The team represented what was then the nation of Czechoslovakia. Its opponent was the old Bradford Park Avenue club. And the match was played just weeks after East and West Berlin had been divided by a fence that would soon become a solid wall. No one who took the field that day could possibly have dreamed what fate had in store.
A new ground for Bradford Park Avenue
‘Bradford’ – the supporters’ preferred name – had played rugby at first, before changing codes and entering the Football League in 1908. They were now playing in the Third Division, having been promoted from the Fourth Division the season before.
To celebrate that event, the club’s Horton Park Avenue ground had been re-modelled by the celebrated architect Archibald Leitch. He had worked on Hampden Park in Glasgow, and his portfolio would eventually include Bramall Lane and Hillsborough as well, plus Huddersfield Town’s Leeds Road stadium and, across Bradford, Valley Parade.
Leitch gave the Park Avenue ground a grandstand that could hold 4,000 people, a roof with not one but three gables, and a gallery that looked out onto the cricket ground next door. Facing this was the Low Stand, which certainly lived up to its name, while behind each goal was a terrace, only one of which was covered. And in one of the corners stood the Dolls’ House, where there were offices and changing rooms, and doors on either side so that the building could also be used by the cricketers.
Bradford Park Avenue” by ForwardDefensive is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0
A club on the rise
Not long after it opened, the new ground was given the honour of hosting an international match between England and Ireland. And Bradford Park Avenue seemed to be going from strength to strength. The club reached the quarter-final of the FA Cup in 1913, and the following year, it was promoted to the First Division.
That debut season during the first year of the Great War saw Bradford finish ninth – the side’s highest-ever placing – and achieve five-goal victories over elite English teams Manchester United and Tottenham. Chelsea, Manchester City, Liverpool and Newcastle were also dispatched, and there was even a last-day derby win over Bradford City. But these good times weren’t to last.
Beating the Bantams
The club was relegated in 1921, after 26 defeats, and it spent the next few seasons bouncing back and forth between the bottom three divisions of the Football League.
The 1940s saw the emergence of a young Len Shackleton, who would go on to score more goals for this, his first club, than any other player.
And that decade also saw the ground attendance record broken, with 32,000 people cramming in for a match against Leeds United. A few more squeezed in for a cup match against Blackpool: Stanley Matthews and all.
But the promotion that Bradford achieved in 1961 must have seemed particularly sweet, given that it was achieved at the expense of the club’s city neighbours, who were relegated to the Fourth Division for the first time in their history.
The ground that had been created half-a-century before was largely unchanged by the time Czechoslovakia arrived. The only real difference was the floodlights that now stood at the four corners, shining down from a height of 120 feet. They had been installed for the new season back in the Third Division and the friendly was intended to celebrate that fact.
Shimmering shirts
The game took place on the evening of Tuesday, 3 October 1961, with 17,000 people thronging the stands and terraces of the Horton Park Avenue ground. And the players, as they emerged into the autumn air and took to the field, will have seemed to shimmer under the new floodlights – the visitors in white, their hosts in their change shirts of emerald green.
Seven Scots lined up for Bradford that evening, including combative player-manager Jimmy Scoular, and Wattie Dick, an inside forward who had scored nearly a hundred goals in the land of his birth. Among the Englishmen, meanwhile, were two former youth internationals – half-back Tommy Spratt, who had once been on Manchester United’s books, and winger Ronnie Bird, who had played in the same side as Bobby Moore.
A spirited match
The match was a spirited affair from the start. The visitors scored after only six minutes, and then quickly doubled their lead. Ten minutes later, however, Bradford were back in the game, as eighteen-year-old Ian Gibson received a pass from Wattie Dick and slammed the ball into the net. Gibson already seemed bound for glory. A Scottish schoolboy international, he had made his league debut aged only fifteen.
The Czechs restored their two-goal advantage just after half-time, but a mistake gave Bradford a deserved second goal just before the end. Overall, the hosts created at least as many chances as their guests, and they might easily have come out on top.
The 1961/62 season would end with the Czechs playing Brazil in the World Cup Final. They lost that match to two late goals, but the side they put out included seven players who had taken to the field in Bradford.
A sad end among the rusting metal
For Bradford Park Avenue, that season was one to forget. Games had to be called off because of fog and snow, and the New Year brought a terrible smallpox epidemic that claimed the lives of six people. The city wouldn’t receive a clean bill of health until mid-February, but then high winds blew down three of the four new floodlights.
The club never really recovered. It faced the indignity of having to apply for re-election three times, and in 1970 it was finally ejected from the Football League. It was eventually wound up with debts close to £60,000. However, an amateur club of the same name still exists today.
The Horton Park Avenue ground was sold to satisfy creditors and it soon fell into disrepair. Demolished in 1980, it left behind a mess of tall grass and rusting metal. But archaeologists working there three decades later were still able to find the concrete steps of the covered terrace, together with the perimeter wall and the brick turnstile sheds, four boot studs, and a board with the price of admission still visible in big chalk numbers.
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