Saturday, December 21, 1957. There was drizzle in the cold London air as Huddersfield Town prepared to take the field at The Valley against Charlton Athletic. The Yorkshire side, like their hosts, had not long been relegated from the first division and, under their ambitious manager, Bill Shankly, they were keen to return to the top flight.

Shankly’s dressing-room talk was simple, as the Huddersfield right half, Ken Taylor, the Yorkshire cricketer, recalls. “Bill just walked around the table, telling us how good we were,” he said. “ ‘Charlton? They’re not fit to be on the same park.’ He was a great motivator. That was his greatest quality.”

The 17-year-old Denis Law, resting a thigh injury, watched the match alongside Shankly. After 17 minutes, his replacement, Stan Howard, challenged strongly for a loose ball, and the Charlton centre half, Derek Ufton, dislocated his problem shoulder. With no substitutes allowed, his teammates were left to play with ten men. By half-time, they were 2-0 down.

Charlton regrouped in their dressing-room. Their left winger, Johnny Summers, a left-footed goalscorer going through a lean patch, was switched to centre forward. He put on a new pair of boots, not fully broken in, and after three minutes he mis-hit a close-range shot with his weaker right foot and made it 2-1.

Gaps opened up, the pitch was muddy and, by the time the second half was 17 minutes old, the score had become 5-1. According to Law, “Shanks was full of what a bad side they were and how we were going to rub it in.”

Ray Wilson, the future World Cup winner, was at left back for Huddersfield. “Later, when I moved to Everton, if we were ever two or three in front, the other side might as well have gone off, because we just used to keep the ball,” he said. “But, at Charlton, we were 5-1 up and we were still having a go. That was Shankly for you.”

Within two minutes it was 5-3. First, Buck Ryan scored. Then Summers, again with his right foot, this time off a post. Ten minutes later, he completed his hat-trick, blasting a right-foot shot past the diving Huddersfield goalkeeper, Sandy Kennon. 5-4.

“Sandy was a showman,” Taylor said. “A great lad, but he liked to turn easy saves into slightly more difficult ones by moving to one side and diving at the ball.”

Five minutes later, Summers drove in the equaliser and, in the 81st minute, with the Huddersfield defence slithering in the mud and the Charlton spectators in pandemonium, Summers hit the ball once more towards goal. It took a deflection and rolled through Kennon’s outstretched legs. Summers had scored five goals, all with his weaker foot.

Bewildered, he told reporters: “I'll keep these boots for the rest of my life.” Alas, falling victim to leukaemia, he was dead within five years.

“He was an easy-going, happy-go-lucky sort of boy,” his teammate, John Hewie, said. “When the game finished, they put him in a car and rushed him up to the BBC.”

Ten-man Charlton, from 5-1 down, had scored five goals in 19 minutes. “If you wrote a book about that match,” Wilson said, “you’d get halfway through and you’d say, ‘What a load of b*****ks!’ ” Yet it was not over. In the 86th minute, the ball was punted towards the Charlton goal and, with Howard running towards it, Hewie attempted to side-foot it out of his path. “The ball skidded, I stretched and I could only toe-poke it,” Hewie said. “And it went into the net.” 6-6.

The match neared its end. A throw-in was taken just inside the Huddersfield half. “For pity’s sake, referee,” a spectator called out. “Blow the whistle!”

The ball travelled across the field. The Huddersfield right back, Tony Conwell, moved through the mud to intercept it. “He had it all nicely covered,” Taylor said, with a sigh, “and he just slipped. He fell. Bang! And that was it.”

Kennon came out, Ryan shot and the goalkeeper’s attempt to divert the ball merely sent it up in the air, over his head and into the net.

Charlton 7 Huddersfield 6. The crowd would not leave, chanting Summers’s name as if he had won them the FA Cup.

No team in the history of the league, before or since, has scored six goals and lost. “Shankly was pacing up and down in the train,” Wilson said.

“He was muttering to himself: ‘It’s just one of those things . . . It’s history . . .’ He was trying to sort it out in his mind, how it had happened.”

“He didn’t speak to anybody for days afterwards,” Ken Taylor said. “We had a good side. But when you played in muddy conditions like that, all sorts of things could happen. In many ways, football wasn’t as skilful a game as it is now, but it could be more exciting.”

Charlton Athletic (2-3-5) Duff – Edwards, Townsend – Hewie, Ufton, Kiernan – White, Lucas, Ryan, Leary, Summers. Huddersfield Town (2-3-5) Kennon – Conwell, Wilson – Taylor, Connor, McGarry – Ledger, Howard, Bain, Massie, Simpson.

— Stephen Chalke is the author of Ken Taylor – Drawn To Sport (Fairfield Books, £20), which tells the story of Taylor’s life in football and cricket. Taylor is also an accomplished artist and the book is extensively illustrated in colour by his work. Telephone 01225 335813 for details.

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