Football writing, thoughts and more by Gary James
On this day in 1939 Old Trafford was packed like never before (or numbers wise since!) when Grimsby faced Wolves in the FA Cup semi final. It was the record crowd for the venue – I’m sure many people would expect United to have attracted the venue’s record crowd but that’s not true.
You can find out more and watch film from the game here:
gjfootballarchive.com/2021/03/25/old-traffords-record-crowd-wolves-v-grimsby/
On this day (March 25) in 1939 Old Trafford attracted its highest ever attendance when 76,962 packed Manchester United’s ground to see Wolves defeat Grimsby 5-0 in the FA Cup semi-final.
At the time this was the third highest attendance ever attracted in Manchester (behind 84,569 MCFC v Stoke, 1934 & 79,491 MCFC v Arsenal, 1935; fourth highest was 76,166 MCFC v Cardiff, 1924) and today it is the eighth highest.
You can view film of the semi-final here. Well worth watching to see Old Trafford at that time. The Old Trafford scenes begin after about 48 seconds:
There were lots of crowd safety issues at this game – these were the days when fans were packed in without the authorities really considering the potential for disaster or injury (which happened frequently).
Incidentally, Dorsett (seen below after a collision) was related to two of Manchester City’s early heroes Joe and George Dorsett.
You can read about the 84,569 record attendance set in 1934 for Manchester here:
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