Bunny Bell scored nine goals in one game on Boxing Day 1935 as which club beat Oldham 13-4?

Bunny Bell's Boxing Day Bonanza

December 26, 1935 was just another Football League fixture on paper — a Third Division North clash between Tranmere Rovers and Oldham Athletic. What unfolded at Prenton Park that afternoon, however, was one of the most extraordinary individual and team performances in the entire history of English football.

Robert "Bunny" Bell, Tranmere's centre-forward, put the ball in the net nine times in a single game. Nine. In ninety minutes. Tranmere ran out 13–4 winners, and that scoreline still stands as the highest-scoring match in Football League history — a record that has survived nearly nine decades of professional football.

Who Was Bunny Bell?

Bell was a prolific but relatively unheralded striker who spent much of his career plying his trade in the lower divisions. He had arrived at Tranmere Rovers from Everton, where he had never quite nailed down a regular starting berth despite showing a sharp eye for goal. At Prenton Park he found his home, and on that Boxing Day he found his moment in history.

His nine goals came in an era before widespread media coverage, which partly explains why the feat isn't quite as celebrated as it deserves to be. There were no television cameras, no Twitter threads, no highlight reels — just the crowd at Prenton Park witnessing something utterly astonishing and a match report in the next day's newspapers.

The Match Itself

Oldham Athletic were not a pushover side, which makes the scoreline even more remarkable. Tranmere were ruthless and clinical throughout, with Bell leading the charge in devastating fashion. He was supported by teammates who contributed the remaining four goals, making the 13–4 final score feel almost surreal even by the attacking standards of 1930s football, when defensive tactics were far less sophisticated than today.

The sheer volume of goals — 17 in total — means the game also holds the record for the highest aggregate score in a Football League match, a record that has never been beaten or even seriously threatened.

Why It Still Matters

Football records fall with increasing regularity in the modern era, but this one has proved almost impossible to approach. The game has become far more defensive and tactically organised since 1935, and the idea of a top-flight or even lower-league match finishing 13–4 today seems almost inconceivable.

Bell's nine-goal haul is also a record for the most goals scored by one player in a single Football League game, and it remains unchallenged to this day. He finished the 1935–36 season as one of the Division's leading scorers, but nothing in his career — or arguably anyone else's — matched that extraordinary afternoon on Merseyside.

For Tranmere Rovers supporters, it remains a proud piece of club folklore — a reminder that extraordinary things can happen in the most unlikely places on the most ordinary of days.