Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!
Between them, Wayne and Brent Gretzky hold the record for most points scored (2,861) by a pair of brothers in National Hockey League history. The more senior of the two, Wayne notched up 2,857 of them while his little brother’s contribution to the tally was just four. Of course, Brent isn’t the only professional sportsman to have tried to make his name in the shadow of an iconic older brother named Wayne and while John Rooney enjoyed a perfectly decent career as a journeyman midfielder playing in the lower leagues, going through life best known for being the less talented and more unsuccessful younger brother of one of the most famous England players in recent memory can’t have been easy. On Saturday afternoon, however, it was Wayne who could be seen blubbing tears of pride at Moss Rose, having just watched his sibling mastermind a thoroughly deserved victory for the semi-professionals of the phoenix club Macclesfield over Crystal Palace in what was unquestionably the biggest FA Cup upset of all time.
With the teams separated by 117 places on the league ladder, some statto quickly figured out it had been the exact same number of years since the holders had been knocked out of the tournament by non-league opposition. On that occasion it was Wolves who had suffered the kind of embarrassment that makes their shortcomings this season look comparatively heroic, while it was Palace fans who would have been waving their homemade replica FA Cups in jubilation if it wasn’t for the fact that the modern kitchen staple that is tin foil wouldn’t be invented until a year later in 1910.
