CJ I can't even imagine going into school after shipping ten, and feels weird that the game is not technically our worst ever defeat (0-7 at Highbury), because it feels like it should be!
I had to look up the details on evertonresults.com, but I've always remembered a City player, Ken Barnes, scoring a hat-trick of penalties.
It was on December 7, 1957, at Maine Road. Barnes scored the first two penalties inside the first eighteen minutes. Jimmy Harris scored two just before halftime to make it 3-2. However, Barnes scored his third penalty early in the second half, and Dave Hickson was sent off. Final score: City 6, Everton 2.
In those days, big scores were quite common. Our promotion season (1953-54) saw us register three wins with scores of 6-2, 6-1, and 8-4 inside a fortnight. I was in the Upper Gwladys with my dad for the last one against Plymouth.
The season after Ken Barnes' hat-trick, the Blues suffered the ignominy of a 10-4 shellacking at White Hart Lane. Jimmy Harris's hat-trick that day, October 11, 1958, went largely unnoticed.
Monday morning at school was dire for young Blues fans, especially as "10-4" was well known from the American crime series "Highway Patrol." For days, we had to put up with that dreaded police code from clownish Kopites.
Our only recourse was to remind the Reds that they had suffered a 9-1 trouncing by Birmingham City four years earlier. We reasoned that losing by an eight-goal margin was far worse than losing by six. They wouldn't have it, of course.
But the tables were truly turned a month after our 10-4 debacle. On January 15, 1959, the shower across the park suffered one of the greatest FA Cup defeats, losing 2-1 to non-league Worcester. Oh, how we Blues got our own back. I can still hear us chanting "Worcester, Worcester" on the school playground and in the corridors.
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