One thing I do know for sure is that there is no way a match like it would happen these days, that being Arsenal and Chelsea playing a friendly with each other on the 31st of January 1925 as an experiment in changing the offside law. The two sides locking horns at Highbury for the game on a blank Saturday afternoon, during which the second round proper of the FA Cup took place minus both the Gunners and the Blues who had already been knocked out of the competition. Other experimental friendlies also taking place that day at Clapton Orient, Charlton and Norwich, while an amateur match between West Riding and Staffordshire also went ahead.
In the 20th century the offside law had already been amended twice in the years before those games, the first change coming in 1907 with it now being limited to the opponent's half of the field of play only. While in 1920 the following was added to the law: ‘Play should not be stopped and a player given offside under Law 6 because the player is in an offside position. A breach of the Law is only committed when a player who is in an offside position interferes with an opponent or with the play.’ Which unless I’m being daft (chances are high) sounds very similar to the law at the moment, despite the ‘interferes….with the play’ argument seemingly being a modern phenomenon.
So, what set off the experiment? Well, the three player offside rule that was adhered to at that time was seen as one of the main reasons for defensive and stifling football. The scenario being that defending players would play high up their half and by keeping in a diagonal line they could catch a player offside near the half-way line as soon as he advanced beyond the foremost defender, and should an attacker manage to break through to chase down a long ball forward he still had a defender and the goalkeeper to beat.
Two reputed masters of the art were full-backs Bill McCracken and Frank Hudspeth at Newcastle United who would combine to catch out attackers in the early 1900s, with a game against Notts County, another team with offside trapper full-backs in John Montgomery and Bert Morley, apparently being wedged in a 20-yard section in the middle of the pitch as both sides looked to spring the offside trap. Other clubs soon catching on to the defensive tactics, with free-kicks becoming more plentiful and scoring harder as the entertainment-side of the game slid down the scale.
The Arsenal experiment then, saw in the first half a line drawn 40 yards from each goal limiting the area in which players could be offside, while after the interval referee Mr Todman enforced the rule that would eventually be implemented, that being the reduction of the number of defenders needed between the player of the ball and the goal from three to two. The game itself, which Chelsea won 1-0 for the record, remarkably containing just one offside, while Mr Todman apparently found it a pleasure not to have to blow his whistle so much.
The two man rule proving a success at the other trial matches too, although in the West Riding game the 40 yards line was deemed the better idea, with one observer wondering whether the half-way line could be done away with, with just the centre-circle left in that area of the pitch. Mr Pilch, the referee in the Norwich against Cambridge University game having his feet firmly in the two men rule camp though as he commented: “Football will be faster and a tremendous amount more interesting. I feel absolutely confident that the suggested alteration will make the game much more interesting for spectators. We must take things as they are, not as we would like them to be.”
He was right too, as after a few more experimental matches took place during the remainder of the 1924-25 season, the new two man offside rule was adopted by the Football Association at the beginning of the following campaign. The result being that the amount of goals scored in the Football League rose by a remarkable margin from 4,700 to a massive 6,373 from the one season to the next. The First Division table the proof of the pudding as all 22 sides, bar wooden-spoonists Notts County, scored over 60 goals. The other side relegated being Manchester City who netted 89 times while conceding bang on a century. That won’t happen these days either.