Get the latest Hull City stories straight to your inbox with our new newsletter Subscribe Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Invalid Email

Today marks the 70th anniversary of Hull City attracting a club-record crowd of 55,019 for the FA Cup quarter-final tie at home to Manchester United. Philip Buckingham looks back on a landmark day at Boothferry Park.

The images, even now, are astonishing. One huge sprawl of football fans as far as the camera lens can see, a mass of expectancy waiting to click through Boothferry Park’s turnstiles.

For two hours and more they had patiently queued – men, women and children – to see Hull City host Manchester United in the FA Cup quarter-finals. The lines snaked up and down North Road and Boothferry Road, all congregating to conjure that iconic shot in the shadow of the North Stand.

Hull City’s new home, opened just two and a half years earlier, had never seen such numbers before and would never do so again. A total of 55,019 fans were in attendance on that day in 1949, setting a club record that has now stood unsurpassed for 70 years.

“Those were very special times to be a Hull City supporter, very special,” remembers City fan Colin Daniel, who was a wide-eyed nine-year-old in attendance for Manchester United’s visit. “We won’t see crowds like that again, will we?”

Not in this lifetime or the next, in all probability. And that is what makes those grainy black and white images from February 26, 1949 all the more remarkable.

City, like so many clubs up and down the country, enjoyed their greatest boom in the post-war years. A new ground, replacing their former home at Anlaby Road, had brought a new era under chairman Harold Needler and the bold capture of England international Raich Carter had placed the Tigers firmly on the map even as a Division Three (North) side.

Interest was on a steep rise by the time Carter had succeeded Major Frank Buckley as player-manager late in the 1947-48 season. Boothferry Park had regularly drawn crowds north of 30,000 and the Christmas Day visit of title rivals Rotherham in 1948 had attracted a new record 49,655.

Manchester United’s visit in the last eight of the FA Cup, though, was something else for a club trying to make itself heard from the third tier.

“There was a lot of excitement, a buzz around the place,” said Daniel. “My Dad and my older brothers were all enthusiastic about it so it was a whole family thing for us.

“Big crowds were a regular thing in those days but nothing as big as this. Manchester United were the FA Cup holders and were a very good team under Matt Busby. And we were only a Third Division team at that time. We were the big underdogs.

“Having Raich Carter gave us hope but we had a lot of good players, like Billy Bly. Carter was a big draw, though. He was a star name in those times."

Hull City 0 Manchester United 1, February 26, 1949 Hull City: Billy Bly, Jock Taylor, Tom Berry, Jimmy Greenhalgh, Harold Meens, Allan Mellor, Ken Harrison, Viggo Jensen, Norman Moore, Willie Buchan, Raich Carter Manchester United: Jack Compton, John Ball, John Aston, Henry Cockburn, Allenby Chilton, William McGlen, Jimmy Delaney, Stan Pearson, Ronald Burke, Jack Rowley, Charlie Mitten Scorers: Pearson 75 Attendance: 55,019

Carter, an FA Cup winner with his boyhood club Sunderland in 1937 and then Derby County in 1946, had not lacked belief in his pursuit of a hat-trick with City. Grimsby Town and Blackburn of Division Two had been knocked out by the Tigers, before First Division side Stoke City were conquered with the goals of Jimmy Greenhalgh and Norman Moore.

The quarter-final draw paired City with Manchester United, FA Cup holders and the favourites to retain the trophy they had won at Wembley nine months earlier. That brought Matt Busby his first silverware of a decorated managerial career and the ambition was for more.

United’s trip to Boothferry Park had been set up by an 8-0 win over Yeovil Town, with 81,565 crammed into their temporary home of Maine Road. Before that Bournemouth and then Bradford Park Avenue had been demolished 6-0 and 5-0.

The admiration for United was particularly clear in City’s matchday programme costing those masses thruppence. A section entitled Club Matters wrote: “We shall have the opportunity of seeing in action a team which is generally accepted as being the most perfect answer to the football lover’s dream of how football should be played.

“So much has been written and spoken of their football skill and teamwork that they were automatically number one choice in the minds of Hull City supporters… Our wish has been fulfilled.”

Yet in the next breath came the hope. “We realise the immensity of our task. Nevertheless we have a sneaking regard for possibilities.

(Image: Twitter/@TigerProgrammes)

“In their defeats of Third Northern and Southern teams, followed by two Second and one First Division clubs, our players produced football which has hitherto only been associated with the higher divisions of the league and, furthermore, have become the talk of the football world.”

City’s board of directors had predicted an unprecedented crowd with so much at stake and planned accordingly. Bulldozers rolled into Boothferry Park during the build-up to raise the height of the terracing, while a temporary stand in the north-west corner also helped to increase capacity.

Supporters came in their droves. Hundreds of bicycles were casually discarded on verges, with supporters swamping the few cars parked behind the North Stand.

Untold supporters were said to have been left disappointed in their attempts to get inside Boothferry Park, with police and dogs patrolling the train lines directly behind the roofless stand that would become known as the Kempton.

“I remember the car park before the game being crammed full of people all cheering and shouting,” said Daniel. “I’d never seen anything like that before.

“It probably took us an hour and a half or two hours just to get into the ground. That’s how busy it was.

“They let all us kids sit around the cinder track down at the front. We were all put down there so we could see and have a bit more space. I got a marvellous view of the game.”

In a fixture called by a young Kenneth Wolstenholme, who would earn commentary immortality 17 years later as England lifted the World Cup at Wembley, City duly gave as good as they got.

“Third Division Hull give their Cup holders their toughest test yet,” said the British Pathe coverage.

Billy Bly, whose City career spanned 21 years, was left semi-conscious and with a broken nose after diving at the feet of United’s Stan Pearson, “gallantly carrying on after treatment,” before Willie Buchan came close to giving the Tigers a second-half lead when his header was cleared by covering defender John Ball.

United eventually had the decisive say with 18 minutes to play. Jimmy Delaney’s cross from the right picked out Pearson, who poked the ball home ahead of Bly. City complained that the ball had gone out but to no avail. The promise of a replay and a place in the semi-finals never returned for the majority of that capacity crowd.

Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now

United were unable to retain the FA Cup when beaten by Stan Cullis’ Wolves side in the last four but City at least ended their own season with silverware. The Division Three North title and promotion back to Division Two was the reward for the uprising led by Carter.

“We were all disappointed to lose, of course we were,” said Daniel, now 79 and living in Anlaby. “But it was special to have been at a game like that.”

He, nor any of us, can expect to see anything like it again.