ON THIS DAY

North of the border the footballing news of the day was the sacking of Scotland manager George Burley. Appointed to the job in January 2008 George Burley, best known as a player and manager with Ipswich Town, had overseen just 3 Scotland wins in his 14 matches in charge of his country. That poor run covered all of Scotland's 8 qualifying matches for the World Cup finals of 2010 when they finished a full 14 points behind the only qualifiers from their group, the Netherlands. But the final straw wasn't the World Cup elimination but a poor Scotland performance in a 3-0 defeat to Wales in Cardiff two days earlier. The following month saw the SFA announce his replacement, Craig Levein. 17 th November

England recorded a memorable 7-0 victory over Northern Ireland in a Home International Championship match at Old Trafford. Tottenham's Willie Hall stole the show scoring 5 goals - equalling what is still the record for England - including a hat-trick in under 4 minutes which is also an England record. The other goals came from Tommy Lawton and Stanley Matthews while Joe Mercer made his England debut. Those were the days! Willie Hall played 10 times for England and made 205 League appearances for Spurs – scoring 27 times - before the Second World War effectively ended his playing career. Tragically after the war he suffered the part amputation of both his legs. He was a very popular personality which was highlighted when Eamonn Andrews highlighted his life story in TVs ‘This Is Your Life’ in February 1959.