"I was recently digging up the history of many cup tournaments and I found out that in 1980 Real Madrid played their reserve squad in the final of the Copa del Rey," wrote Svilen Tomov last week. "Is this the only occurrence anywhere, or has it happened more than once?"

Not that we know of, Svilen, but there have been a few close misses. First, though, let's take a look at that remarkable cup run of Castilla CF, Real's reserve team. They began with two-leg wins over Extremadura, Alcorcon (who a couple of years ago embarrassed the full Madrid side), and Racing Santander before taking on the big boys of La Liga.

Hércules (who finished 15th in the top flight) were beaten first, then Athletic Bilbao (seventh), Real Sociedad (runners-up) and finally Sporting Gijón (who came third behind Sociedad and Real) in the semi-finals. In the final the Real first team put the upstarts – featuring a young Ricardo Gallego, who would go on to win 42 caps for Spain and feature at the 1982 and 1986 World Cups, in their ranks – firmly in their place with a 6-1 hammering.

The adventure wasn't over, though. With Real winning the title, Castilla became Spain's entrants in the 1980-81 Cup Winners' Cup, the only reserve side ever to compete in European competition (at least until English sides started fielding theirs in the Uefa Cup). It was a brief but eventful campaign. In the first round they beat a West Ham side including Trevor Brooking et al 3-1 at the Bernabéu, but violence at the game meant the return leg was played behind closed doors. The Hammers won 3-1 in 90 minutes and the 262 spectators who had somehow crept into Upton Park saw David Cross score twice in extra-time to complete his hat-trick and send the English side through 6-4 on aggregate. (Footage of the second leg with, oddly, crowd noise seemingly dubbed on top, can be seen here.)

The club closest to matching Real's feat is the Swedish side Orgryte. "Until 1925, the Swedish championship was decided in a knock-out tournament. In 1897 the reserves of Orgryte IS reached the final for the first time, losing 0-1 to the first team," reports the ever-excellent rsssf.com promisingly, only to put something of a damper on things by adding: "This was, however, not much of a feat, as there had been no other entries."

Ajax's second team were just a penalty shootout away from meeting their first XI in the 2001-02 Dutch Cup final, reports Tom Adams on Twitter. Having beaten De Graafschap in the third round, Twente in round four and Telstar in the quarter-finals, Ajax II's cup run came to an end against Utrecht in the last four, 7-6 on penalties after a 2-2 draw. (It was quite a young side that Ajax II had back then: Maarten Stekelenburg, Petri Pasanen, Abubakari Yakubu, Jelle van Damme, Steven Pienaar, Nigel de Jong, Wesley Sneijder, Michael Krohn-Dehli, Cedric van der Gun, Jason Culina, Johnny Heitinga and Tim de Cler all featured at various points in the season).

Austria Vienna had a very similar tale to Ajax in the 2008-09 Austrian Cup, with the reserve team beaten by FC Admira in the semi-finals while the first XI went on to win the tournament.

Also close were Hertha Berlin in the 1992-93 German Cup, but it was the first team that, ahem, let the side down. Hertha were dumped out by Bayer Leverkusen in the round of 16, but their reserve team battled all the way to the final, where they were also beaten by Bayer. And also deserving of a mention are Sparta Prague B, who reached the Czech Cup semi-finals in 1970-71 having beaten the Sparta first team in the quarter-finals.

More on some of the football world's best reserve sides can be found here.

FOOTBALL'S GREATEST MARATHON RUNNERS (2)

Last week we thought that the former Leicester City player Muzzy Izzet might be the tidiest footballing marathon runner, finishing the 2011 London Marathon in 3 hours and 22 minutes.

Not so, says Martin Axon, who sent in a link to the story of the former Exeter City utility man Barry McConnell's 2011 charity run from John O'Groats to Lands End, in which it was revealed that his best marathon finish was a spritely two hours and 58 minutes. Last summer Truro, where McConnell had been playing since 2008, gave him time off from pre-season training to complete the length-of-Britain challenge in aid of the Adam Stansfield Foundation.

"I don't really think that the pre-season running sessions that I would be doing quite compare to this," said Barry, who was proved horribly right by a knee injury that forced him to abandon the run after 126 miles, somewhere near Inverness. "I was forced to stop, I had terrible pain in my right knee," he explained, having run 30 miles on the swollen joint the day before. "I feel disappointed and devastated that I couldn't continue." There was some suggestion that he might try again further down the line, but we've not been able to find anything. Give us a bell if you know otherwise.

"Former Spanish internationals Luis Enrique (ex Sporting Gijon, Real Madrid and Barcelona), Emilio Amavisca (Racing Santander, Real Madrid) and Iván Helguera (Racing Santander, Real Madrid) all deserve a mention," reckons Dermot, who cites numerous marathons and Ironman competitions. Indeed, he included this link, which describes the lengths Luis Enrique went to (geddit?) in his post-football career. Having run his first marathon in three hours and 14 minutes, he dipped under the three-hour mark a couple of years later by completing the Florence marathon in 2 hours, 57 minutes and 58 seconds. He completed the Marathon des Sables (151 miles across the desert) in 2008 and is scheduled to take part in the Cape Epic (a 400-odd mile, two-person mountain bike race) early next year. We've pulled our hamstrings just thinking about it.

"As you might not recall, the Danish international striker Miklos Molnar decided to hang up his football boots at the age of 30, in favour of some running shoes, to start a new career as an Ironman competitor." This from Martin Mathiasen. "He ran the 2005 Copenhagen Marathon in 2:59:20, although I suppose he has the distinct advantage of actually training for these things, compared to the other footballers." True enough, though the former Liverpool defender Sami Hyypia could do no better than three hours and 56 minutes in last year's Helsinki marathon, as Mikko Knuuttila emailed in to tell us.

There's half-marathon news, too! Ian Rogers dug out his old copies of Shoot! to find reference in Kevin Keegan's columns to an appearance at the first Great North Run in 1981. According to the race's Hall of Fame, Keegan suffered a wardrobe malfunction about six miles in. "Eleven year old Eddie Hope and his brother had been waiting on the roadside to see their idol, and he ended up swapping his running shoes with his hero, as the ones [Keegan] was wearing gave him blisters. Despite the trainers, Kevin finished in an impressive one hour and 26 minutes." Which makes him a good 23 minutes faster than Paolo Di Canio.

Finally, we also received an email from TEN Sports' very own Joe Morrison, explaining that his studio colleague and pundit Trevor Sinclair ran the London marathon in 3 hours and 33 minutes earlier this year. "So he tells me," notes Joe.

DELIBERATE OWN GOALS

Last week we looked at the players to have scored deliberate own goals (featuring 149 in one match) in protest against their club, their manager or the referee. And though this email doesn't exactly fit the bill, it's an enjoyable yarn nevertheless:

"Austria's greatest football coach ever, Ernst Happel, loved to score own goals during his playing days against his team-mate and close friend Walter Zeman," writes Jörg Michner. "Both played for Rapid Vienna and the Austrian national team, Happel being a defender and Zeman obviously a goalkeeper. When Rapid was crushing the opposition, as they often did in the 1940s and 50s, Happel used to get bored at the back and occasionally took the ball, scored an own goal and taunted Zeman: "Lucky for you I didn't hit you in the head or else you'd be dead," he would shout in broad Viennese at his keeper. When Austria was preparing for the 1954 World Cup against a local selection in Innsbruck, at the scoreline of 14-0 a bored Happel put the ball in his own net from 20 metres out."

KNOWLEDGE ARCHIVE

"There's a story doing the rounds at my local that Blackpool once resorted to using a flamethrower to thaw out their frozen pitch," wrote Bill Winkles back in 2007. "Would I be right to think it's total guff?"

Well Bill, it's not quite true, but it is closer to reality than you might imagine. The winter of 1962-63 was extremely harsh, and Blackpool suffered more than most as their pitch completely froze over to the point where they couldn't play a single home game between 15 December and 2 March. Some players even took to ice skating on the pitch, as revealed by the following gem, dug out of the West Lancashire Evening Gazette's archives by Seasiders historian Gerry Wolstenholme:

"At Bloomfield Road Jimmy Armfield and Tony Waiters ice skated on the pitch on 8 January 1963 and two days later they were joined by Barrie Martin, 'Mandy' Hill and two other players. On 29 January 1963 Blackpool used a disc harrow to try to get the game against West Ham United played on 2 February 1963 but that too proved ineffective and on 30 January 1963 the players swept a heavy fall of snow from the pitch in a vain hope that it would be clear underneath, but the ice – one to four inches thick – was 'as formidable as ever'."

But it was actually Norwich who attempted, unsuccessfully, to defrost their playing surface with fire. Their scheduled FA Cup third-round tie at home to Blackpool had been postponed 11 times, and, as the same piece of archive reveals, they were willing to try just about anything by the end. "In an attempt to get the game played, the Carrow Road pitch was treated with flamethrowers on 22 January 1963 as, according to a Norwich spokesman, 'a last desperate effort'. However they 'served no purpose whatsoever' for 'as fast as the ice melted it froze again'. An icebreaker was also used but it too proved ineffective."

For thousands more questions and answers take a trip through the Knowledge archive

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"In a game that was remarkable for a number of reasons, Theo Walcott was credited with goals on 45, 90 and 120 minutes for Arsenal against Reading in the League Cup, surely the only hat-trick ever scored entirely outside regulation time (including the extra half-hour - the last goal was 120+0:02)," writes Joe Ludlam. "Has anyone else matched or even come close to such a statistical freak?"

"Sunday's game between River Plate and Boca Juniors was delayed by River fans holding aloft a giant inflatable pig wearing a Boca shirt," writes Kevin Downey. "Is this the first time a match has ever been delayed by an inflatable?"

"Have there been any instances of spouses taking medals and similar football honours as part of the proceeds from a relationship with a footballer?" asks Prashant Maharaj. "If so, who is the most decorated former partner of a footballer?"

"It seems like Russian clubs have a lot of Brazilians in their squads," begins Kai Helge Aalhus. "In the match between Shakhtar Donetsk and Chelsea I counted 10 Brazilian-born players among the 36 players on the pitch and bench. Can any other non-European country match this number of players involved in a Euro tie?"

"After their 1-1 draw with Charlton, I now make it close to 11 months since Leeds United last won a league match on a weeknight," writes Michael Hewitt. "Since a 4-0 victory at Nottingham Forest on Tuesday 29 November 2011, the run is currently P14, W0, D5, L9. Has any other team had a bigger aversion to playing on a school night?"

"Last week Carlos Arias of the Bolivian club Oriente Petrolero saved three penalty kicks in a game against Universitario," begins Tim Dockery. "While impressive, he is hardly the only goalkeeper to save three penalty kicks in the same game. These penalty kicks, however, all derived from the same penalty. Arias blocked Universitario's first attempt to score, but he was deemed to have prematurely left his line, and the penalty was retaken. The second attempt was also saved but retaken for the same reason. Finally, his third save on Universitario's third try was deemed valid. Has any other keeper blocked the same penalty three (or more) times?"

"I worked out yesterday that my team, Nottingham Forest, have not been awarded a penalty since September 2011," begins Andy Edwards. "That run without a penalty encompasses 54 matches, over 5,000 minutes in three competitions against 30 different teams. So what is the longest time a team has gone without being awarded a penalty?"

"Watching the FA Cup qualifier between Stockport and Stalybridge, in injury-time at the end of the first half, there were three goals and a missed penalty," writes Andrew Pechey. "As someone who often ends up in the bar for injury time, I would normally have missed all this, but what's the most action I would have missed by being in the bar instead of watching injury time?"

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