Attention: Please take a moment to consider our terms and conditions before posting.

Sam Bartram in the fog in colour...

2»

Comments

  • Dazzler21 said:

    Tramp said:

    I thought the Bartram foggy moment was pre-war and at Stamford Bridge.

    Tramp said:

    I thought the Bartram foggy moment was pre-war and at Stamford Bridge.

    No. Happened in the 40s. Was it Christmas Day, or Boxing Day.? Sorry can't remember the exact year. A copper wondered why he was still on the pitch, as the game had been abandoned for some time.
    Nope happened in the 37.


    On Christmas Day 1937, Bartram was in the papers once more after a bizarre incident in a match against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. With the score at 1-1, the game had to be called off on 61 minutes due to thick fog. Unfortunately for Bartram, he was the last to be made aware. "Soon after the kick-off, [fog] began to thicken rapidly at the far end, travelling past Vic Woodley in the Chelsea goal and rolling steadily towards me," he wrote in his autobiography. "The referee stopped the game, and then, as visibility became clearer, restarted it. We were on top at this time, and I saw fewer and fewer figures as we attacked steadily.

    "I paced up and down my goal-line, happy in the knowledge that Chelsea were being pinned in their own half. 'The boys must be giving the Pensioners the hammer,' I thought smugly, as I stamped my feet for warmth. Quite obviously, however, we were not getting the ball into the net. For no players were coming back to line up, as they would have done following a goal. Time passed, and I made several advances towards the edge of the penalty area, peering through the murk, which was getting thicker every minute. Still I could see nothing. The Chelsea defence was clearly being run off its feet.

    "After a long time a figure loomed out of the curtain of fog in front of me. It was a policeman, and he gaped at me incredulously. 'What on earth are you doing here?' he gasped. 'The game was stopped a quarter of an hour ago. The field's completely empty'. And when I groped my way to the dressing-room, the rest of the Charlton team, already out of the bath and in their civvies, were convulsed with laughter."

    A great story and a great man but do we believe it? No sounds of any players shouting, no whistles from the ref, and yet.... I know it doesn't really matter, but just wondered.
    There wouldn't have been much crowd noise. as they couldn't see anything, but what noise there was as they dispersed might have drowned out any whistles or players shouting?
    Sam wrote about this in his autobiography at length, and I for one believe him. This was a different era when your word meant an awful lot.
    And I remember those peasoupers. Very disorientating!



  • A great story and a great man but do we believe it? No sounds of any players shouting, no whistles from the ref, and yet.... I know it doesn't really matter, but just wondered.

    There wouldn't have been much crowd noise. as they couldn't see anything, but what noise there was as they dispersed might have drowned out any whistles or players shouting?
    Sam wrote about this in his autobiography at length, and I for one believe him. This was a different era when your word meant an awful lot.
    And I remember those peasoupers. Very disorientating!


    Yeah I know all that, but 20 minutes! Surely he must have realised something was wrong.



  • A great story and a great man but do we believe it? No sounds of any players shouting, no whistles from the ref, and yet.... I know it doesn't really matter, but just wondered.

    There wouldn't have been much crowd noise. as they couldn't see anything, but what noise there was as they dispersed might have drowned out any whistles or players shouting?
    Sam wrote about this in his autobiography at length, and I for one believe him. This was a different era when your word meant an awful lot.
    And I remember those peasoupers. Very disorientating!


    Yeah I know all that, but 20 minutes! Surely he must have realised something was wrong.



    Didn't he say 15 mins in his book? Exaggeration even at 15 I expect. Still funny if it's 5 mins.

    Anyway, as they say at Sky News, never let the facts spoil a good story.

  • Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier, continued to fight a guerrilla war in the Philippines until 1974 because he thought the second world war was still being fought.

    It is lucky Bartram believed the policeman, imagine if he had remained on the Stamford Bridge pitch for a further twenty-nine years still believing Charlton were on the attack.
  • Reported as Boxing Day 1937?

    I wouldn't put any credence in a comment that says "without knowing nothing".
Sign In or Register to comment.

Roland Out Forever!