A bit of history.

[since41]

I was there somewhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMZfgrb38jA

[nw6pie]

And I bet someone coming out of the ground said “47,310? There was way more than that! Did you see that small gap on the County Road side?”

Thanks for posting that, never seen it before. Good to see the pitch in front of the Main Stand was still problematic even then.

[Iremongersrighthand]

Thanks for posting this...typical Notts, massive crowd and we fluff our lines

[lunaspie]

Miles offside when he poked it home.

[upthemaggies]

To think we'd knocked out two top flight teams plus Middlesbrough 4-1 away before we lost this tie to a 3rd tier club. At Sheff Wed there were 53,138 to see us earn a replay. 41,457 saw the Chelsea game at Meadow Lane, we might have got the all time record crowd then had the weather not been so bad, it was bitterly cold with a pitch covered in snow.

Middlesbrough - 2nd tier (finished 12th that season)
Sheffield Wed - 1st tier (22nd)
Chelsea - 1st tier (1st Champions)
York City - 3rd tier (4th)

We also did the double over Fword that season as well as thrashing West Ham 5-1 and beating the 2nd tier champions Birmingham City. We finished 7th. Fword finished 15th.

[SaltySeaDog]

Thanks for posting this...typical Notts, massive crowd and we fluff our lines

Exactly!

[60YearsAPie]

I was there somewhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMZfgrb38jA

Six months before I started watching the Magpies. Just look at that crowd. Brilliant!

Here's the Football Post's front page from that day.

[Frigiliana Pie 1]

Miles offside when he poked it home.

I thought so too.

Two things stood out from that short film...

1 As soon as they get possession of the ball, the goalkeepers boot it up the pitch, as far as they can and without looking to see if there are any teammates in a position to receive it. Obviously there was no silly tippy tappy around the edge of your own area in 1955.

2. How the heck did we get all those people into (and out of) the ground without major loss of life? The biggest crowd I was ever in at Meadow Lane was 34,000 v Villa in 1972, and I thought that was pushing the boundaries. Yet we had over 40,000 quite a few times in the 1940s and 1950s without (so far as I’m aware) any serious incidents.

Thanks for posting this.

[60YearsAPie]

Here's a few comments from the following Monday's daily papers.

The free kick was awarded by the referee for a foul by Leon Leuty on Norman Wilkinson.

Wilkinson said after the game, “I cannot honestly say I felt anything in Leuty’s tackle that could be called a foul.”

Leuty said, “I took the ball off Wilkinson cleanly enough, and Wilkinson fell against me off balance.”

As the reporter commented, “It was a clear case of Mr A Hayworth’s jittery refereeing that marred the game from the start."

When York were awarded the free kick twelve minutes from the end, the goal scorer Arthur Bottom lined up alongside as outside right Billy Hughes prepared to take the kick. But Hughes pushed him away.

“I wanted him to tap the ball to me as I stood a yard away, so that I could have a go,” Arthur said afterwards. “But Bill said, ‘No, get in the middle’, so I did and am I glad?”

[upthemaggies]

2. How the heck did we get all those people into (and out of) the ground without major loss of life? The biggest crowd I was ever in at Meadow Lane was 34,000 v Villa in 1972, and I thought that was pushing the boundaries. Yet we had over 40,000 quite a few times in the 1940s and 1950s without (so far as I’m aware) any serious incidents.

We actually had 45,000 at Meadow Lane as early as 1921 v Aston Villa and this was before the Kop was extended (due to the regular big crowds for Lawton). I'm not sure if it was that game, but there was a pre-war fixture where it was reported there were people passing out and having to be rescued from the stands by the police/stewards, so they probably learned fairly early on of the potential hazards. It is a myth that we only started getting big crowds after Lawton joined.
Tommy Lawton had a huge impact, of course, but his own claim that we were averaging 5,000 before he arrived is ludicrous, We had 20,000 or more at all of the five home games before he joined, even pre-war - before the crowd boom - we'd averaged 14,000 in 1936/37 in the 3rd tier with the highest gate just under 30k.