LEIPZIG ENCOUNTERS

While we have never faced RB Leipzig before, we have played four matches against teams from the city, including our UEFA Cup semi-final clash with Lokomotive Leipzig back in the 1973/74.

- JON RAYNER

But we have to go back over 100 years for our first-ever fixture against a Leipzig-based team, when we travelled to Germany for the very first time for a six-match tour of the country in May, 1911. And this is where it gets interesting.

Up until now, all the Club knew about those matches were the team names of the opposition, the date of the game and the city it was played in. Match programmes and club handbooks of the time refer to the games, but our team line-up and goalscorers aren’t mentioned and have remained a mystery!

But, after some extensive online research and with the help of German football historian Udo Luy – who possesses the greatest archive of German football journals in his country – we have been able to unearth local newspaper match reports of those friendly fixtures which provide us with all the missing information.

So here, for the first time in the club’s history, are details of our first visit to Leipzig…

First Time Visitors

Overseas tours were still a relatively new concept in 1911. We first travelled abroad to take on continental opposition in 1905 when we visited Austria-Hungary, then Belgium in 1907 before we ventured further afield with a ground-breaking tour to Argentina and Uruguay in 1909.

Two years later and Germany was our destination as we spent the majority of the month of May there. First stop Hamburg to play a North German Combined XI, which we won 4-1, before moving onto Berlin where we beat Preussen 7-0 and Hertha FC 4-1. The final two matches were against Eintracht FC in Brunswick and Kickers-Victoria FC in Frankfurt, winning 4-1 and 6-0 respectively.