In April 1925 a panel of assorted footballing suits and bigwigs gathered to debate a possible method of arresting the decline in the number of goals being scored and decreasing the amount of irritating stoppages being endured. The tweak they agreed on that day immediately engendered a blossoming of high-speed attacking surely beyond the wildest imaginings of those gathered at the meeting, a flourishing of forward play that culminated six years later in a still-unbeaten 3.7 goals being scored in the average league game and Aston Villa alone plundering 128, another record. For all their attacking brio Villa still came second – Arsenal, the champions, scored 127.
So although Billy Pease, Billy Birrell, Owen Williams and Jacky Carr fed him countless chances during the 1926-27 season, George Camsell’s goals were also created in that committee room, where the council of the Football Association debated two proposed changes to the offside law and, in a move that will astonish long-term followers of football administrator voting, very much picked the right option.
One proposal, that lines should be drawn 40 yards from each goal beyond which no player could be offside, was suggested by the Scottish FA and rejected. A second, which involved reducing from three to two the number of defenders who needed to be stationed between an attacking player and the goal in order for them not to be offside, was proposed by the spiffingly named George Wagstaffe Simmons, who had managed the British team who took football gold at the 1912 Olympics and represented Hertfordshire on the Council, and was agreed. That June the International Board – a largely British body composed of three representatives of each of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales plus a single token foreigner, from France – ratified the decision. And the game, at a stroke, was transformed.
The problem was that teams had discovered a flaw in the previous law and created something widely known as “the one-back dodge”, whereby one of the half-backs would run forward, leaving every opposing attacker offside and one defender still in reserve in case the referee mistakenly waved play on. “The spectators found that the one-back business was depriving them of the sport they had paid to see – and depriving them by a trick, not by skill,” Charles Clegg, the FA president, said. “This has been remedied and the game, as a whole, is reaping the benefit.”
In the 1924-25 season, the last under the old law, the average First Division match contained 2.58 goals (and across the Football League it was 2.52), which everyone agreed was not enough. The change made an immediate difference: between September 1924 and September 1925 the average number of goals in the First Division rose from 2.59 a game to 3.85, in the Second Division from 2.51 to 3.43, in the Third Division South from 2.17 to 3.51 and in the Third Division North from 2.51 to 3.76. In September 1924 there had been 54 goalless draws across the Football League; in September 1925 there were 11. And not only were there more goals, there were fewer stoppages.
It proved a particularly busy time for football statisticians, so rapidly were goalscoring records being rewritten. The mark for the most league goals scored by a player in a season was set first by Joe Smith of Bolton, with 38 in 1920-21, then by David Brown of Darlington with 39 in 1924-25, then Jimmy Cookson of Chesterfield with 44 in 1925-26, by Camsell with 59 the following year, and by Everton’s Dixie Dean with 60 the year after that. In 90 seasons since Dean set his mark nobody has got within five goals of it, and it is nearly 60 years since anyone – Peterborough’s Terry Bly, with 52 in the Fourth Division in 1960-61 – got within 10.
“The new offside rule has, of course, made scoring a good deal easier than formerly but Camsell’s feat is a remarkable one,” wrote the Times in February 1927, after Camsell had smashed Cookson’s record with three months to spare. “It is a common belief that something more than skill is required today, that strong physical power must be added to craft. But while football is a game for the strong man, skill still has its reward, as has been seen in the case of Middlesbrough. Not only has Camsell created a new ‘record’ but the team as a whole promise to obtain more goals this season than have ever before been gained. Their football has always been a delight, and in these days when force threatens to take the place of craft it is good that they should have been so handsomely rewarded.”
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Middlesbrough’s season was the way it started: while they ended up winning the Second Division at a canter they lost their first three matches and drew the fourth, scoring only one goal in those four games combined, and in mid-September sat miserably at the foot of the table. Then their centre-forward, Jimmy McClelland, was injured, and a young and largely unheralded reserve with only three first-team goals to his name was called up to replace him.
Camsell did not score in his first game but he did score in his next – and the one after that, and the one after that, and the one after that. From his first appearance of the season on 18 September to the day he broke the scoring record in late February his scoring tally in league games was: 0 2 1 1 3 0 1 1 1 4 1 4 1 2 4 5 2 3 0 1 2 3 1 2 2.
The new offside law opened up the game for fleet-footed forwards and although Camsell was certainly one of those he was a great deal more besides. Middlesbrough had bought him from Durham City in October 1925, his form having been so good that, according to the Lancashire Evening Post: “A crowd of football officials almost wore out the doorstep at Durham’s ground.” The Derby Daily Telegraph, whose coverage of the entire Second Division was excellent, wrote the following month: “Borough are quite satisfied that they have picked up a player who will develop into something out of the ordinary, but recognise that he is young yet.” His development did not take long.
Within a few years Arsenal’s Herbert Chapman had converted Herbie Roberts, a reserve half-back, into the first centre-half to deal with these onrushing strikers, developing his WM formation. The tactic was widely adopted, after which many of these prolific pacemen were discovered suddenly to be a bit useless. Not so Camsell, who continued playing, and scoring, for another decade. He exceeded 30 goals in his first, second, third, fourth, fifth and 10th seasons in the first team, and played until he was 40. He continued to wear Boro’s colours during the second world war; a few weeks before his 38th birthday in 1940 he played in a game against Grimsby memorable because of “a freak goal which astounded all who witnessed it”, scored by a Grimsby player called Reeve, who fell to the ground, “discovered that the ball was wedged between his ankles” and then, as opponents vainly hacked at his legs in an attempt to dislodge it, simply crawled over the line.
By then Camsell had scored 345 times and had been Boro’s top scorer in 10 successive seasons. For England he scored at least once every time he played, getting 18 goals in only nine appearances. “His fans, which meant virtually the whole of the town dragged down by the depression, reckoned this was another clear case of London prejudice,” noted the Times in their obituary. After his playing career ended he stayed with the club as a coach, then as chief scout, and then as assistant secretary. When he finally retired in 1960, three years before his death, he had been at Boro for 35 years. By way of thanks for his extended service, the club gave him a television.
So of all these goals, which one to pick? His golden season contained a particularly gilded run between 16 October and New Year’s Day, when he scored in 12 successive league games and individually averaged 2.4 goals per match. And in this gilded run there was a particularly awe-inspiring festive hot streak, when he scored four in a 7-1 win over Swansea and then all five in a 5-3 victory at Manchester City on Christmas Day. Swansea were a mediocre side but the Citizens were no pushovers – they were to come third that season, denied second place and promotion because their goal average was inferior to Portsmouth’s by the wafer-thin margin of 0.005. Had City scored just one more goal that season, or conceded one fewer, they would have gone up (they got over the disappointment by winning the title the following season). And although the Guardian reported that his performance was as “the opportunist pure and simple”, of the five he scored on Christmas Day one in particular stood out.
Those Christmas fixtures illustrate just how much goalscoring was happening at the time because three people scored five that day: Camsell, Wolverhampton Wanderers’ Tom Phillipson and Leicester City’s brilliant Arthur Chandler, who had also scored five against Aston Villa in November. Across the divisions there were 183 goals in 42 games, at 4.36 each. For the second time in a week City opened the scoring in the first minute but Boro led 2-1 at half-time. City equalised to make it 2-2 and then 3-3 before Boro pulled away.
“Camsell is a very dangerous young man in front of goal, but he is something more than that,” wrote Athletic News. “He is a centre-forward in the real sense of the term – a footballer with craft in his feet, a fine eye for position, and rare discrimination in his passing. Camsell does not depend solely upon the dash through for his success, nor is he prone to banging the ball about or driving for goal from any position. He works for his points, and he triumphs by his judgments in placing himself. That was one of the secrets of his success in this match. He was always in the right place at the right time.
“There was nothing particularly thrilling about any of his goals except the last. The first I thought was decidedly offside, but there was no doubt about any of the rest and the one with which he completed his solo was a gem of the purest ray serene – the result of a glorious run nearly half the length of the field, in which he tricked Cookson by consummate footwork, and then a left-foot shot that would have beaten any goalkeeper. It was really the only goal he scored with a shot, for three were little more than taps from close quarters, and the fourth was headed through.”
A couple of months later Camsell revealed the secrets of his success, which he said had as a foundation the “free and confident use of both feet”. “The discovery we have made at Middlesbrough is this: the new offside law gives forwards a greater chance of scoring goals. Which is the right way to seize it? Our way is to keep the ball to toe, to play penetrative football down the centre of the field, and to vary the procedure by a flash to the wings. Wherever possible the outside forwards go ahead, draw in towards goal, and carry on till they have drawn the defender and can give me a backward ground pass. That is goalscoring made easy. The centre from the wing, in comparison, is a haphazard method. It may reach one of your men or it may not.
“My goal secrets? Get off the mark quickly, go all out for goal when the chance comes, and do not be discouraged by shots that go wide. Keep on trying. Have faith in yourself, and never be afraid of ‘having a go’ for goal.”
That was not a problem from which this player often suffered. Normally, when Camsell had a go for goal, it wasn’t him who was afraid. And in this particular game Manchester City were positively terrified. Still, they regrouped, and when they travelled to Ayresome Park for the return fixture two days later they let in only two, although they still lost 2-1. Camsell scored both of those as well.