Читать книгу Football Extreme - Rob Crossan - Страница 14
ОглавлениеWhy scoring a hat-trick really isn’t anything much to shout about if you’re a Luton Town fan
One of football’s most-repeated maxims is that young players need time to settle into the first team. They need a good few games to adapt to the faster pace, to lose their rawness and to mature slowly into a vital component of the first XI. Well, clearly nobody told the striker fielded by Luton Town on Easter Monday at their home Kenilworth Road in 1936.
DID YOU KNOW?
The record for the most Football League career goals belongs to Arthur Rowley. From 1946 to 1965 he scored 434 League goals in 619 matches for West Bromwich Albion, Fulham, Leicester City and Shrewsbury Town.
A fringe player in the Luton set up, Joe Payne, a wing half and former coal miner, had spent much of the previous few seasons loaned out at Biggleswade Town. He then came to manager Ned Liddell’s attention as a player who could fill in during an injury crisis so, to the surprise of many supporters, he was named in the starting line up to play as centre forward for a match against Bristol Rovers. He’d only made three previous appearances in the first team and wasn’t even named in the match programme that day, coming in only as a late replacement for the injured Billy Boyd.
The 22-year-old delighted Liddell and supporters alike by netting the first goal. Roberts then made it two. Surely nobody could ask for more from Payne? He’d scored on his debut and it was only natural that he would begin to tire in the second half. But then all hell broke loose.
Starting just before half-time and ending five minutes before the end of the match, Joe scored TEN goals in 63 minutes. Seven of the goals were scored with his feet and three with his head in a performance that has never been repeated to this day. A team-mate with the surname of Martin, who clearly must have thought this was all just a bit silly, scored in the last minute to even out the bragging rights a tad. But there was no doubt that it was Payne’s day as the match ended with a final scoreline of 12-0.
Unsurprisingly, interest from other clubs in the man who had made this most jaw-dropping of debuts came thick and fast and it wasn’t long before Payne was capped by England (he scored twice against Finland) whilst keeping up his penchant for goalscoring at Luton, netting an awesome 55 goals in 39 games to earn promotion for Luton the following season.
A big-money move to Chelsea followed. The timing, however, was appalling. The Second World War broke out, Payne broke his ankle twice, and despite a brief spell at West Ham after the war, his career faded. Payne died in 1974 but he’s never been forgotten at Kenilworth Road, with one of the executive suites named in honour of him to this day.
Joe Payne may have been destined to never be able to live up to that incredible goalscoring performance, but let’s put this into context. ‘Striker’ Brett Angell scored one goal in 19 appearances for Everton a few years back and Jason Lee scored fifteen in 94 appearances for Nottingham Forest. That’s only five more than Payne managed in an hour. Shame on you both.
