Two Legs and a Gypsy Curse: The Story of the 1946 FA Cup

A Bold Experiment

With just five minutes left to play at Wembley, the score stood at 0-0. Derby County’s Dally Duncan took a shot, Charlton Athletic’s Bert Turner tried to clear it, and the ball deflected past his own goalkeeper. A minute later, Turner took a free kick at the other end, and it too took a deflection on its way into the net. It was a chaotic end to normal time in a chaotic competition.

With the country still reeling from six years of war, the Football League did not return for the 1945/46 season. Instead, clubs played in regionalised North and South leagues, a hangover from the wartime setup. The FA Cup, however, went ahead. To compensate for the lack of a full league programme and to maximise revenue for clubs getting back on their feet, the Football Association took the radical step of making every tie before the semi-finals a two-legged affair. Until the Third Round, these were played on consecutive Saturdays; from then on, it was Saturday and Wednesday afternoons, as floodlights were still a thing of the future.

The format was an unqualified commercial success. It laid the foundations for the post-war boom in attendances, a period of packed terraces the likes of which English football will never see again. Over 76,500 turned out for a quarter-final between Aston Villa and Derby County. Birmingham City’s semi-final against Charlton at Maine Road drew more than 80,000.

The Burnden Park Disaster

That hunger for football came at a devastating cost. The quarter-final between Bolton Wanderers and Stoke City was always going to attract a huge gate, but the reality overwhelmed the club’s preparations. Burnden Park’s record attendance was 69,912, set more than a decade earlier. On the day of the match, official sources claimed the gates were locked with 65,000 inside, but other estimates suggest the crowd may have swelled to a catastrophic 90,000.

Shortly before kick-off, two crush barriers gave way. The crowd surged forward, and the match began with the scale of the unfolding tragedy not yet apparent on the pitch. Play continued for twelve minutes before the referee stopped the game. After a fifteen-minute delay, it restarted, ending in a 0-0 draw that saw Bolton through 2-0 on aggregate. The result was an afterthought.

Thirty-three people were killed and more than four hundred were injured. The subsequent inquiry forced clubs to implement stricter safety measures, reduce stadium capacities and properly govern the number of people entering their grounds.

Lifting the Curse

Bolton were eliminated by Charlton in the semi-finals. Their opponents in the final were Derby County, a club with a peculiar backstory. It was said that the club was cursed by gypsies after the Baseball Ground was built on their former camp at the end of the nineteenth century, with a promise that they would never win the FA Cup. Three final defeats in 1898, 1899 and 1903 gave the story its power. In the run-up to the 1946 final, some Derby players reportedly visited the gypsies to ask for the curse to be lifted.

After the bizarre own goal and equaliser, Derby’s Jackie Stamps had a goalbound shot saved when the ball itself burst. This was a common problem with the poor quality leather available after the war. The same thing had happened in a league match between the two clubs a week earlier.

Some claimed the burst ball was the moment the curse was broken. In extra-time, Derby pulled away, with two goals from Stamps and another from Peter Doherty securing a 4-1 victory. Derby had won the FA Cup for the first and only time in their history.

The FA abandoned the two-legged experiment the following season. It had served its purpose in generating income, but with the Football League back, the congested format was no longer necessary. Many ties had been settled in the first leg anyway, rendering the second a formality. The 1946 FA Cup was a sign that normality was returning, but it was a return forged in both triumph and tragedy.