Match Summary

England Team

Ireland Team

England and Ireland played a drawn game on the ground of the Liverpool Club yesterday, each side scoring three goals.

Of late years some rather unkind things have been said of international matches, but yesterday's large crowd should have gone away well pleased. They saw a game in which every man was all out from start to finish, in which there was plenty of good football and not a few flashes of brilliance, and the result of which hung in the balance to the very last kick. On the whole, the selectors of the England side should also be pleased, for it seems as if they had at last found the core at least of a really homogeneous side. Wisdom and necessity will doubtless dictate one or two changes, but the essential understanding is there. England were, indeed, a little unlucky not to win this match...

The Irish left wing broke away with some brilliant inter-passing that completely beat the defence. McInroy managed to get the ball a few yards away, but Gillespie seized upon it, and scored a well-deserved goal with a fine rising shot. Three minutes later Brown equalized with a similar shot, following a free kick for a foul...

For more than half an hour the English attack had done everything but score, and immediately Ireland, whose spasmodic raids had seldom looked dangerous, scored a quite unexpected goal. It was certainly a clever forward pass that gave Davey his chance, and excellently he took it, with a hard, high shot from some 20 yards' distance just as he was tackled by Wadsworth, but it did look as though McInroy, who got a hand to the ball, should have been able to prevent a goal. Ireland's lead at half-time was very soon wiped out by a magnificent shot from Spence that gave Scott no chance, but they soon regained it from an even more brilliant effort by Toner...

When the inevitable goal came at last, it was from the other wing, Brown taking a good centre from Spence and shooting well out of Scott's reach before he could be tackled. - The Times - Thursday 21st October, 1926

IN OTHER NEWS...

It was on 20 October 1926 that the bodies of three members of a family were found at a small country mansion in the Yorkshire Dales. The inquest was held on the following day and determined that Colonel Edmund Wray, who had recovered from a nervous breakdown during the war, had shot his wife and 21-year-old son, and then tried to burn down the house before shooting himself.

Source Notes

Northern Ireland's Footballing Greats
Original Newspaper Reports
TheFA.com
Rothman's Yearbooks
FA Yearbooks 1950-60
Ancestry.com
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CG