On 30th April 1905, Everton played their first ever overseas match in Budapest. It was the first of seven matches of a tour of Austria-Hungary. In January the same year, the club agreed to do a European tour, visiting Budapest, Vienna and Prague. There was originally a plan for a European tour in 1903 but nothing went any further. The first match of the tour was against a combined XI of two Hungarian clubs – Budapesti Torna Club and Magyar Atletikai Club.
Football was relatively new in Hungary at the time and several English teams visited the nation before Everton. However, results suggested that the Hungarians were far, far behind the English. When Oxford University visited in 1902, they won all four of their games against Hungarian opposition with a combined score of 58-0. Southampton played two matches in Budapest the following year and won both with a combined score of 29-0.
Hungarian teams’ results against English opposition weren’t all that bad but as a country fairly new to the sport, the tours were a learning curve for them, and Everton were their first major test. They were the first Football League club Hungarians played against. The Hungarian press was expecting another heavy annihilation when the combined Budapesti TC and Magyar AC team face the Blues but was nevertheless anticipating a club of Everton’s ability playing in their country.
The match took place at what is now known as the Millenaris Sporttelep, which was Magyar AC’s home ground, in front of around 7,000 fans. The opposition included a few Hungarian internationals, such as Gaspar Borbas, Ferenc Blaszek and Arpad Kisfaludy. Details of the match weren’t reported by the English press apart from the scoreline, however after discovering a Hungarian newspaper archive and attempting to translate reports to the best of my ability with a little help from Google Translate, here is how events unfolded in a historic match for Everton.
Everton kicked off and already dominated the match in the opening minutes before Tommy McDermott broke the deadlock after 7 minutes. Everton doubled their lead on the 11th minute through McDermott again and Jimmy Settle made it 3-0 six minutes later. The gulf between the sides became more and more evident as the match went on. Everton made it 4-0 after 21 minutes through Sandy Young. The combined team managed to avoid conceding another until 19 minutes later with Young scoring again. At the half-time whistle, Everton led by 5 goals to nil.
Three minutes after the restart, there was another goal – but this time, it was for the Hungarians. At the start of the second half, Sandy Young and Billy Scott switched positions – Young in goal and Scott in the forward line – due to Young suffering a knock and Gaspar Borbas took advantage. Sandy Young became complacent and gave the ball away to Ferenc Blaszek, who then crossed the ball to Borbas and he slotted it past Young. The crowd went into raptures, even though the Hungarians were still losing by 4 goals. Following the goal and because Everton were starting to struggle to score, Young and Scott switched back to their normal positions.
Everton regained their 5-goal lead near the hour mark through Jack Taylor. A few minutes later, Sandy Young showed that his knock wouldn’t affect him that much by completing his hat-trick and making it 7-1. Tommy McDermott then completed a hat-trick of his own and added his fourth and Everton’s ninth immediately afterwards, and then Jimmy Settle made it double figures for the Blues. The Hungarians redeemed themselves a bit by making it 10-2 five minutes from time through Ferenc Blaszek. In a role reversal of their first goal, Gaspar Borbas passed the ball and Billy Scott failed to deal with it, allowing Blaszek to shoot into an empty net, causing more celebrations from the crowd. But just before the final whistle, Jack Taylor scored Everton’s 11th goal of the game.
When the final whistle was blown, despite the heavy defeat, the Hungarian crowd cheered their footballing compatriots. Even though they conceded 11 goals, the Hungarian press praised the combined team for scoring 2 goals and said those were the only important goals of the game because they were against a team of great stature.
Full time: Budapesti TC & Magyar AC Combined XI 2-11 Everton
