Fastest Red Card

“Chippenham striker David Pratt was sent off just three seconds into a game against Bashley last month,” says Jimmy Finn. “Does that qualify as the fastest sending off ever?”

Surprisingly it doesn’t, Jimmy. Pratt was indeed reported (by this very website, among others) to have set a new record when he was dismissed for ploughing into Bashley’s Chris Knowles after three seconds of Chippenham’s 2-1 British Gas Business Premier defeat on December 27. We had all forgotten, however, about Cross Farm Park Celtic striker Lee Todd, who was sent off just two seconds into a game back in October 2000.

Where Pratt was sent off for a reckless challenge, Todd got his marching orders for foul language. Todd had his back to referee at the start of Cross Farm’s Sunday league game against Taunton East Reach Wanderers, and was startled by the force with which the whistle was blown for kick-off. “Fuck me, that was loud,” muttered Todd, and the referee promptly showed him the red card.

“I wasn’t swearing at the ref or anyone else,” protested Todd afterwards. “Anyone else would have done the same - he nearly blew my ear off.” Manager Mark Heard was supportive. “Players should be sent off for swearing at the ref or a player,” he added after his team won the game 11-2. “But referees are supposed to use a bit of common sense.”

Previously, we discovered the record for the quickest dismissal at the beginning of a professional match was believed to have been held by Giuseppe Lorenzo of the Italian club Bologna, who was sent off after 10 seconds in 1990 for hitting a Parma player. And then there are the substitutes. Sheffield United’s Keith Gillespie was technically sent off after zero seconds during a Premier League game against Reading in January 2007, but that was after he had come on as a substitute. After replacing Derek Geary early in the second half, Gillespie elbowed Stephen Hunt in the face and duly saw red before the game had even been restarted. Walter Boyd achieved a similar feat whilst at Swansea, earning himself a dismissal before play had resumed when he was brought on as a substitute by Swansea during a game against Darlington back in 2000.

FIREPROOF BOSSES

“Paul Ince was sacked after failing to win for 11 matches,” begins Lars Ellensohn. “What’s the longest winless run without a manager getting the sack?”

The longest winless run we could find belongs to former Dumbarton manager Jim Fallon, who went a spectacular 31 league games without a win between October 1995 and September 1996. Dumbarton actually only managed four draws in that time, as they crashed out of the Scottish first division and got off to an inauspicious start in the second.

As Paul Haynes pointed out to us, Dumbarton’s only league victory during Fallon’s first season in charge came at home to Dundee United on 7 October 1995 (1-0). By that point Fallon had already lost his first five games as manager. Dumbarton, who had actually won both their first two games that season before appointing Fallon, went on to post 26 defeats and two draws in their remaining league games.

Rather than sack him at that point, Dumbarton’s board decided to give him a new contract. “The aim now will be to stabilise the club and make a determined effort to get back up,” said Fallon at the time, but his team opened the following campaign with two more draws and a defeat before the run finally came to an end with a 1-0 win away to Clyde on 7 September 1996.

Dumbarton still had further to slide yet, though, and promptly set off on another winless run, drawing one and losing seven of their next eight games before Fallon finally left the club in November. At which point the team promptly won three of their next four.

NOMINATING NICKNAMES

“The answer about the origins of Sunderland’s Black Cats nickname makes me wonder if there are any other clubs with a similarly official nickname that resulted from some kind of formalised poll,” wonders Mark Goodge.

There certainly are Mark, in fact one of them was confirmed just last year. Fans of Sydney FC in Australia were invited to submit their own suggestions for a new club nickname at the end of 2007, before team officials named the “best” one as winner early in 2008. You can draw your own conclusions about the quality of submissions received from the fact they settled for Sky Blues. “No one has used it since,” insists reader Adoni Patrikios.

Closer to home, Michael Haughey wrote in to tell us Welling United held a similar competition before settling on their nickname “The Wings”.

Email the usual address if you know of any other examples.

KNOWLEDGE ARCHIVE

“Looking at the Premier League table, I realised that right now there are just four points separating Reading in 18th and Middlesbrough in 12th,” piped up Erica Bland last year (2008). “Which got me wondering - which was the closest league of all time, with the smallest gap between first and last place?”

We’re going to have to set some parameters on this one, Erica, as otherwise we’d end up with readers emailing in excitedly about two-team leagues such as that in the Isle of Scilly. For the sake of argument, then, we’re going to arbitrarily limit our scope to leagues featuring at least 12 teams, and at least 22 games.

Which is convenient, really, since such a focus allows us to include both of our two stand-out favourites for closest league ever. First up is Morocco’s 14-team Championnat National de 1ère Division, where Casablanca’s Wydad Athletic Club won the league title with 57 points in 1965-66, while both Club Omnisport de Meknès and Maghreb Athletic Tetouan were relegated in last and second-last respectively on 49 points - a gap of just eight points. While a system which awarded three points per win, two for a draw and one for a loss did tend towards equality, it remains true that Wydad had won just four more games - and drawn the same number - as the relegated clubs. The gap between first and last was just over 15% of the theoretical maximum gap (52) had Wydad won all their games and last place lost all of theirs.

Arguably tighter still, however, was Romania’s Divizia C, Seria a VIII-a in 1983-84. In a 16-team league, with two points awarded for a win and one for a draw, Muresul Deva took first place - and promotion to Divizia B, with 38 points, while Minerul Ghelar and Minerul Aninoasa were relegated in the bottom two spots with 29 and 28 points respectively. The league looks more preposterous still, however, if you simply ignore Muresul Deva for a moment. Second-place UMT Timisoara had just 31 points, meaning they avoided relegation by 13 places, but also by just two points. Most infuriatingly for second-last Minerul Ghelar, eight other teams finished equal with them on 29 points, yet of those sides only they were relegated; sadly that’s what a goal difference of -17 will do for you.

The always glorious rsssf.com has the full tables for both those two leagues right here.