950s onwards made it a much more domestic event.