Has a football match ever been described as a ‘four-pointer’?

“To hear that a fixture is a ‘six-pointer’ is pretty common in the modern game, but I can’t ever remember hearing a game was a ‘four-pointer’ when it was just two points for a win. Can anyone find examples of pre-1981 games called four-pointers?” asks Ed Butler.

The Guardian and Observer archive is our friend here. A quick search for “four-pointer” brings up plenty of answers, including a classified advert from 1836 for an auction, with items on sale including “about 18 dozen of prime old port wine, 15 dozen of sherry, which will be sold in lots to suit purchasers; one garden roller, two iron garden seats; four pointer dogs and various other valuable effects”.

We digress, but frankly why wouldn’t you with something like that? Anyway, the first football-related mention in the Guardian archive comes from Ronald Atkin’s report of West Ham 3-1 Leicester in February 1980. “This was very much what the pundits call a four-pointer,” he begins, “and the points were firmly and fairly claimed by West Ham.” In the end, both teams ended the season happy – Leicester won the Second Division title, and while the Hammers’ league form tailed off, they shocked Arsenal in the FA Cup final – the last second-tier side to win the trophy.

The earliest mention we can find anywhere else is from 1970-71, when the Tranmere manager Jackie Wright spoke about his team’s relegation battle. Their run-in was full of fixtures against teams around them and Wright said every game was “a four-pointer”. They won enough of them to finish 18th and avoid relegation to the old Division Four.

John Spooner can go further back doing more of our work for us. “A quick scan of the British Newspaper Archive suggests ‘four-pointer’ was first used in the early 1950s,” he