As the 1897-98 season roared towards its final furlong, the battle to avoid relegation from the First Division was white hot. Seven of the 16 teams were in danger of being forced to endure the post-season test matches that pitted the top two of the Second Division with the bottom two of the First to decide the final make-up of the following year’s top flight. “However the final positions may be allocated there will be a finer set of test games this April than ever before,” trilled Sporting Life in February. It is fair to say they got that one wrong.

By the time the season ended the league’s own president was declaring the tests “a distinct failure” and proclaiming that “the sooner we get rid of them the better”, while plans were made to gift the two losing sides promotion as a final apology for inventing the cursed system in the first place.

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The battle at the bottom of the First Division never calmed down, and in the end five teams finished level on points at the foot of the table, with Stoke and Blackburn occupying the last spots because of their poor goal average, while Burnley and Newcastle were clear of the pack in the second tier. Blackburn – who had won one and lost six of their last 11 league games – carried that dismal form into the tests, but the others proved closely matched.

The penultimate game was a 4-0 victory for Newcastle over Blackburn in which the home side’s attacking play was so thrilling that a surge in the packed sixpenny enclosure brought down a barrier, leading to several hundred people collapsing on top of each other and two youths being hospitalised with serious injuries. After that result three sides were level with one further fixture to play: when Burnley’s game at Stoke got under way shortly afterwards the visitors knew that if they lost by any score they would stay down, while if they won by a couple of goals Stoke would be relegated instead. A draw, on the other hand, would suit both sides.

What happened next was depressingly predictable. Reports of the match describe a single shot on target, easily saved. The two teams “shuffled about, making a burlesque of sport, winning their way into the upper circle and doing nothing for it,” wrote the Nottingham Post. “To say point blank that the result was connived is, of course, speaking without facts … but we are very sorry to say we are very far from being convinced of the bona-fides of this particular match.”

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The Athletic News reported that “play had not been in progress many minutes when it was easily perceivable that there would only be one result. The teams could have done without goalkeepers, so anxious were the forwards not to score.” The Scottish Referee, a newspaper that billed itself as “a record and review of outdoor recreation”, wrote that “the first half was absolutely devoid of interest, there being neither a decent bit of play nor a single shot that appeared likely to score, [and] the second half was a repetition of the first”.

As this farce played itself out, the fans were left to conjure their own entertainment. “The spectators wanted their money’s worth,” wrote the Athletic News, “and such remarks as ‘Play the game’, ‘come off the field’, ‘time’, ‘chuck it’, and others which will scarcely bear repeating were hurled at the players.” Soon after the second half got under way the ball was kicked into the crowd, and they refused to give it back. Sporting Life dedicated most of its match report to the ensuing off-field action.

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“Several attempts had been made by the spectators to keep the ball when it went out of play, and a certain section now succeeded in doing so, the referee leaving the field and requisitioning a new one,” they wrote. “The struggle for the old one continued for some time, but at last it was thrown into the arena again. Immediately afterwards, from a long return by McLintock, another mighty tussle ensued. Several policemen joined in the melee but were overpowered, and there was every indication of a right royal row until somebody stronger than the rest got hold and punted the ball up on the roof of the stand.

“All would have been quiet had not some meddlesome person climbed on to the roof, and from there thrown down the ball into the struggling mass below. Again attention was entirely diverted from the game, which went on unwatched, unnoticed, play being of an uneventful character. Then the ball bounced high on to the cycle track, and from thence into the crowd, and the disorderly scenes were resumed. The ball was kept by the crowd, and immediately afterwards, someone rushing along the track to keep another ball in play ran plump into a leviathan policeman, and knocked him sprawling under the rails, amongst the feet of the crowd. These incidents proved more funny than the play, which settled down into a steady, uninteresting scramble again.”

And thus the game ended, and both Stoke’s survival and Burnley’s promotion sealed. “The principle and sportsmanship will be strongly questioned, but at the same time it would be a difficult matter to prove that there was any truth in the allegation that ‘Mr Arrangement’ had anything to do with the result,” wrote the Newcastle Journal, who nevertheless felt their local side had “simply been robbed of their honours in the Test games”. “The game proved a complete fiasco,” roared the Staffordshire Advertiser, Stoke’s local paper. Only Birmingham’s Sports Argus seemed unperturbed. “In the knowledge that even honours would suit them best,” they wrote, “can we blame either Stoke or Burnley that they should have found themselves unable to secure winning brackets?”

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Over the following days disgruntlement over the result and the manner of its conception continued to build. The Athletic News declared that “the tests are a fraud”. “The sooner the authorities put an end to the farce, the better it will be for the game,” wrote Sporting Life, calling on the league to “remove the evil”.

Within three weeks, at their AGM in Manchester, they did just that. The successful motion was proposed by, of all clubs, Burnley, and carried unanimously. Another motion proposed by Burnley, to expand each of the top two divisions from 16 to 18 teams, was also carried and a vote to decide on the two teams to occupy the newly-created top-flight places resulted in Newcastle and Blackburn getting the nod.

“Newcastle United were practically robbed of an advance they had secured by merit,” wrote the Newcastle Journal, who obviously had a particular axe to grind, in their preview to the following season. “The injustice that was possible under the old administration was made so clear that there was quite a revolution of feeling for a reform.”

And so it was that the world of football learned that it was wisest to schedule the final games of such series simultaneously, to protect against collusion and impropriety. Though, inevitably, it has still needed occasional reminders.