Alright, so this project started, as most good projects do, because I was thoroughly pissed off. Not about the football, yet, but about the general state of historical data online. I had this argument with my brother-in-law, Dave, who is a massive Barnsley fan, naturally. He kept claiming that every time these two clubs meet, it’s either an absolute classic or a complete disaster for Birmingham City. I told him he was talking absolute rubbish, that history is long and complicated, but I realized I couldn’t actually back up my own claim with hard evidence beyond yelling about the last three games.
I decided right then I needed to build the definitive timeline. Not just a list of results, but the true key dates—the managerial shifts, the specific transfer announcements, the weird mid-season friendlies we all forget about. I needed to know exactly when the power shifted between St Andrew’s and Oakwell.
Diving into the Archives: The Digital Swamp
I initially thought this would take maybe an afternoon. I laugh now thinking about that. I opened up the usual suspects—Wikipedia, BBC Sport archives, FootballWebPages. The first thing I discovered was how unbelievably inconsistent the data is when you go back past the year 2000. For recent history, it’s clean. But trying to verify a transfer date from 1993? Forget it. One site said the deal was done in August, another said the player only officially signed in September after a medical that took forever.
My entire process for the first couple of days was just sifting. I had to create a giant master list in a spreadsheet, just throwing every date I could find onto it. It looked like a monkey had typed it. I had dates for:
- Every league match result since 1950.
- Dates for all cup ties (FA Cup, League Cup, whatever other random regional cups they played in the 70s).
- Any time a manager was sacked within 48 hours of playing the other side.
The sheer amount of useless fluff I had to filter out was staggering. I scraped a couple of fan forums, but that was a waste of time—just old blokes arguing about who was better, Trevor Francis or someone equally ancient. I had to stick strictly to documented newspaper archives I found through some old library databases I still have access to from my brief stint at university years ago. That’s where the gold was.
Imposing Order: Turning Chaos into Chronology
The real ‘practice’ wasn’t finding the data; it was organizing the damn thing so it actually told a story. I started by defining what counted as a “key date.” A routine 1-1 draw in 1985? Nope. A 5-0 thrashing that directly contributed to one team getting relegated? Absolutely, that stays in.
I implemented a system where every entry had to have two verification sources. If the Wikipedia entry for a manager’s first match against the opposing club didn’t match the historical fixture list on the official club site, it got flagged for deeper checking. I spent hours cross-referencing the transfer histories, specifically focusing on players who had a genuine impact after moving. Think about the players who left one club and immediately scored against them—that date is a critical point on the timeline.
I had to set specific markers:
- The Domination Periods: I highlighted every time one club won four consecutive meetings or more. These periods define the rivalry.
- The Financial Crises Dates: When major transfers happened because one club was clearly desperate for cash. That’s context, not just football.
- The Absolute Peak Matches: Key promotion deciders or massive semi-final appearances where one team was involved.
The beauty of the timeline, once I laid it all out, was seeing the pattern emerge. Dave was right about some short bursts of Barnsley excellence, but over the long haul, things are far more balanced, with specific decades belonging entirely to Birmingham City.
Why the Time Commitment? The Honest Truth
So why did I dedicate five days of my life to meticulously verifying 80 years of football minutiae? Was it purely to win an argument with Dave? Partly. But mainly, it was because I had nothing better to do. My job got shifted to remote work a few months ago, and honestly, the sheer isolation has been getting to me.
I needed a solid, tangible project that required pure mental grinding. I had been trying to learn how to fix the leaky faucet in the kitchen for about a month, but every time I went near it, I just got more frustrated. So, instead of fixing tangible reality, I decided to fix historical reality.
The timeline project became my escape. Every time I verified a new date, it felt like a tiny victory that compensated for the fact I haven’t seen a real human being face-to-face who isn’t the Amazon delivery guy in a week. I was so obsessed with completing it that I completely missed the local council meeting I was supposed to attend about the noise ordinance—forgot the date entirely.
But hey, the timeline is done. It’s definitive. It’s solid proof, documented down to the day. I sent the finished document to Dave, and he actually shut up for once. That, my friends, is the real win.