Imagine, if you can, the following scenario: Carlisle United smash seven goals past their sorry opponents at Brunton Park, yet many frustrated home fans leave the game early – and those who remain register their displeasure by slow-handclapping the team...

Different times, clearly. This unlikely scene was witnessed in the autumn of 1963 amid the most free-scoring Carlisle season there has ever been – and one which came to a climax involving this weekend's opponents, Gillingham, and one of the tightest title races of all.

The 1963/64 Division Four campaign was a soaring one for both United and the Gills. To say Alan Ashman’s Cumbrians were prolific would be an understatement; likewise regarding the Kent outfit as somewhat hard to break down.

These sides with contrasting traits proved the best in the fourth tier, with an upwardly-mobile Workington Reds not far from their heels. Carlisle, fuelled by the extraordinary goalscoring of their new striker, Hugh McIlmoyle, started the season by scoring in bulk and this was never more emphasised than in their consecutive games against Hartlepools United.

On September 16, Carlisle went to the north east and came back with a 6-0 victory. On October 1, the return game saw the Blues lacerate their opponents 7-1, McIlmoyle scoring four, Barry Brayton two and Peter McConnell one.

Remarkably, this was not enough for the audience. Most of Carlisle’s scoring came in the first half. “When [in the second half] the United players started playing a ‘keep possession’ game after the Real Madrid style, angry fans booed every pass and began the slow handclap,” wrote the Cumberland Evening News correspondent.

Hugh McIlmoyle, left, and Johnny Evans were stars for Carlisle in the knife-edge 1963/64 title race with Gillingham (Image: News & Star)

Spectators were, it was said, “fed up” with United’s players failing to try and get a “cricket score” against beleaguered Pools. “They were just not interested in any ‘clever’ play. They wanted more goals and howled their heads off for them.”

Ashman, the manager who had been appointed as Ivor Powell’s successor the previous season, was unimpressed with the vocal treatment of his heavy-scoring side. “I certainly do not like to hear my team being slow-handclapped when they are six goals in front,” he said, in one of the more unlikely lines a Carlisle manager must ever have uttered.

“We did, at times, attempt to play good football, and that is possession of the ball – which is just what we did.”

Ashman and the fans clearly got over their differences as 63/64 unfolded. Carlisle racked up 113 goals in their 46 league games – comfortably a club record – with McIlmoyle, who had joined from Rotherham United the previous season, claiming 39 of them (and five more in the cups). Joe Livingstone was another prolific marksman in a forward line also enhanced by such stars as Sammy Taylor and, later in the campaign, Johnny Evans.

Highlights were there many, United scoring three goals or more in 21 of their league fixtures. Among them was a terrific midweek occasion when Carlisle became the first side to defeat an extremely solid Gillingham team: a 3-1 win a tribute to the terrific scoring ability of McIlmoyle, who plundered a hat-trick.

After that game the league table showed Gillingham out in front with Carlisle a close second and Workington in third. It was a mark of things to come. Freddie Cox’s Gillingham remained top for much of the season but United kept pace with them, and some late-season postponements for the Gills allowed the Blues to hit the front.

Come April, United remained on top but with Gillingham making up ground as they got through their rearranged fixtures. The title was on a knife-edge even as United advanced on promotion. A 4-1 win over bottom side Barrow put the Blues on the brink of going up and then the visit of Rochdale allowed them to seal the deal.

Champagne in the dressing room after United's promotion-clinching win over Rochdale...but the title race wasn't over yet (Image: News & Star)

Ashman, before the game, got together his main forwards McIlmoyle, Livingstone, Evans and Frank Kirkup...and his pre-match talk had the desired effect. In front of 11,556 at Brunton Park, Carlisle got the job done with a 1-0 win – Evans getting the all-important goal in the first half, pouncing to score after Livingstone had dummied a Kirkup cross.

United made it through the remaining tension to safeguard the result and, at the final whistle, fans hurdled the perimeter fencing to swarm the pitch. Ashman and the players later appeared in the directors’ box to acknowledge the cheers and bask in their promotion glory. They had bounced straight back to Division Three after the previous season’s relegation, chairman George Sheffield poured the champagne in the dressing room…but it was not over yet.

Carlisle were up but the title remained to be claimed. Four days after the Rochdale game, United went to Brighton & Hove Albion and won 3-1. Gillingham’s 2-1 defeat at Rochdale the same day might have been decisive, had the Gills not had two games still to play.

Manager Alan Ashman, left, and chairman George Sheffield pictured during the 1963/64 season (Image: News & Star)

Points dropped in either would see Carlisle champions, yet on the Monday a 1-0 Gills win at York City kept things in the balance. Their final game would come three days later at Newport County, where victory would put Gillingham level on points with Carlisle…and the championship having to be decided on the system of goal average: goals scored divided by those conceded.

It was an agonising wait for United, since a win for Gillingham without conceding would see them sneak the prize, but if they did let in a goal in south Wales, they’d need to score three or more to finish first.

The margins were minute. As the Blues counted the days down, they also had to contend with unwanted events at headquarters. A break-in at Brunton Park’s development club premises was reported, a man having been seen racing across the pitch after kicking down a door to the bar. Club stewards found that 680 cigarettes, “valued at over £6”, had gone missing.

Eventually the crucial game unfolded at Newport’s Somerton Park…and, in a manner typical of their own campaign, Gillingham won narrowly: 1-0, thanks to George Francis’s goal and some typically stalwart defending. Carlisle received word of the result around 9pm and this put the Gills on top by the tiniest of gaps.

Their goal average, after 59 scored and 30 conceded, was 1.967. Carlisle’s after, 113 scored and 58 conceded, was 1.948. This is all that separated these 60-point rivals after 46 games apiece and it earned Gillingham the first league title in their history.

Carlisle fans at the city's train station en route to an away game in 1963/64 (Image: News & Star)

Consolation for Carlisle came with their automatic promotion. Workington also went up in third, only a point behind the pacesetters, and the Cumbrian clubs’ respective bosses, Ashman and Ken Furphy, exchanged congratulatory messages come the end of things. Both had taken their sides up in their first full year as league managers.

“This has certainly been a week for rejoicing among soccer enthusiasts in the county, with both of the county’s senior sides clinching promotion,” wrote our reporter Bob Wood. “For a county recognised as the outpost of English soccer, and with much more restricted facilities than many other counties, this has indeed been a fine achievement.”

United averaged home crowds of 8,350 in 1963/64, and those who watched them certainly got their money’s worth in terms of goals and glory, if not – quite – the title, thanks to a system which was replaced by the modern method of goal difference come 1976.

Perhaps a narrow win against the men from Kent this weekend can make up for it.