The cities of Bradford and Liverpool will unite on Sunday for Stephen Darby, as a sell-out crowd aims to raise as much money as possible for the Darby Rimmer Foundation. It will be a magnificent occasion and, ahead of it, it felt appropriate to look back at competitive meetings between the two sides.

Bradford City and Liverpool do, understandably, not meet in competitive football all that often. In total, there have been just 26 clashes between the teams in league games, with a handful of cup games thrown in to boot.

For context, that is significantly less than meetings against the likes of Manchester United (32), Tottenham Hotspur (32) and Chelsea (34). That is largely due to the fact that since City’s formation in 1903, Liverpool have spent just nine seasons out of English football’s top division.

Early meetings

One of those came in 1904-05, City’s second season as a Football League club. The two sides met for the first time officially on September 17th, 1904; John Beckram – the first player to receive a Heritage Number – scored in a 4-1 defeat at Anfield. The reverse fixture that season was equally one-sided; as Tom Watson’s side came to Valley Parade and won 4-2. Liverpool won promotion that season, and while the two sides met in the FA Cup in 1907 – City again succumbing to defeat in the Third Round – it wouldn’t be long before the Paraders joined them in the top-flight.

However, City’s first win against Liverpool was still some years away. In the club’s first two seasons in Division One, Liverpool won all four meetings – before our first victory at Anfield, on the opening day of the 1910-11 season, a campaign which would end with FA Cup success for City. Jimmy Spiers and Frank O’Rourke scored in front of approximately 20,000 people at Anfield and that season – the first and only time it has ever happened – Bradford City finished higher than Liverpool in the league standings. City came 5th, while Liverpool were 16th.

That was one of only two occasions in which Bradford City would win at Anfield – the other coming on New Year’s Day 1914, when Dicky Bond scored the only goal in a 1-0 win. Since then, City have been back to Anfield over half a dozen times and been beaten on every single occasion.

There was one other notable piece of business between the sides prior to World War Two; Liverpool sold forward Albert Whitehurst to the Paraders in 1929. He scored 30 times in 38 league games – including setting the all-time record for goals in a single game for the club, when he scored 7 against Tranmere in March 1929. It has still not been beaten to this day.

Post-World War Two

City were relegated from the First Division in 1922, and wouldn’t return for 77 years. Even when Liverpool dropped out themselves for a period in the mid-1950s, the Paraders were languishing in the third tier of the Football League pyramid. There was an FA Cup tie meeting between the sides in January 1924 – but it yielded a familiar outcome, as Liverpool won 2-1 at Anfield in the First Round.

It would be 56 years until the two teams met competitively again – but it produced one of Bradford City’s most legendary performances. George Mulhall’s Paraders were a mid-table Fourth Division side in 1980, while Liverpool were back-to-back league champions, and were just beginning a season that would see them lift the European Cup.

After seeing off Rotherham in the First Round of that season’s League Cup, City were given the plum tie: Liverpool over two legs. With almost the entire league pyramid between the two teams, City weren’t given a sniff – but on a Wednesday night under the lights at Valley Parade, the Paraders stunned the world.

A Liverpool side featuring the likes of Graeme Souness, Phil Thompson, Alan Hansen and Ray Clemence were beaten 1-0 thanks to Bobby Campbell’s goal. It raised hopes of arguably the biggest shock in League Cup history, but Liverpool set the record straight at Anfield a week later, winning 4-0 and continuing City’s miserable record at the ground.

Premier League Years

City had to wait another two decades to lock horns with arguably the world’s most famous football club again. 11 points from the first 11 games in the 1999-00 Premier League season had raised hopes the Bantams could keep their heads above water in the top-flight, but a 3-1 defeat at Anfield in November 1999 – with goals from Titi Camara, Jamie Redknapp and Veggard Heggem – a sobering reminder of the jump-up in class the Premier League provided.

Of course, few City fans need reminding about the return leg at Valley Parade that season:

..and that was the last goal Bradford City have scored against Liverpool. The following season, City were beaten 1-0 and 2-0 and relegated from the Premier League – and the sides have not met since.

Sunday’s game, of course, is about far more than any football scoreline.. but a repeat of Campbell or David Wetherall’s heroics would at least raise a cheer from most of those inside a sold-out Valley Parade. Even if we all know deep down what the final outcome is likely to be.

Statistics
Bradford City versus Liverpool record (league)
Played: 26
Won: 6
Drawn: 2
Lost: 18
Goals For: 22; Goals Against: 45

Bradford City versus Liverpool record (all comps)
Played: 30
Won: 7
Drawn: 2
Lost: 21
Goals For: 24; Goals Against: 52

Played for Both Clubs Include: (Heritage Number)
David Pratt (#176)
Albert Whitehurst (#264)
Don Woan (#473)
David Wilson (#662)
Steve Staunton (#768)
Phil Babb (#795)
Stan Collymore (#928)
Stephen Darby (#1137)

When you think of Bradford City and cup final victories, you most probably think of one thing: Jimmy Speirs, the FA Cup and 1911 – but it isn’t the only time the Paraders have lifted a cup high above their heads.

1939 would prove to be a year which changed the world forever, following the outbreak of World War Two. It was the last year regular league football would be contested until after the war, and things didn’t get back to some form of regularity until 1946-47.

Bradford City were also going through an interesting period in the club’s history in 1939. Three years earlier, the club had been relegated to Division Three (North); and they actually wouldn’t return to the second tier for 48 years. Manager Dick Ray eventually left in 1938 after City finished disappointingly in mid-table in their first season in Division Three (North), and the board of directors turned to Carlisle manager Fred Westgarth, who decided to resign from his post at Brunton Park to take the City job. It was an inspired move from all parties.

Westgarth wasted no time in reshuffling an underperforming Paraders squad in time for the 1938-39 season. Goalkeeper James McCloy, a stalwart in Scotland with St Mirren, forward Jimmy Smailes and defender Ernest Beardshaw were among six players who made their debut on the opening day of the season: a thumping 6-2 win against Darlington. That was a hint for the success which would follow that season.

In the league, City finished 3rd, much-improved on the previous season’s 14th-placed finish. They were still some way behind eventual champions Barnsley and were knocked out of the FA Cup in the first round at Chester: but there was still another prize to aim for.

In 1933, the Football League introduced another tournament for teams in the bottom tier: the Third Division Challenge Cup. Both the north and south divisions were given their own cup, and City entered for the first time in 1937-38, doing well in the process: getting all the way to the final, before losing to back-to-back champions Southport.

However, Westgarth’s new-look, free-scoring Paraders – they netted 89 goals in 42 league games in 1938-39 – were clearly capable of going one step further this time around. It was an underwhelming start, however; it took a replay, and a Jack Deakin goal, to see off Rotherham in the first round – in front of a crowd of just 1,124 (City’s average was around three or four times that for league games in the run-up to World War Two).

From there though, the shackles came off. Deakin and George Hinsley both scored twice in a 6-0 demolition of Hull City in the next round, before Hartlepool United were beaten 5-2 at Valley Parade in the semi-final, Deakin this time scoring a hat-trick, with Hinsley netting twice.

City’s second successive final in the Challenge Cup produced a meeting with Accrington Stanley at Valley Parade. The two meetings between the sides in the league had been split by a single goal on each occasion: but Westgarth’s Paraders played Stanley off the field in the final – with Hinsley and Smailes among the scorers in a 3-0 win on May 1st, 1939, in front of a crowd of 3,117. Almost 28 years to the day since City’s first major cup triumph, another trophy had worked its way back to Valley Parade – and this time, it had been won on home soil to boot.

But that, unfortunately, is where the story ends. Many clubs can rightfully question how their clubs would have evolved in the following years had Britain not declared war on September 3rd, 1939: and Bradford City are one of them. Westgarth had built an exciting, free-scoring footballing side in a matter of just months, and unfortunately, by the time the war had ended in 1945, that team had been almost entirely broken up. Promotion, you suspect, would have been an inevitability at some stage under Westgarth – but even he left his position as manager midway through the war to join Hartlepool, where he would experience further success.

League football was suspended during World War Two, with an alternative competition, based on region, rather than ability, put in place by the Football League. That featured an enormous number of guest players who were normally stationed locally – as evidenced by the fact that one such player, James Isaac, was the third-highest appearance-maker for Bradford City during the war. Players like Goerge Murphy, Ernest Beardshaw and Jimmy Smailes, who could – and arguably should – be remembered as legends, had their best years in a Bradford City shirt robbed by the war.

But there will always be that triumph of 1938-39. Yes, it certainly won’t stick in the memory as firmly as the unforgettable FA Cup victory of 1911: but as City’s second – and most recent – cup competition victory, it is surely well worthy of a place in the minds of all supporters, irrespective of their age.

The team that won the 1938-39 Division Three (North) Challenge Cup Final (with heritage numbers):

City 3-0 Accrington
Goals: Hastie, Hinsley, Smailes

#356: James McCloy
#319: George Murphy
#305: Charles McDermott
#357: Peter Molloy
#354: Ernest Beardshaw
#232: Charles Moore
#337: Alfred Whittingham
#364: George Hinsley
#336: Jack Deakin
#363: Alexander Hastie
#358: James Smailes