We have a football game in Sheffield to thank for a tradition that goes back to 1860
For all those looking at Monday's football fixture list in gratitude as a respite from excessive poultry consumption and a refuge from the in-laws, we have Sheffield FC and Hallam FC to thank.
On Boxing Day 1860 at Sandygate Road, the world's oldest and second oldest clubs played the first ever inter-club match, a 2-0 victory for Sheffield, the senior side, who prevailed despite fielding fewer men. For three lonely years as the pioneers of club football, the members of Sheffield FC had faced each other in matches between teams made up of players with surnames from the first 13 letters of the alphabet against the N-Zs, married v unmarried and those in professional occupations against the rest.
But in 1860 a tradition had been established that was built upon by the Football League's inaugural 22-game season in 1888-89, when Preston North End's "Invincibles" defeated Derby County 5-0 on the Feast of Stephen and all but sealed the title by stretching their lead to nine points over Aston Villa with five matches left to play. It has flourished ever since.
Christmas Day and Boxing Day double-headers were a routine part of the fixture list until 1957 and, although a handful of clubs ploughed on with hosting matches on 25 December, they had generally fallen out of favour by 1963, when the most remarkable Boxing Day on record produced 157 goals in 39 games.
In the First Division's 10 matches 66 were scored, Fulham's Graham Leggat bagging four in a 10-1 thrashing of Ipswich Town, Liverpool's Roger Hunt matching him in a 6-1 defeat of Stoke at Anfield, Burnley's raw-boned Andy Lochhead also scoring four in a 6-1 rout of Manchester United and twin hat-tricks for Fred Pickering and Andy McEvoy helping the league leaders, Blackburn Rovers, to an 8-2 mauling of West Ham United at Upton Park.
Astonishingly, two days later when the fixtures were reversed, Manchester United put five past Burnley at Old Trafford, Ipswich managed a 4-2 victory over Fulham and West Ham ran out 3-1 winners over Blackburn at Ewood Park.
The newspapers were full of the usual stories of Boxing Day "madcappery", cricket matches played in the snow and photographs of shivering souls swimming in the sea with only a light plastering of goose fat and rudimentary, masochistic nose clamps for protection, but even they could not upstage football's zenith of absurd festive scorelines.
One of the downsides of rugby league's move to a summer season in 1996 is the absence from the competitive fixture list of such Boxing Day derbies resonant in history as Wigan v St Helens, Workington v Whitehaven, Hull v Hull KR, Leeds v Wakefield, Widnes v Warrington, Batley v Dewsbury and Swinton v Oldham. Some survive as winter revenue raisers but too many have been scrapped on the sound but unromantic basis that there is little point preparing players for a hard-fought fixture months before the Super League season begins.
Given its roots in fox hunting, which greeted each 26 December as a red-letter day, national hunt racing's King George VI Chase at Kempton is a Boxing Day staple since 1947 that has provided imperishable memories of courage and drama. Arkle, "himself" to his legion of Irish devotees, won it in 1965 having been tested to the two-mile marker by the doomed Dunkirk. At that point, with his head still held high, he drew on his extraordinary powers of acceleration and sprinted away. A year later he still came second after breaking a pedal bone on the guard rail two miles from home. Cheltenham will always claim him as its own but Kempton, too, has a special place in the legend of the flying, gallant gelding.
Desert Orchid, the first to win the race four times, was cherished as the nation's favourite racehorse for his exploits in the King George VI. By 1991, as he prepared his attempt to win it for a fifth time, he was being namechecked by the chancellor of the exchequer, Norman Lamont, during the budget speech.
"Desert Orchid and I have a lot in common," Lamont said. "We are both greys, vast sums of money are riding on our performance, the opposition hopes we shall fall at the first fence and we are both carrying too much weight." The similarities ended there ? Dessie captured the public imagination in a way that is an occupational impossibility for the tenant of 11 Downing Street.
On Monday Kauto Star has the chance to surpass the Grey Horse's record in the "Christmas cracker" and post victory No5. Tears will be shed if he makes it but even if he does not triumph the crowds at Kempton tearing up their betting slips will ultimately recognise how blessed they have been by such a great champion.
As Christmas night in the UK dwindles towards Boxing Day, thoughts turn to Melbourne where the first day of the MCG's Test match gets under way. Last year with the Ashes tied at 1-1 England put Australia into bat and skittled the hosts for 98 in 42.5 compelling overs of menacing seam and swing bowling. In 1986 Gladstone Small and Ian Botham took five wickets apiece to bowl out Australia for 141 and both matches were pivotal victories in winning the Ashes, roared to the rafters more than 10,000 miles away.
In 1981 "the G" witnessed one of the greatest Australia innings in living memory when Kim Hughes came to the wicket with his side eight for three against West Indies and left the oval a tad over four hours later on 100 not out having cut, hooked and driven Michael Holding, Andy Roberts, Joel Garner and Colin Croft in an astounding knock of bravado and class.
His fightback gave such impetus that by the close of play Australia had reduced West Indies to 10 for four and had even displaced the perennially brutal Sydney to Hobart yacht race from its habitual dominance of the sports coverage.
In the Sydney suburb of Rushcutters Bay in 1908, a few miles from where the sloops leave the harbour heads en route for Tasmania, Jack Johnson became the first black world heavyweight champion in a ferociously one-sided battering of Canada's Tommy Burns and struck a significant blow in the fight against bigotry. Pleasingly for literalists, on that day prizefighting made the most momentous contribution of all to the history of Boxing Day sport.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2011/dec/25/boxing-day-sport
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