SOCCER IN FOG

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 November 1945, Page 8

SOCCER IN FOG

RUSSIAN TEAM WINS LONDON, Nov. 221 The Moscow Dynamo Soccer team defeated the Arsenal team by. four goals to three.. The Press Association describes it as one of the most fantastic matches in the history of British football. It says: The players, from the side lines, appeared like shadow wraiths. It was only possible to follow the game by the sound from the referee’s whistle and the occasional flash of a photographer’s bulb at the goal ends. The Arsenal team’s manager, during the second half, when the Dynamos were leading by 4 to 3, told the Russians that they could have the satisfaction of a victory, and he suggested that the game should be called off, in view of the conditions. But he met with a curt refusal, and. the match was played out to the bitter end. It is doubtful whether an English referee would have allowed such a farcical game to run the full course, but the Russian official stuck strictly to the schedule. The referee surprised the crowd by ordering two English linesmen to stay on one side of the field, while he covered the whole of the other side. He insisted that he was the sole judge of any incident in the penalty area. The match produced a record for the number of substitutes who took part, there being two Russian and one Arsenal players. Towards the end, blows were struck in a scuffle. The referee apparently tried to order an Arsenal player off the field but no one could understand the Russian.

A Moscow correspondent reports:— “When the result of the game was broadcast, a Russian sports official exclaimed: ‘That proves that we are just about the best Soccer players in the world.’ ”