This is the story of the most successful positional switch in the history of the game, one that immediately resulted in an individual goalscoring achievement which no man in the history of English football has emulated and only one has even approached. It is a tale that, according to one newspaper account from the time, "reads more like a novel rather than a happening on the football field", but it is a story which becomes only more remarkable when placed in context: the Football League was 123 years old last month and in that time just one man has scored seven goals in a top-flight game, just one has scored nine in a single match and only one has scored 10. All three events took place in the space of 121 days during a single season.

The story starts at a coal mine in Derbyshire in September 1933. Bolsover Colliery had previous when it came to nurturing striking talents – Sam Raybould was playing for them when he was spotted by New Brighton in 1899; after half a season with them he moved on and became the first player to score 100 goals for Liverpool. Perhaps it was with Raybould in mind that Charlie Butler, a Luton scout, went to watch Bolsover play but it proved a profitable trip and three players were signed as a result: H Kitchen, an inside‑forward who went on to play a single first-team game; T Pearson, a goalkeeper who soon moved back home and signed for Derby; and Joe Payne, who was sent on loan to non-league Biggleswade Town before joining Luton's reserve team. Like Harold Wightman, then the Luton manager, we will forget about him for a while.

Fast forward to December 1935. Arsenal's Ted Drake had scored 42 goals the previous season but he was finding his second year in London considerably harder. So much so that at the start of the month, according to the Observer, "Drake played in a reserve match, for the express purpose of getting some shooting practice, as his power in front of goal seemed to be waning".

That season there was no opponent a struggling striker would rather play than Aston Villa, who were on their way to the first relegation of their history. They had lost 7-2 to Middlesbrough, 7-0 to West Bromwich Albion and 6-2 to Grimsby Town, all at home, before they welcomed Arsenal on 14 December. On that day all of Drake's striking woes were dispelled. He had a hat-trick by a half-time, a second within the hour and grabbed a final goal late on to finish with all seven in a 7-1 win. According to legend he scored with each of his first six shots on goal and in the end failed to convert only one effort – and that hit the bar. Even then Drake protested to the referee that the ball had crossed the line after bouncing down off the woodwork. "Don't be greedy," he was apparently told. "Isn't six enough?" It was not.

Drake's seven was an accomplishment that no man had bettered and only one had equalled in 47 years of organised English football. Twelve days later somebody scored nine.

As with so many of English football's most bizarre goalscoring feats, it happened on a holiday. Back in the 1930s teams used to play home-and-away double-headers over 24 yuletide hours, the first match on Christmas Day and the return on Boxing Day. The 1935 festive fixtures threw Oldham against Tranmere (in fact their first ever meetings). In the first game, at Boundary Park, Oldham won 4-1; the following day they shipped 13.

They were already a goal down when Norman Brunskill left the field after five minutes, nursing an injury. By the time he was fit enough to return to action, 15 minutes later, his side were 6-0 behind. With Brunskill on the field there was an improvement of sorts – they restricted Tranmere to seven more goals in the remaining 70 minutes, scoring four of their own. It is still the highest total goal tally of any league match. Oldham's right-back, Seymour, must have felt particularly miserable come the final whistle: not a first-team regular, he had played for the reserves at West Bromwich on Christmas Day, where his side had been beaten 8-2. In two days he had witnessed 27 goals and been part of defences which between them had conceded 21.

On a pitch "ankle-deep in mud", according to the Liverpool Daily Post, Robert "Bunny" Bell missed a penalty and still destroyed Drake's record, the two goals that lifted him above the Arsenal striker coming in the 88th and 89th minutes. The last, continued the Post, "caused the spectators at that particular end of the ground to break the enclosing railings and pour on to the playing pitch. Some spectators received minor injuries in this way but they were soon forgotten because, when the referee blew his whistle for time, the spectators dashed on to the field in thousands and chaired the hero of the most sensational scoring 'feast' football has ever known."

When Bell finally made it into the dressing room, the crowd lingered outside chanting "We want Bell, We want Bell" before segueing into a rendition of For He's a Jolly Good Fellow. When he finally emerged some time later, the remaining fans carried him shoulder-high to the directors' room, where representatives of both clubs presented him with a signed match ball. "It would not have been possible for me to have broken the record if it had not been for the unselfishness of the others," he said, proving that post-match interviews were no more revelatory all those years ago.

It might never have happened had Bell not rejected a possible move to the First Division two weeks previously having decided "that his part-time professionalism and his work as a clerk in a Liverpool shipping office are a better combined proposition than being a fully fledged professional footballer". His will was soon to break, though, and the following March he moved to Everton, where he was to spend much of the next few years as Tommy Lawton's understudy. (Drake, similarly, had initially rejected Arsenal to continue taking gas-meter readings in Southampton, only to relent eventually.)

Back, then, to Luton, who with the season drawing to a close were vying for the single promotion spot from the Third Division (South). They found themselves preparing to host Bristol Rovers on Easter Monday – another holiday fixture – having already played on the Friday (also against Rovers, a 2-2 draw) and again on the Saturday and with all three first-team strikers out through injury. Their former Bolsover Colliery man Payne had played only four league games that season, all of them at right-half, and none at all since September. "He has been regarded as the utility man of the reserves," wrote the Beds & Herts Evening Telegraph. "He has played at back, half-back, inside- and wing-forward but has been regarded primarily as a wing-half … the main fault supporters have had to find with him has been that he did not seem to take the game seriously enough." He had, though, played in attack for Bolsover, prompting one director to propose him as a stand-in striker.

"Other directors gasped," the Bristol Evening Post wrote, "for it must be realised that Payne was considered a defender. Anyway, after a discussion, Payne was picked."

Given what was to transpire that day, this was the 1930s equivalent of Arsène Wenger discovering that Gilles Grimandi was twice as potent as Thierry Henry, or Sir Alex Ferguson finding that John O'Shea was many multiples more prolific than Wayne Rooney. Payne had never, ever played at centre-forward for any Luton side before 13 April 1936 but he would never play anywhere else afterwards.

Icy weather troubled the residents of nearby Whipsnade Zoo that weekend and sleet whipped across the ground at kick-off. It took a while for the players to warm up, Payne opening the scoring in the 23rd minute and Roberts added a second in the 32nd; five minutes before half-time the home side led 2-0 and it was all to play for. But close-range finishes in the 40th and 43rd minute brought Payne a hat-trick before the break and after it he really got going. In the 49th minute he crashed in Stephenson's centre; in the 55th his header was clawed off the line by the Rovers goalkeeper, Ellis, and Martin followed up to force the ball home. Payne scored further goals in the 57th, 65th, 76th, 84th and 86th minutes.

That left him with nine; the publicity that had followed Bell's Christmas goal rampage ensured that every man, woman and child in the ground knew that he needed one more to break the record. There was indeed one more goal to come, in the 89th minute, though it was not Payne who got it but Martin. "Near the end, when it was thought that Payne needed one goal to eclipse the record, every member of the side played up to him," read the match report, bylined "Crusader", in the local paper, "and when Martin scored the 12th goal I think even he was disappointed that it was not the centre-forward who had found the net."

The final whistle went and fans cheered a stunning victory that resurrected their promotion chances. But Payne, having missed several chances to score even more goals, had fallen a single strike short of making the record his own. "Had Ellis not been a splendid goalkeeper, the score would have reached 20," wrote Crusader. "He had no chance with any scoring shot and frustrated many others."

But then came the story's final twist, as the referee, a TJ Botham from Walsall, reported that the credit for Luton's sixth goal, which everyone present believed to have been bundled over the line by Martin, in fact lay elsewhere. For he believed that the ball had crossed the line before Ellis's save and Martin's intervention. Payne had his record but not one of Luton's fans knew about it before they read the following day's papers.

Inevitably everyone was terribly impressed with their team's new discovery of sorts. "Payne's finishing was marvellous," Crusader wrote later that week. "He showed, too, that he is not merely a good shot without any of the other attributes of a centre-forward, for he held the line together in brilliant style and distributed the ball in first-class fashion. The crowd was delirious with joy as each goal was heralded with thunderous cheers."

"A former miner, 21 years of age, Payne is a native of Bolsover," Frank Poxon wrote in the now defunct London paper the News Chronicle. "I think he may be a 'native' of England's XI before long. He is a real centre-forward with tremendous dash and a sure shot in each foot … when a chance comes along his brain is packed in ice."

On the Wednesday Payne received a congratulatory telegram from a gracious Bell, who had but weeks to revel in a spotlight that his replacement enjoyed for a lifetime. That weekend, at Newport, Payne kept his place and scored both in a 2-0 win – and his heroism did not end there. On the way back to Bedfordshire the team found themselves with an hour to wait at St Pancras, so Payne and his team-mate Tom Mackey went for a stroll. "They were walking along a quiet street just off the Euston Road when they saw two men dash from a house, followed by a woman shrieking 'Police! Police! Thieves!'" it was reported. "Payne promptly grabbed the two of them. One wrenched himself free and took to his heels down the street, and Mackey at once gave pursuit … as Tom closed up to him the fugitive turned in threatening fashion, but Tom promptly showed him the size of his fists."

That was the last anyone saw of Luton's fighting spirit, as they missed out on promotion by a single point. Payne may have scored 12 in his first two games as striker but the entire team between them managed only one in the next three, including home and away draws to the eventual champions, Coventry. But Payne never lost the scoring touch, averaging more than a goal a game for Luton (even discounting the Rovers anomaly) and the following year – while playing in the regional Third Division – did indeed line up for England. Despite scoring two of eight goals against Finland, however, he was never picked again. In 1938 he joined Chelsea and played there until the outbreak of the Second World War and a couple of broken ankles all but ended his career. He was to return to Luton and lived for a while on Kenilworth Road, before he died suddenly at home in 1975, aged 61. He is commemorated with a plaque in the car park of the Miners Arms in Brimington, where he had returned in 1936 to celebrate his bravado act of goalmanship.

In the Guardian's review of the season the following month Drake's achievement is all but forgotten as Arsenal are described as "often a dull side" boasting little more than "the most dour and heart-breaking defence in England", while Bell and Payne are dismissed as "comets that passed across the sky". It might have been easy, after all the record-rewriting that season, to trivialise their achievements. Seventy-five emphatically comet-free years later if anyone came close now, there would be little chance of that.