Saturday, September 23 – 1933
Match: Football League, First Division, at White Hart Lane, kick-off: 15:30.
Tottenham Hotspur – Liverpool 0-3 (0-1).
Attendance: 33,080.
‘Spurs (2-3-5): Jack Nicholls; Billy Felton, Billy Whatley; Tom Evans, Arthur Rowe, Tommy Meads; Jimmy McCormick, Taffy O’Callaghan, George Hunt, Willie Hall, Willie Evans.
Liverpool (2-3-5): Arthur Riley; Willie Steel, Jack Tennant; Tom Morrison, Tom Bradshaw, Jimmy McDougall; Berry Nieuwenhuys, Gordon Hodgson, Sam English, Dave Wright, Alf Hanson.
The goals: 0-1 English, 0-2 Hanson, 0-3 English.
It was Springbok Day at White Hart-lane on Saturday.
Meet the sprightly Reds of Liverpool – a team who number in their ranks no fewer than three South Africans.
On the right wing – Nieuwenhuys, who has only been in this county a fortnight, partnered by Hodgson, the international inside-right. In goal – Riley.
Nieuwenhuys had a hand in two of Liverpool’s three goals.
Riley saw to it that Tottenham did not get any.
So Tottenham Hotspur, proud leaders of the First Division, were humbled on their own ground by three clear goals.
The Spurs don’t think much of Springbok Day.
This was one of those games in which one side has most of the play – and the other side gets the goals.
Liverpool had about half-a-dozen chances. They scored three times.
The Spurs swooped down on goal time without number. But ever and always the found the path barred by a rock-like defence.
The opportunists
The lesson was clear. Victory went to the team whose forwards had learned the value of opportunism.
Defeat was the lot of the side whose defence staggered under pressure.
The story of the match is simple. The Spurs’ bright young forwards kept hammering away at the Liverpool defence for three-quarters of the game.
But Liverpool’s all-Scottish halves were equal to the occasion. Bradshaw, down the middle, had Hunt in his pocket, while McDougall and Morrison never gave McCormick and Willie Evans an inch of room on the wings.
Even when Tottenham’s raids did confound the Reds’ half-backs, there was always Steel and Tennant to raise a further barrier. And, behind this redoubtable pair, stood Riley.
Riley’s unerring anticipation and certain hands spelled “Finis” to every Tottenham attack.
In Liverpool’s first real attack, Hanson slung a fine centre into the middle. The flaxen head of English, the Irish international centre forward with Scottish upbringing, was in the right place. Nicholls stood no chance.
In the second half, Nieuwenhuys came to life on the right wing. The South African had been obviously nervous in the opening chapter.
But now he began to show his true mettle and, from two of his perfectly placed centres, Hanson and English put on two further goals to complete Tottenham’s discomforture.
(Daily Mirror, 25-09-1933)
Old-time methods of Liverpool puzzle defenders
There is no desire to detract from the real merit of Liverpool’s win at Tottenham when it is pointed out that it was accomplished by old-fashioned methods. Perhaps it would be better to say by sound, honest-to-goodness football. And I liked it immensely.
In the early part of the game I was afraid that Liverpool’s South African right wing, Nieuwenhuys and Hodgson, were going to have an unpleasant time. Nieuwenhuys was certainly not in the running before the interval. It is difficult to be transplanted from the hard, sun-baked grounds of South Africa to rain-sodden turf and be able to judge the pace of the ball.
So nearly all the passes that were meant for him skidded past him, and he gave the general impression of being slow off the mark. But eventually, by sticking to the out-of-date (in this country) methods of fast touchline runs and accurate centres from the corner-flag, Nieuwenhuys (nicknamed Nivvy) had the ‘Spurs’ defence guessing. They expected him to cut in, and waited for him.
Twenty yards of green turf separated him from the nearest defender, when twice, with time standing still, he lobbed the ball into the centre and saw Hanson, and then English, put it past Nicholls.
Previously – in the first half – Hanson had given English a similar sort of pass, and the entre forward not too neatly headed and shouldered it into the Tottenham net.
Perhaps the Liverpool management will decide that Nieuwenhuys will gradually become accustomed to English wing forward play – modern style. Maybe they will let him work out his own salvation. It is a pretty problem: meanwhile, defence will be puzzled because they will be confronted by a new – yet – very old – style of play.
Wright was the Machiavelli of the Liverpool attack. He did everything he could to expose weaknesses in the Tottenham defence and he succeeded very well.
But I rather fancy the ‘Spurs’ forwards were equally to blame for this defeat. They crowded together in the middle of the field; Hunt and W. Evans and O’Callaghan and Hall – and sometimes McCormick – ran in and out and played musical chairs in the Liverpool penalty area, and got nowhere.
Then in desperation they shot very hard from long range and made the cool and calculating Riley (another South African) look a super-goalkeeper.
The two entre halves did yeoman work, and McDougall, of Liverpool, was as good as anyone else on the field. The truth is that Tottenham lost some of their speed on the wet ground and had nothing to replace it. But they will.
(Daily Mail, 25-09-1933)
"Play Up, Liverpool" 