Match Summary

England Team

Norway Team

England beat Norway at Newcastle-on-Tyne yesterday by four goals to none, and once that plain statement of fact has been made there is very little to add to it. As a contest it simply did not exist--once England had scored her first goal after 13 minutes' play her victory was assured--and as a football match it was handicapped by the fact that Norway were simply not good enough to bring the best out of their opponents. They tried hard and some of the movements they brought off would serve, were they to be reproduced in a slow-motion film, as admirable examples of football skill but what is effective on the screen may be disastrous on the field and the basic weakness of the Norwegian play was that it was in slow motion. Their players frequently found each other with the ball, but as there was always an Englishman fast and resolute enough to take it away again this virtuosity was of little use.

Speed is not everything in football ; indeed, it is very far from it, but absence of speed in movement, thought, and tackling is disastrous, and the Norwegians were definitely slow...

...the game was only 13 minutes old when England took the lead. Matthews beat his man and put across a perfect centre for Smith to head the ball past Johansen. Seven minutes later Dix, who had plenty of time to spare and as much room as he needed, got in a shot which seemed to touch a defender on its way to the back of the net, and the only question that remained was the margin by which England would win.

England scored another two goals before half-time. Lawton scored the first after a shot of his had been saved at the expense of a corner, and he was morally responsible for the second when he hit the cross-bar and Smith put the ball through...

England from start to finish were the faster and stronger side, and it was remarkable that the score was not larger. - The Times - Thursday 10th November, 1938

IN OTHER NEWS...

It was on 9 November 1938 that the death of the 29-year-old German diplomat, Ernst vom Rath in Paris triggered the Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) throughout Germany. Vom Rath was shot several times by a 17-year-old Jew, Herschel Grynszpan at the German Embassy. When news of his death reached Berlin, organised violence broke out against Jewish businesses and synagogues, and 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and taken to concentration camps. It was the beginning of the Holocaust and alerted the world as to just how far the Nazis were prepared to go in their persecution of the Jewish people.

Source Notes

TheFA.com
Fotball.no
Original newspaper reports
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CG