ON THIS DAY

Most clubs have celebrity supporters - the bigger the club the more celebrities seem to support them! Back in 2008 Hollywood legend Tom Hanks announced that he was an Aston Villa fan when attending the premiere in London of his film Charlie Wilson's War. It wasn't the clubs' history or their style of play which appealed to him but he liked their 'old world name'. He said that 'Aston Villa sounds like a lovely little place... it sounds like a spa.' Anyway to be fair to him he saved up hard for a plane fare and a ticket and on Saturday 18th February 2023 the curtain was raised for his first visit to Villa Park for a match, Arsenal being the visitors in the Premier League. As if scripted Villa took the lead in five minutes through Ollie Watkins and twice led before two Arsenal stoppage time goals finally gave the Londoners a 4-2 win which took them to the top of the table.

A Guinness world record was set at the Rochdale v Charlton Athletic League 1 fixture - Derby fan Ed Wood reclaimed the record for attending matches at all the League grounds in England in the shortest time. He had started his quest at the League 1 match between Bristol Rovers and Oxford United on August 14th 2016 and 189 days later at Spotland had visited the 93 League grounds – that’s the 92 Premier and Football League grounds plus the Shielfied Park home of Berwick Rangers, the Scottish League side who had their home in England. The original record of 264 days was set by Mike Jones and Bob Wilson in the 1968-69 season (no Sunday matches in those days), Ed Wood reduced that to 243 days in 1991/92 before Ken Ferris lowered it to 237 days in the 1994/95 season. To reclaim that record Ed had taken a six-month unpaid holiday from Lloyds Bank and he raised money for Prostate Cancer UK during his travels. The new record is virtually a match every two days on average and on four occasions Ed attending two matches in a day - can the record be beaten?

England visited Madrid and beat Spain 4-2. Gary Lineker scored all four England goals and manager Bobby Robson - who was celebrating his 54th birthday - gave Tony Adams his international debut. Those were the days!

Dixie Dean's two goals in the 5-2 Second Division victory over Barnsley at Goodison meant that he had scored in 12 consecutive Football League matches. The run had started on December 6th and in those 12 matches Dean had scored 23 times to help Everton to some amazing victories which included a 9-1 home win over Plymouth and a 7-0 victory at Charlton. Dixie Dean scored 39 of Everton's club record 121 League goals that season (plus another 9 in the FA Cup) which saw them finish as champions in their first season in Division 2. Three seasons earlier he had set a goalscoring record that stands to this day when scoring 60 League goals in a season.