Football / Bristol City
Remembering Ashton Gate’s record attendances during FA Cup fever in 1935
Unlike some similar sized clubs that bounce around their level, it is well documented that Bristol City are not a side blessed with the ability to reel off long-past major accolades. No ancient First Division titles, no relic of a League Cup win, not even a 100-year-old FA Cup triumph to twist into relevancy when arguing of size or status.
And with the exception of last year’s fourth round win against West Ham, the FA Cup is a competition which has been particularly dry of success in recent years too. It is a competition, however, which does hold a couple of notable old records for the Robins.
Most obviously, the FA Cup is where City have played their most prestigious fixture ever, the 1909 final against Manchester United which ended in a 1-0 loss. It is also the tournament which has, to this day, attracted the largest number of spectators ever to watch a football match in Bristol.
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In a city which has rarely seemed to catch true footballing fire, the fever caused by a cup run in 1935 which drew more than 80,000 total supporters to BS3 across two games, is perhaps one of its most remarkable anomalies. And in City’s case, it is the most prudent reminder of what the FA Cup was once capable of. A moment in which the city shut down for football and the masses headed to Ashton Gate in numbers unlikely to ever be repeated.
This is the chaotic story of Bristol’s record football attendance and City’s “fine cup side” of 1935.
If Bristol City are to be considered in a state of languish now, then the barren era which began in the early 1930s compares even more unfavourably. Here, City spent well over a decade stuck in the old Third Division South, with most of those seasons being a lowly struggle.
No Robins side of the 30s is a particularly famous one. Nor are there any players from the era whose names have managed to truly echo in club folklore today. John Atyeo was still around 15 years away from pitching up in red and white, the first division days of Wedlock were by now a distant memory and – due to the club’s financial hardship – any significant talent that did pass through Ashton Gate was often quickly cashed in upon.
But to write those years off as a desert of entertainment is too harsh. The team of 34/35 was the side that, statistically, provided the people of Bristol with one of their highest moments of sporting excitement.
For two FA Cup games in the winter of that season, a young, resilient City side were the ones to lift Bristol into the most berserk of footballing fevers it had ever seen, drawing two crowds in excess of 40,000 for what were then and are still now the largest attendances in the football club’s history.
City’s trundling league season that year could only encourage an average of around 8,000 regulars through the turnstiles of Ashton Gate, and comparing this mammoth gap in attendees shows the incredible eagerness that could indeed be brought by the FA Cup in bygone worlds.
The first of those two seismic crowds, and officially City’s second highest attendance of all time, was against First Division side Portsmouth. City had earlier managed to battle out a third round replay victory against Bury – a club of much higher prestige – and the promise of a giant killing against a prominent Portsmouth side was boiling Bristol into a frenzy.
Papers from the week of the match had floated the unlikely idea of a crowd pushing 25,000, and none would have realistically foreseen this as gross underestimation. In reality, cigar-puffing bowler-hatted bedlam was already long on its way to Bedminster.
Caught unprepared, Ashton Gate could simply not sustain the mass of supporters who arrived ready to try anything for a glimpse of the game, and as crowds gathered safety became dangerously scarce. Barriers were smashed and house-full orders ignored as fans focused anyway they could on gaining entrance.
When space on the ground became too tight, many looked upwards; clambering onto roofs of stands for the views they craved. Perhaps these scenes should have been anticipated, for such was the fizz of excitement surrounding the fixture many of the city’s big factories – whose employee numbers stretched into the tens of thousands – had shut their doors to allow their workers a chance to attend.
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Read more: Wills’s Work Magazine provides glimpse into life in south Bristol 100 years ago
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Roared on by a touchline hovering, pitch-spilling army of Bristolians, City managed to bob and weave to a ridiculous 2-0 win amidst the chaos. Avenues were made between supporters when corners were taken and the referee was forced to repeatedly stop play to see to ongoing obstructions.
At full time, yet more barricades bit the dust as players were carried off on fans’ shoulders in the glorious aftermath of an FA Cup upset. It was, as described by the Western Daily Press, an “unprecedented” scene in the history of the club and city. The Robins were playing out their biggest moment since the early part of the century, and it was about to go bigger still.
The fixture for round five was to much anticipation revealed as Preston North End. In today’s game, they are perhaps the club most comparable to Bristol City; a solidified Championship side but no Premier League visits nor major honours for eras.
But in the time of this story they were Proud Preston, the famous Lilywhites, and had earned their nickname from determined past successes including an FA Cup triumph and a First Division title. They were the glamorous side facing up to the giant-killing Robins next, and among their star-studied team arriving in Bristol the Friday night before the tie was a Scottish midfielder named Bill Shankly.
Bob Hewison, a steely looking Northumbrian with slicked-back silver hair and City’s manager of the time, had diagnosed Portsmouth’s downfall in the previous round as “playing too much football”, and saw no reason why his “fine cup side” could not roughhouse a way through Preston too.
February 4 1935. Game day. Bristol expected. And this time, so did its authorities. In an attempt to reaffirm the legitimacy of law, order and capacity, an enormously raised police presence hovered around Ashton Gate from early on in the day. Traffic was rerouted and the roads of the city pointed towards Ashton Gate.
Work, other places, other things and other people were secondary. This was a day for Bristol City and its supporters.
An hour before kick-off, at a number adjudged to be 43,335, house-full orders were given, and this time enforced, subjecting thousands to a disappointed trudge home. Some remained outside, intent on listening to the commentary of the crowd or to peer in through Ashton Gate’s available gaps.
During those 60 minutes before kick off, fans lucky enough to be locked inside the stadium became drenched in thunderous downpours. But no one was for turning. An hour of wind and wet was nothing, of course, compared to the potential lifetime of knowledge that you bore witness to your club’s greatest modern victory.
City’s side that day was packed with the same players who had been putting in performances above and beyond their perceived station all tournament. There was Jack Hodge, the tricky outside winger from Devon; Bill Dolman, City’s impressive shot stopper; Dennis Roberts, a brawny centre half who retired with 322 City caps; and Ted Harston, an irrefutable attacking talent who would shortly go on to score 55 goals in a single season at Mansfield Town before signing for Liverpool.
These players would give the masses their shillings worth against Preston, keeping City’s cup run alive with a gruesomely fought, tense and torrid 0-0 draw. A more orderly affair where crowd control was concerned, perhaps, but they were no less fixated, no less in awe and the sense of occasion no less enormous.
When the full-time whistle blew, another historic footballing day in Bristol had ended with the Robins’ newfound heroes giving themselves a chance to provide the city with another one.
The replay at Deepdale, however, would see an abrupt end to dreams of more wild days ahead and of unlikely glories, as First Division class finally told. A 5-0 hammering in Lancashire, and the end of the road for City.
Amidst the comedown, there were to be no more victories of note for City’s fine cup side of the 34/35 season. Their league campaign dwindled, with the side sliding down to 16th, and some stars of the run were soon sold after it came to an end.
Even if there was glory to be had in keeping the team of the mid-30s together, careers would soon be cut short with the commencement of the Second World War. That tricky young talent of Jack Hodge has barely a football league appearance recorded after the start of the war, and others in the squad would cease to play professional football again.
While the closing down of industry did not harm matters, the crux of these record Bristol City attendances is nothing more than pure, dizzy cup wonderment; moments of contagious inspiration in an otherwise uninspired period of the club’s history.
So perhaps, when you are following City vs Wolves on Saturday, think of the ferrel mass that descended on Ashton Gate 90 winters ago, the thousands that were turned away, the danglers from roofs and the barricade breakers. For football may never be more anticipated, more feverish and more celebrated in Bristol than on those two FA Cup days in the winter of 1935.
Main photo: Bristol Archives
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