Funny Football Score - Illogan Reserves FC Lose 55 - 0

Here's a funny football score, a village team in Cornwall (Illogan Reserves FC) lost 55 - 0 and are still not bottom of their league! It's probably worth pointing out that only 7 players from that team turned up. Not including a goalkeeper!

Click image to enlarge

There are mismatches in football and then there are humiliations and one Cornish team has been well and truly embarrassed after losing by 55 goals to nil. In a scoreline more suited to the rugby field, Illogan RBL Reserves subjected Madron to the epic 55-0 thrashing last Saturday with one player scoring 10 goals alone.
And while the scale of the defeat was remarkable, Madron's players have become used to being humiliated on the field, having conceded 150 goals in their previous nine games and scoring only two.

The Penzance-based team arrived for Saturday's game with just seven players and Illogan seized their numerical advantage by racing into a 24-0 lead at half time. They passed the half century mark in the second half and by the time Madron's capitulation was completed, 11 of Illogan's players had found the net.

Luke Abbott-Smith led the goal rout with ten goals, with Gareth Pitt (8), Luke Helan (7), Ryan Treloar (6), Jason Buckley (6), Mikey Pascoe (6), Nick Ward (3), Lee Harris (3), Stuart Peters (3), Adam Callaway (2) and Dave Thomas completing the scoring. The biggest win in Illogan's history means they have now scored an incredible 125 goals in 12 games.

Fans of Ipswich Town will sympathise with Madron having been subjected to the biggest defeat in Premier League history in 1995, as Andy Cole scored five goals in Manchester United's 9-0 win. Tottenham Hotspur almost matched the Red Devil's drubbing of Ipswich by battering Wigan 9-1 last season while the 1998/9 Premier League season saw Newcastle hammer Sheffield Wednesday 8-0.

Yet even the world record victory in international football - Australia's 31-0 defeat of American Samoa in 2001 - pales in comparison to the 55-0 battering Madron FC faced last weekend. The scale of the victory was no laughing matter for the victorious Illogan assistant manager Mark Waters, who described the result as a 'mockery'.

'Nobody enjoys games like that, we certainly didn't enjoy it,' he said.

'I have nothing but admiration for the seven Madron players, but it does make a mockery of the league.'

Though virtually every Illogan attack ended with a goal, Water stressed his side had paid their opponents 'respect'. 'We didn't once send our keeper up as some teams do in these situations and there was no mickey taking,' he added. 'At the end of the day it was a league game, it was a waste of everybody's time, including the referee's, but we had to abide by the rules and play the game.

'I have nothing but admiration for their boys, they came into the bar afterwards and they were as good as gold.' Madron were promoted to the top division of the Mining Football League last season but lost a number of first-team players and have been forced to assemble a brand new - and evidently struggling - squad. 'I know everybody is probably laughing at us but we will battle on,' said club secretary Alan Davenport.

'Teams drop out of leagues all the time, but we've not missed a game this season and we will carry on. This is a very difficult time but why walk out? 'On Saturday we originally had ten players but a number read dropped out at the last minute leaving us with seven. 'It was always going to be difficult against the top-of-the-table team but to be fair to them they kept going.' Illogan's win, the largest in the club's history, is not, however, the biggest ever.

Madagascan side, Stade Olympique de L'Emyrne, put the ball in their own net 149 times in a 2002 league match against Adema in protest at a refereeing decision.

Stade Olympique de L'Emyrne's manager had been enraged by a refereeing decision in an earlier match which had cost his team the league and ordered his players to score multiple own goals - he was, unsurprisingly, later suspended by Madagascar's football federation for three years.

We were thinking that couldn't the winning team have pulled four players after a while, or at least told them "You guys sit down over there and do nothing;" it would have minimized the mismatch.