So I got this idea last Tuesday, right? Wanted to see every single football match Crystal Palace ever played against Everton. Sounded simple enough at the pub, ha! Figured, how hard could it be to just make a big list? Turns out, pretty damn hard.
The Messy Start
Started simple. Opened up Wikipedia, scanned the Palace and Everton history pages. Wrote down the obvious ones – recent Premier League stuff mostly. Felt good for maybe five minutes. Then I realized, that ain’t even half of it. These teams go way back. Like, Victorian times back. Felt a headache coming on.
Googled “Palace Everton head to head”. Got flooded with news articles about last weekend’s game. Useless. Tried adding “all fixtures” or “historic results”. Better, found a couple fan forums where old geezers argued about scores from the 70s. Scrolled forever, copied down dates and scores they mentioned. My fingers started hurting already.
Deep Digging Like an Archaeologist
Next day, rolled up my sleeves. Knew I needed proper sources. Found some sketchy-looking football databases online. Some made you pay, others just felt broken. Spent ages clicking through seasons. One site had the scores right, but the years all messed up. Another listed games that never happened. Almost threw my keyboard.
Stumbled upon this ancient football history site. Looked like it hadn’t been updated since dial-up. Found old Football League records from like the 1920s! Got real excited. Spent hours cross-referencing dates and places mentioned on different sites.
- Checked old newspaper archives – names like “The Daily Sketch” popped up! Weird.
- Looked at defunct league tables – Third Division stuff felt like another universe.
- Found PDFs from Palace historians – bless those nerds, seriously.
- Went through Everton’s official history books snippets found online.
Ended up with pages and pages of scribbles: “Oct 11, 1930, Palace 1 – 2 Everton (FA Cup)”; “March 14, 1977, Goodison, 0-0”. My desk looked like a detective’s board.
The Spreadsheet Hell
Okay, had a mountain of notes. Time to organize. Launched Excel. Created columns: “Date”, “Competition”, “Venue”, “Palace Goals”, “Everton Goals”. Easy.
Started typing. And typing. And typing. Realized how many damn games they played! Hundreds! War time matches. Friendly fixtures that probably involved drinking more than playing. League Cups, FA Cups, Charity Shields even? Every time I thought I was done, I’d find another batch from some obscure cup in the 50s. My eyes started glazing over.
Tried sorting by date. Excel crashed twice. Finally got it stable. Scrolled down the long list. Felt a weird sense of pride mixed with exhaustion.
Making Sense of the Madness
Now for the “timeline” part. Dumped it all into a new document. Just listed them chronologically, oldest to newest. Saw the whole story unfold:
- First ever clash: September 1905! Palace were in the Southern League then. Lost 1-0. Typical.
- Long stretches in different divisions meaning decades without playing.
- Massive scorelines from different eras – 4-5 losses, 5-0 wins… pure chaos.
- So, so, many draws. Seriously.
Highlighted the big wins for each side. Added little notes where I knew something wild happened – dodgy penalties, pitch invasions, that time Andy Gray scored a hat-trick against us. Made it feel less like a spreadsheet.
Stared at the finished list. All told, looks like they kicked a ball at each other over 150 times. History’s heavy, man.
Was It Worth It?
Honestly? Probably not to anyone else. Took me like three days of digging through digital dustbins and wrestling with ancient data. Found conflicting reports, had arguments with myself over missing FA Cup replays listed in one place but not another. My butt hurts from sitting.
But now? It’s done. One big, ugly, beautiful timeline of Palace vs Everton knocking lumps out of each other since Queen Victoria was probably still warm. Feels good to have it down. Now… what do I even do with it? Probably nothing. Maybe just stare at it. Cheers.
