“QPR recently scored six goals against Pompey with three players scoring a double each,” begins Dan Trelfer. “This threw up a few questions.”

So it did. Let’s take Dan’s questions one at a time.

1) What’s the most number of goals a team has scored in a game without a player scoring a hat-trick?

Our readers recalled at least three examples of teams hitting double figures without anybody staking a claim to the match ball. Before we get to those games, let’s round up some hat-trickless hammerings from the English top flight.

Nottingham Forest thrashed Chelsea 7-0 at the City Ground in April 1991, with Stuart Pearce and a teenage Roy Keane scoring twice. Newcastle beat Sheffield United 8-0 in 2023 (see below), and Liverpool have had two 9-0 victories. Crystal Palace (1989) and Bournemouth (2022) were the unfortunate opposition.

And so to double figures. Chris Matterface and Michael Pilcher both mentioned Gillingham’s 10-0 hammering of Chesterfield in 1987-88. “Howard Pritchard, David Shearer, George Shipley and Karl Elsey all scored twice,” writes Chris, “but nobody went home with the match ball.”

From Priestfield back to Anfield, where Liverpool have had so many huge victories over the years – including a record 11-0 win over Norwegian side Strømsgodset in the Cup Winners’ Cup of 1974-75. “Nine outfield players scored,” writes Michael Haughey, “and two Phils – Boersma and Thompson – got a brace each.”

Liverpool’s haul was matched by Australia against Samoa in a World Cup qualifier 25 years ago. Australia had already won 22-0 against Tonga and 31-0 against American Samoa in their group. Pretty hard to rack up those scorelines without a hat-trick, but they did manage it in an 11-0 victory. Aurelio Vidmar, David Zdrilic, Archie Thompson and Tony Popovic all scored twice.

2) What’s the most number of goals a team has scored without anyone scoring more than one goal?

Dave Amos and John Mearns were straight in with Newcastle’s 8-0 evisceration of Sheffield United at Bramall Lane during the 2023-24 Premier League season. Eight goals, eight different goalscorers.

Knowledge regular Dirk Maas has seen those eight goals and raised them by steering us in the direction of Guatemala’s 10-0 victory over Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in a World Cup qualifier five years ago.

3) Has a team ever scored eight with four players all scoring twice? Or 10 with five doubles?

We suspected this question would go unanswered. Dirk Maas had other ideas and has produced sepia-tinted examples of both scenarios. Let’s start with Atlético Madrid’s 8-0 win over the Irish side Drumcondra in the 1958-59 European Cup. Joaquin Peiró, Vavá, Enrique Collar and Jorge Mendonça were the goalscorers. In the second round of the 1965-66 Cup Winners’ Cup, 1. FC Magdeburg walloped FC Sion 8-1. Manfred Eckardt, Hermann Stöcker, Günter Kubisch and Joachim Walter shared the goals.

Dirk even found a game in which 10 goals were shared equally among five players: Lyon 10-0 SR Dellois in the 1955-56 Coupe de France. François Konrady, Ernest Schultz, Émile Antonio, Jacques Fatton and René Ramon the double goalscorers. The most surprising thing is that Lyon’s 10th and final goal was scored in the 79th minute, meaning five players were on a hat-trick for the last 11 minutes against a team whose morale had been crushed, and nobody managed to score.

Lucky losers

“I just got back from watching Luton Town win the Football League Trophy,” chirps AJ. “This was after they were knocked out by Swindon in the last 16, only to be reinstated because Swindon fielded two ineligible players. Have any other teams won a cup competition after being reinstated?”

This is a sibling of an old Knowledge favourite – teams that have won competitions for which they didn’t qualify, such as Denmark at Euro 92. In this case, Luton were knocked out of the EFL Trophy when they lost 2-1 at home to Swindon, only to be reinstated three weeks later. Swindon fielded two players who were ineligible for different reasons: Ollie Clarke was suspended and Aaron Drinan came on as substitute despite not being on the official teamsheet.

A not dissimilar thing happened to Rinus Michels and Johan Cruyff’s brilliant Ajax team in the KNVB Cup of 1969-70. As Dirk Maas points out, they were beaten 2-1 by AZ in the third round – which was the last 14 rather than the last 16 due to an irregular number of teams in the competition. The seven winners went through to the quarter-finals along with one ‘lucky loser’. The eighth quarter-finalist was drawn in the PSV Eindhoven boardroom, with Ajax coming out of the hat. Six weeks later, Ajax beat PSV 2-0 in the final.

We’ll be honest: we didn’t expect Hailsham Town to appear in this week’s Knowledge. But Alun Thomas informs us that they won their first-ever trophy, the Sussex Junior Cup of 1895-96, after being beaten in both the quarter-final and semi-final! The two games were replayed after Hailsham protested, one because the referee had been appointed by the opposition and the other because of an ineligible player.

“There was another protest following Hailsham’s 1-0 win in the final,” writes Alun. Their opponents Worthing Athletic objected to the use of a replacement linesman during the latter stages of the game but as this had been pre-arranged with the match referee, Hailsham kept the trophy.”

Université National de Bénin took a similarly strange route to glory in the Coupe de l’Indépendance of 2004, as outlined on the lucky losers page on RSSSF.com.

And finally, Mitchell Sandler has a tangential nugget from the EFL Trophy. Due to the scheduling problems caused by Covid, Salford City won the 2019-20 competition 96 days after they had been eliminated from the 2020-21 version. Does that count as the worst trophy defence ever?

Knowledge archive

“Has a physio ever pulled up injured while sprinting on to the pitch to treat an injured player?” asked Scott Sumner in October 2016.

Looking beyond the more recent instance of Gary Lewin dislocating his ankle and being carried off on a stretcher after a rare moment of England celebration at the 2014 World Cup, there are a couple of other unfortunate physios. “Back when Southampton’s fortunes were not so good, I was at a game at Home Park, in about 2006-07, between Plymouth and Saints,” recalls Philip Wood. “A Saints player had pulled up with an injured hamstring and required treatment … cue the Southampton physio, who was getting on a bit. He enthusiastically came sprinting across to the far side of the pitch to where the injured player was lying and about 10 metres before he got to him started hobbling himself. He had managed to also pull a hamstring – much to the derision and merriment of the Plymouth fans. Cue a scene of the injured leading the injured.”

And Andrea Raffaelli mailed in to state that “in September 2012, the team doctor for my hometown club Ternana (Italian Serie B) tore an achilles tendon while sprinting on to the pitch to treat two players (both playing for the opposite side), who had collided head-to-head. Talk about good deeds gone wrong. Here’s a source (in Italian) that mentions the incident.”

The following week, David Hopkins mailed in with a cracking follow-up answer: “In the 1930 World Cup semi-final between Argentina and the USA, the American team doctor Jack Coll ran on to treat an injured player, dropping his bag on to the pitch as he arrived to do so,” he emails. “This caused a bottle of chloroform inside the bag to break, leading to Coll being overcome by fumes … and being carried off himself.”

UPDATE: there are a couple more additions to make to this answer. From 2013, Germany’s legendary physio Klaus Eder suffered both a torn leg muscle and a broken finger while running on to the pitch to tend to defender Marcel Schmelzer in a World Cup qualifier against Austria. Despite the two injuries, Eder continued to treat Schmelzer before being helped off the pitch by Mesut Özil and Miroslav Klose, explaining afterwards that “one should not underestimate the effect of adrenaline.”

And in 2021 in the Uruguayan city of Fray Bentos, a first-aider known as Cocoita Vasquez injured himself while running on to the pitch with a stretcher in a match between Uruguayan sides Laureles and Universitario de Salto. Vasquez clearly pulls up as he approaches an injured player, and staggers off towards the edge of the pitch before collapsing behind the goal.

Can you help?

“Manchester City have been top of the Premier League for only six days this season yet are now most people’s favourites for the title,” writes Danny Perkins. “Which teams have won any of Europe’s top five leagues while spending the least time on top of the table?”

“Europa League semi-finalists Nottingham Forest could conceivably win the competition while being relegated, and would then enter next season’s Champions League while playing in their domestic second tier. Has this ever happened anywhere across Europe?” asks Gunnar Cauthery.

“Celtic just beat St Mirren 6-2 after extra time in the Scottish Cup semi-final,” notes Will Spry and several others. “What is the biggest winning margin after extra time in a major competition?”

“During Sunday’s game at Aston Villa, Chris Rigg became Sunderland’s first English goalscorer of this Premier League season, 33 games in,” noticed Chris Carter. “Has a club ever gone an entire season without a domestic goalscorer? What’s the most goals a team has scored in a season without one?”

“Erling and Alf-Inge Haaland bought the only surviving copy of the first printed edition of Snorri Sturluson’s medieval history of Norwegian kings and donated it to their hometown of Bryne in Norway,” emails Kári Tulinius. “Have other footballers bought and donated rare books or other antiques?”

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