November 6, 1915
It is yet unknown when the report of the Football Association commission which followed up the League inquiry into the allegations concerning the Manchester United – Liverpool match last April will be published, but on the best authority we can say that it is hardly likely to drop a bombshell into the football world when it does appear.
Not that either the League or F.A. are convinced the game was all it should have been.
But it is one thing to suspect and quite another to be able to prove, and thus the players get the benefit of the doubt.
But if there was no connivance, no arrangement, it is a coincidence that nearly all the bookmakers right down to the Midlands and up in Newcastle were cleaned out except those who refused to pay out, daring the backers to proceed against them, and that all the money was out on at the actual score – 2-0.
It is not suggested by anyone that all the players were implicated.
The inquiry goes to show that there was comparatively little betting on the match in and around Liverpool, but that, generally speaking, people had got the idea of the actual result there is no doubt.
One can only hope that there was no squaring of the game, no matter what may have been the temptation to any unscrupulous player to “make summer wages” while opportunity served, before wages were knocked on the head, for once the public begin to question the bona fides of the game it is all U.P. with it, just as it was with professional footracing and cycling in the old days.
(Liverpool Echo: November 6, 1915)
"Play Up, Liverpool" 