In a 47-year career at the BBC, Nicholas Witchell has covered a range of major events. The list includes the deaths of Queen Elizabeth and Diana, Princess of Wales, the Falklands War and the Gulf War, Lockerbie and Zeebrugge. On Christmas Eve 1983 it was his solemn duty to educate the nation on something less seismic: the final score in the Division Three match between Brentford and Wimbledon.
The 5 p.m. news, tucked away between The Dukes of Hazzard And Some mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em, concluding with a report from Griffin Park. The BBC had sent a team to West London because it was the only professional match being played in England. And although Leeds met Manchester United in the Premier League on December 24, 1995, it remains the last Football League match to be played on Christmas Eve.
Brentford had originally planned something that would make even more headlines: the first Football League match on Christmas Day since 1965. It was the brainchild of their innovative chairman, Martin Lange. “Brentford had a strangely poor season, bottom of the league and struggling to attract a crowd,” says Rob Jex, a Brentford historian. “They were in debt of almost £500,000, which was a lot for a club our size, so they were looking for a gimmick to bring in more fans, even on a one-off basis. It was a desperate time financially, with setback after setback, and Martin Lange did everything he could to stabilize the club and keep it solvent.”
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A Brentford fan from the age of five, Lange was a popular, attractive chairman who made his money in property. In 1985 he sold one of the Ferraris in his collection so that the club could buy striker Robbie Cooke for £25,000. Last month a similar car sold at auction for £42 million. “Brentford played regularly on Christmas Day from 1906 to 1958 and Martin Lange may have been present at some of those games,” says Jonathan Burchill, author of A pub on every corner. “The idea that you could maybe get 10,000 spectators would have fired his imagination. He was always trying to do something different.”
It was Lange, a lower league champion, who came up with the idea for one of English football’s great successes: the play-offs. Perversely, Brentford then failed in nine consecutive play-off campaigns between 1991 and 2020. Lange, who died in 2015, was not there to see them finally end the curse when they were promoted to the Premier League in 2021. He also suggested the use of a selection team. numbers and names on the back of shirts before they were introduced into the Premier League. When the idea was rejected, Brentford placed their players’ names on their shorts.
Lange’s plan to play on Christmas Day made the back page of the Daily mirrorthanks in part to a dubious soundbite. “We want to revive the old tradition of the man going to the football on Christmas morning while the women cook the turkey,” said Eric White, a senior figure at the club who has served in multiple roles from press officer to vice president.
In reality, Lange’s vision was more inclusive. “There has always been a special magic about Christmas Day matches and it is worth recreating that,” he said. “I see it as a great opportunity for the family to enjoy a crisp Christmas morning. We may be taking a bit of a gamble, but the response from fans so far has been extremely encouraging and after all, it is their needs that we have in mind.”
However, the players’ needs were secondary. The match was scheduled for 11am, which would have meant an early start. Player power was a thing of the future and although the Brentford dressing room was full of robust characters such as Chris Kamara, Terry Hurlock and Stan Bowles, there was probably nothing more than a few pantomime grumbles.
“Footballers don’t really see the Christmas period as a holiday – it’s just another week,” says Bob Booker, a Swiss army knife of a footballer who was voted supporters’ player of the year last season after wearing every jersey number except 1 and 11 .“I doubt we were consulted. As a footballer you are a bit of a robot. You are told where to go, what time to be there, you are told what to eat. I’m sure some families would have been upset. I was still single at the time, so it didn’t really bother me.”
Jim McNichol, a Scottish defender who scored a thunderous free-kick in that Wimbledon match, has a similar memory. “You got used to playing during the Christmas period, so you knew not to eat or drink too much. Some families were against it because there is a difference between an hour of training, which we normally did on Christmas Day, and playing a real game. I don’t remember any disagreements in the locker room about the idea. I wouldn’t have had a problem playing on Christmas Day – that’s your job, just do it.”
There were complaints from both groups of supporters, mainly on religious grounds or due to the lack of public transport. Lange had also promised Brentford would never play at home on a Sunday when Christmas Day fell in 1983. This led to objections from local residents and at the end of November, three weeks after the original announcement, Lange reversed the decision.
“I certainly don’t remember any uprising from the fans,” says Jex. “I was 24 at the time and it didn’t make much of an impression on our group; it was just a bit of fun. I suspect the biggest factor was the response from people living near Griffin Park. More fans would have had to drive to the game because there was no public transportation, which would have clogged the streets on Christmas Day. Brentford has always been a community club and Martin Lange is said to have taken complaints from residents very seriously. He would not have allowed a commercial decision to undermine the feelings of the local community.”
‘Santa Claus stops playing’ was the headline in the newspaper Hounslow and Chiswick informant, under which a city councilor revealed the size of the opposition. “We had a petition with 200 names,” Bob Stratton said, “but we no longer need it.”
The match was moved to Christmas Eve rather than back to its original date of Boxing Day. Wimbledon, whose emerging Crazy Gang were taking a shortcut through the Football League, won a ding-dong match 4-3 in front of a crowd of 6,689, almost 3,000 more than Brentford’s previous home match. “It was perfect to bring it back on Christmas Eve: we played and then we got Christmas Day And Boxing Day off,” says McNichol.
Instead of playing two games in two days like everyone else – the second was a long journey to Exeter – Brentford had 70 hours between games. The defeat at Wimbledon was their fifth in a row and they had won two of their 19 league matches that season. A relatively renewed side defeated Exeter and then Newport on New Year’s Eve. Those matches did not make the BBC News, but were ultimately the difference between survival and relegation.