By Will Foster

For many years an uncashed postal order hung in the Luton boardroom. It was for the princely sum of 1/8 (13p) and represented Town's share of the gate receipts from the 3rd Division (now League 1) meeting with Thames on the 6th of December 1930. With only 469 fans through the turnstiles it remains the lowest recorded attendance in the history of the Football League.

The match was played at the West Ham Stadium, not to be confused with the modern stadium of the same name. It was built in 1928 as a greyhound venue and designed by the famous football ground architect Archibald Leitch. Situated at Custom House, near to the present day Prince Regent DLR station, it could hold 120,000 spectators and, ironically, remains the largest venue to regularly hold Football League matches.

Keen to maximise revenues at the weekend a group of local businessmen decided to start a football team based at the ground. Thus, in 1928, Thames AFC were born, starting in the Southern League and being elected to the Football League for the 1930/31 season. In such a congested area they struggled to attract spectators and the nadir was reached when Town visited a few months into that first campaign.

Though Thames had lost three in a row, and were second bottom of the table, the main reason for the especially sparse crowd was the weather. Local supporters, knowing how heavy the fog was and how close the ground was to the river, assumed the match would surely be postponed.

Those attending were not rewarded for their hardiness and optimism. With the space between the stands and the pitch so large, and the fog unrelenting, it was almost impossible to make out what was happening. Even the only goal of the game from Thames’ striker Wilf Phillips, twenty minutes into the second half, was barely noticed until a group of players were seen celebrating. An attempt to improve visibility by lighting the arc lamps around the greyhound track only made matters worse and they were quickly turned off again after cries of complaint from the stand.

Despite the inclement weather, Crusader was very complimentary about the club and the ground in the match report, ‘West Ham Stadium will be a very big noise in the football world if I mistake not…the general equipment, dressing rooms, offices, indeed everything, is splendid, and I liked the place far better than Highbury.’

However he was not convinced by the playing quality of the hosts, ‘I am fairly sure they will be beaten comfortably at Luton if they do not have a better side.’ This time he was right. Luton would run out 8-0 winners at Kenilworth Road the following April.

Thames lasted just one more season before financial problems led to them being replaced in the league by Aldershot. The stadium fared better, continuing to host a range of events until its closure in 1972.

As a side note, the referee that day was a certain Stanley Rous. He left the teams on the pitch at half-time while debating whether to continue with the match. Rous would go onto to re-write the laws of the game in 1938 and become the first secretary of the FA and the 6^th president of FIFA.

Below: For the match against Luton in January 1938 Tottenham recreated the (in)famous postal order on their programme front cover.