The First English Match to Go to Penalties Wasn't an FA Cup Final

Penalty shootouts feel like they belong to the biggest occasions in football: World Cup finals, Champions League nights, agonising Euros knockouts.

The first one in English professional football happened at a pre-season friendly tournament nobody remembers today, between a second-tier club and a star-studded Manchester United, six weeks after the method had even been approved.

A brand new rule with nobody sure how it would go

In February 1970, the International Football Association Board approved penalty shootouts as a way to settle drawn knockout matches, replacing the coin tosses and drawn lots that had decided ties before.

Nobody had actually used the method in a real match yet when the newly created Watney Cup, a short-lived pre-season tournament for high-scoring teams that hadn't been promoted or qualified for Europe, kicked off that August.

Hull City hosted Manchester United in the semi-final at Boothferry Park on 5 August 1970, and 34,007 fans turned up largely to see United's George Best, Bobby Charlton and Denis Law rather than to witness football history.

Hull took an early lead before Law equalised late on, and the match stayed level through extra time, setting up the exact scenario the new rule had been built for.

Five kicks each, and a miss nobody saw coming

Best stepped up to take the very first penalty in English professional football and scored.

Hull's Terry Neill leveled it.

Brian Kidd, Ian Butler, Bobby Charlton and Ken Houghton all scored in turn to make it 3-3, before Denis Law, one of the finest players ever to play for United, had his effort saved by Hull goalkeeper Ian McKechnie.

Hull's Ken Wagstaff then missed too, before Willie Morgan restored United's lead at 4-3.

It came down to McKechnie himself, Hull's own goalkeeper, stepping up to try to keep his side alive.

He struck the crossbar, and United went through 4-3 on penalties.

Frankie Banks, who played for Hull that night, later described the atmosphere as electric, a small club going toe to toe with genuine global stars in a competition nobody quite realised would matter to football history.

A tournament that vanished, a method that didn't

The Watney Cup itself lasted only four editions before folding in 1973, remembered today mostly as a footnote and a name on an old trophy that occasionally does the rounds between the clubs that once won it.

The shootout format it introduced to English football went the opposite direction entirely, becoming the sport's standard method for settling knockout ties worldwide within a decade, used in FA Cup replays, European finals, and eventually World Cups.

Nobody involved that night in Hull, least of all George Best or a nervous Ian McKechnie, had any idea they were creating a piece of football's permanent furniture.

It just happened to be the first available drawn match after the rule changed, in a competition too obscure for anyone to think it would be remembered for anything else.

Does it feel fitting that one of football's most nerve-shredding modern rituals was born in a forgotten pre-season tournament rather than on one of the sport's biggest stages?