It won’t have escaped anyone’s notice that Erling Haaland has made a blistering start to life in English football. Manchester City’s new £51m striker may have suffered a difficult debut including missing a late sitter in his side’s 3-1 Community Shield defeat to Liverpool in late July but he scored a brace at West Ham on his Premier League debut the following weekend and already has 14 goals in his first eight domestic games for the Etihad club.
The Norwegian’s hat-trick in last weekend’s 6-3 rout of local rivals Manchester United was his third treble in consecutive home games after also taking the match ball home following his exploits in Pep Guardiola’s side’s victories against Crystal Palace and Nottingham Forest over the last month, the first time such a feat has been achieved in the modern era.
A remarkable accomplishment which took the 22-year-old’s overall goals tally for his first 100 appearances in major European leagues to a mind-boggling 103. But impressive though Haaland’s hat-trick heroics are, they have been bettered by a Liverpool forward who once bagged trebles in three consecutive matches en route to one of the Reds’ most dramatic championship triumphs.
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Jack Balmer played a key role in the Reds’s title triumph of 1946/47 - the first official post-war season - and deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as that era’s more celebrated figures like Billy Liddell and Albert Stubbins but endured something of a strained relationship with the Anfield crowd and would later suffer the same Wembley heartache as another figure from that hallowed Reds side, the great Bob Paisley.
Balmer’s background may have been partly responsible for why some Reds fans did not entirely warm to him. Born into a West Derby family of Evertonians, two of his uncles - Bill and Bob - had played for the Toffees and it was at Goodison Park where Jack began his career as an amateur having been spotted playing for Collegiate Old Boys, a side formed to provide football opportunities for alumni of the renowned Liverpool Collegiate School close to the city centre which he had attended. The Blues released him though after two years as an amateur and in May 1935 the 19-year-old crossed Stanley Park to join Liverpool, signing professional forms three months later.
He was soon in the first team and, while the 1930s was an undistinguished and rare trophy-less decade at Anfield, Balmer gave Everton cause to regret their decision to let him go, scoring after only 30 seconds in the February 1938 Goodison debut to help set up a 3-1 Reds win. Like many players of the era, World War Two robbed him of some of his prime years of his career - he did at least gain his only international recognition, playing alongside Everton’s Tommy Lawton and scoring for England in an early wartime fixture against Wales at Wrexham’s Racecourse Ground in November 1939 - but when First Division action resumed in earnest with Liverpool taking on Sheffield United at Bramall Lane in August 1946, Balmer in the absence of captain Willie Fagan skippered George Kay’s side to a 1-0 opening day success thanks Len Carney’s 90th minute goal.
It was a topsy-turvy start to the campaign with the Reds losing by a single goal at home to Middlesbrough in their second game before a lively 7-4 Anfield victory over Chelsea and then a 5-0 away reverse to Manchester United played at Maine Road because Old Trafford was having war-time bomb damage repaired. That would be Liverpool’s last defeat for almost three months and by early November they had settled into second place in the league table when Balmer embarked on his extraordinary run of hat-tricks.
His first victims were Portsmouth, soon to emerge as one of the strongest teams in the country, who had won the last FA Cup before war broke out in 1939 and who would become First Division champions after the Reds in 1948 and 1949. Balmer opened the scoring on the half hour mark with a penalty before adding two more midway through the second half, the ECHO writing afterwards, “Jack Balmer has scored some great goals for Liverpool in his time but none better than the third of his hat-trick against Portsmouth. If ever a shot looked like making a hole in the net that did. And the two earlier ones were almost as powerful. A bit of luck with other shooting efforts and Balmer might have totted up half-a-dozen. Perhaps now he will believe in himself a bit more.”
A week later the Reds travelled to the Baseball Ground to take on Derby County and went top of the table with a 4-1 victory, Balmer grabbing all the of the visitors’ goals in a whirlwind 17 minute spell either side of half time. His first came two minutes before the interval, the Liverpool forward as the Football ECHO described it “tripping easily towards goal and disregarding calls for the ball before flicking in a lovely shot.” Two minutes after the break, he doubled his tally and the visitors lead with “one of the best goals he is ever likely to get”, beating three Rams defenders before firing home from an acute angle and he completed his hat-trick only two minutes later after being set up by Billy Liddell. He added a fourth on the hour mark after winger Harry Eastham ‘did a (Stanley) Matthews trick’ and pushed the ball through to the red-hot forward who lobbed goalkeeper Alick Grant as he advanced.
Former Sunderland great Raich Carter pulled a late consolation back for the hosts but all the talk afterwards was of Balmer’s latest scoring feat with Monday’s ECHO praising manager George Kay for persevering with the forward when he had been tipped to leave Anfield. “Immediately before the war there was a danger Liverpool might let its ex-Collegiate boy go to Huddersfield or Arsenal at a fee which would be considered trifling today. But manager George Kay was among those who were convinced he should be kept. What wise judgement that was. Balmer’s success is the success of the side as a whole. They have developed an uncommon habit of holding up the others and then coming with a sustained rally as happened at Derby. All four goals were brilliantly taken. Balmer is a great shot and only wanted confidence and a little luck to begin his phenomenal scoring.”
Seven days later second from bottom Arsenal travelled to Merseyside to take on the league leaders and, after Balmer opened the scoring from the penalty spot, stunned Anfield by taking the lead with two quick-fire goals shortly before half time from Reg Lewis (whose scoring ability the Reds would become painfully familiar with three-and-a-half years later at Wembley) and Jimmy Logie, but Balmer got Liverpool back on level terms just after the hour mark with a powerful shot into the roof of the net after a scintillating Liddell run to put himself on the brink of a hat-trick of hat-tricks.
“The scene when the equaliser arrived was almost reminiscent of when Dixie Dean got his 60 goals at Everton”, the ECHO reported. “Rarely has an Anfield goal given so much joy, with Liddell’s part as great as that of the scorer. All that was needed now was a Balmer goal to make it three hat-tricks in succession and no sooner had the words been spoken then Eastham started the run which produced an angled chance for Balmer, who veered to the right and put the ball into the net to the biggest cheer Anfield has ever known in its long history. Ironically it was Arsenal who were the victims when Dean got his 60 goals. Having scored a hat-trick of hat-tricks, and 10 in three matches, Balmer must have established a record which will stand for many a year. Not even the record-breaking Dean or Lawton can boast such a thing. Balmer was mobbed by his delighted comrades and November 23, 1946 became one of the red letter days in the history of the club.”
Albert Stubbins, who had arrived at Anfield for a club record £13,000 only two months earlier after choosing Liverpool over Everton, sealed the Reds’ 4-2 victory twelve minutes from time and the Newcastle-born forward - who would famously featured years later on the album cover of the Beatles’ iconic Sergeant Pepper album - would finish the campaign as joint top-scorer alongside Balmer with 24 goals each. Stubbins, along with the incomparable Liddell, tough-tackling wing-half Bob Paisley and versatile defender Bill Jones (grandfather of 1990s Reds' full-back, Rob), were adored by the Anfield career for their whole-hearted approach but Balmer’s more cerebral approach was not always as well appreciated by Liverpool supporters in the era of burly and physical traditional English centre-forwards.
“Maybe I didn’t go in for the crunch tackle but that kind of thing wasn’t my idea of football”, he once admitted. “I was never a coward at the game, but I got a shudder when I saw the boot going in.”
Along with his Everton links, this apparent refusal to 'mix it' along with his perceived well-educated and middle-class background led to some unforgiving comments from the down-to-earth Anfield faithful who would sometimes call him ‘Over the Bar-mer’ when his finishing was not up to scratch but his team-mate Bob Paisley - who of course would go on to become one of Liverpool’s greatest ever managers - was in no doubt over Balmer’s value to the team and felt he was harshly treated.
“By the time I arrived at Anfield in 1939, he was well-established in the first team having played more than 100 games for the club and shown signs then of the skills that would thrill and infuriate the fans”, Paisley said. “He was anything but the old fashioned centre forward who could burst through, brushing aside the challenge of big, beefy defenders. He relied on his wonderful ball skills but was always ready to take a shot at goal. He also suffered from a premature loss of his hair and, with his Alistair Sim-style moustache, looked a lot older than he was for much of his career. He should have been given far greater credit for his scoring run that season which saw him on target in seven successive matches between the beginning of November and the middle of December. In those games he scored 15 goals – a scoring rate that even lan Rush, the greatest goal-scorer I’ve ever seen in the English game - would have been proud of.
“I don’t honestly think I’ve ever known a player so harshly treated by Liverpool supporters as he was – but he managed to smile his way through although it hurt him deeply. He was a local lad, born and bred in Liverpool, and he gave everything to his only professional club but there was a group of supporters who could never forgive him because he didn’t get stuck into the tackle. As captain it was even harder for him to take and while the fans didn’t appreciate his attributes there was no-one at the club who didn’t support his continued selection for much of the later stages of his career. He had marvellous ball control and was an ideal partner for Albert Stubbins.”
Liverpool would hit a slump after Balmer’s hat-trick of trebles, losing seven out of the next twelve matches, but defeat at Goodison Park at the end of January proved to be a turning point with seven successive victories putting them right back into the title picture and into the FA Cup semi-finals. Dreams of the Double, which at the time had only been achieved by Preston North End and Aston Villa in the late 1800s, and a first ever appearance at Wembley bit the dust after replay defeat to Burnley at Maine Road but the Reds won five and drew one of their next half dozen matches to go top of the league for the first time since the week after Balmer’s incredible run of hat-tricks the previous November after triumphing in their penultimate fixture, ironically away to Arsenal.
Victory in their final match - away to Wolverhampton Wanderers, who were themselves in with a shout of the title having won their game in hand to go a point ahead of Liverpool - would keep them in top spot but Kay’s men would not know until mid-June whether that would be enough to be champions, which was when Stoke City - who could still match the Reds’ points tally and had a superior goal average - played their final match away to Sheffield United due a fixture backlog caused by brutal winter weather earlier in the year.
In from of over 50,000 expectant fans at Molineux in sweltering late May temperatures, Balmer - again captaining the side in Willie Fagan’s absence - gave Liverpool the lead midway through the first half with what the ECHO described as “a beautifully worked goal, Balmer’s final strike an object lesson in how goals should be taken and indeed he had a grand day throughout with his cross-field passes a sheer delight.” Stubbins added a second seven minutes before the break with a brilliant individual goal having run half the length of the pitch and although Jimmy Dunn - a Liverpool fan whose father scored for Everton in the 1933 FA Cup final - pulled one back on 65 minutes for the hosts, the Reds held out for the vital two points they needed to return to the top of the table although they needed a string of excellent saves from Welsh goalkeeper and former Wolves star Cyril Sidlow to do so.
Two weeks later, on Saturday 14 June 1947, over 40,000 packed into Anfield to see the Reds beat Everton 2-1 in the Liverpool Senior Cup final but all thoughts were on events at Bramall Lane and when news filtered through that Stoke had been beaten 2-1 by Sheffield United, there were rapturous scenes as Liverpool’s fifth league championship and the first since the ‘Untouchables’ back-to-back title-winning side of the early 1920s was confirmed.
Balmer’s influence was recognised when he was made club captain for the following season and, although he and his team were unable to match the previous campaign’s exploits and finished 11th and then 12th in the First Division over the next years, in 1949/50 Liverpool reached the FA Cup final for only the second time in the club’s history after losing to Burnley in 1914 and would play at Wembley Stadium for the first time. Balmer had played in the Reds’ last match before their showdown with Arsenal in the capital despite missing much of the campaign through injury so had to suffer the disappointment of not being named in the starting line up which lost 2-0 to the Gunners, a fate also suffered by Bob Paisley who had scored in the semi-final victory against Everton at Maine Road and would go his whole decorated career as a player and manager without ever winning the world’s oldest cup competition.
“We shared that one particular experience that neither of us enjoyed”, Paisley later recalled, “although in Jack’s case it may have been a bit easier to accept as he hadn’t played in any of the previous cup matches, I played in them all but one”.
Balmer managed one more year of regular appearances before retiring at the age of 36 in 1952 having scored 110 goals in 309 appearances for the Reds and he stayed at the club on the coaching side for a couple more seasons until he finally quit in 1955 to concentrate on his building business in West Derby Village, where he lived with wife Edith and sons John and Colin. He died suddenly on Christmas Day 1984 at the age of 68 but his place in Liverpool and English football folklore - with nobody since having yet been able to emulate his hat-trick of hat-tricks - is secure and he modestly admitted it was the stand-out memory of his twenty years at Anfield.
“Towards the end of a long career, memories crowd thick and fast on one. That which remains most fresh in my mind was when I had the good fortune, thanks to the unselfishness of my team-mates, to score three successive hat-tricks in 1946-47.”
