“There was no fooling the 18,000 spectators at Old Trafford. “Play up, you rotters!” they screamed. The fix was on. They knew it, as Manchester United went through the motions against Liverpool on 2 April 1915, winning 2-0 in a listless performance.”

In Episode Eighty Two we revisit ‘The Silenced Crowd’ by Richard Fitzpatrick from Issue Ten, which looks at the greatest scandal in British football in the first half of the twentieth century, as a group of players from two of the country’s greatest sides colluded to fix a match.

This episode was produced by James Parkinson as part of a collaboration with By Association, an award-winning narrative podcast about football, based in Australia. For a new audio documentary each month subscribe to By Association wherever you get your audio output, and learn more at the show's website - byassociation.audio

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