The Fiver | Hoying a bottle of ale into the radio receiver in impotent rage

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Back in the day, it didn’t matter who you supported: if a team from England was playing a match against European opposition, you’d give them your blessing. Take, for example, the passion on display across the entire country when Wolverhampton Wanderers took on Honved in a prestige floodlit friendly in December 1954. The BBC cleared the schedule of Britain’s only TV channel to show the second half live, while the whole thing was the subject of radio commentary on the Light Programme. Everyone was on tenterhooks to find out whether Stan Cullis’s champions could put Ferenc Puskas, Sandor Kocsis, Zoltan Czibor and Jozsef Bozsik back in their box after England’s recent 6-3 and 7-1 Hungary humiliations. And they did it! Whoop! What a glorious nation!

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