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It’s kind of sad how English football has re-written itself over the last twenty years or so. It’s as if football didn’t exist before the heinous brand that is the English Premiership came into being. On Saturday, Sadio Mane of Southampton scored a record breaking hat-trick in English top flight football. However, most references go on about how he has surpassed Robbie Fowler’s record of 4 minutes and 33 seconds, but for top flight football in England, the record was actually held by a Scotsman. Take a bow Graham Leggat. Aberdeen born Graham, played for the Dons between 1953-58, scoring 64 goals in 109 appearances and indeed had been part of their championship winning team of ’54-’55. He moved to Fulham after the World Cup in ’58 in which he played in two games. Graham had a successful career with Fulham, scoring 127 goals in 254 League games, which if you do the maths is a goal every two games. On Boxing Day, 1963 Fulham pulverised Ipswich 10-1 with Graham scoring a hat-trick in three minutes, which stood as an English top flight record ’til last Saturday. I can’t imagine there were many games in Scotland that day, as the Winter of ’63 shut down Scottish football for almost two months and some say even cost Partick Thistle the First Division title that season.

First posted on Facebook on May 20th, 2015