Bigg Bob Image 1 Crystal Palace 1936

Description

Cairo, Egypt born outside left Bob Bigg began his football career with Athenian League club Redhill from where he was signed by Third Division (South) club Crystal Palace in 1933, his debut coming in a wild Third Division Cup match at Exeter City in January 1934 that finished 11-6 to the hosts!!  Bigg made his Football League debut in the first match of the following season, scoring in a 2-2 draw at Aldershot that August, and he underlined his knack of finding the net with a goal in each of his next two matches. A regular during their 1934-35 campaign, Bigg scored 17 times as Crystal Palace finished fifth in the division, a total which included a hat-trick in a 6-0 win over Newport County in April 1935, his haul leaving him Palace’s second highest goalscorer that season behind Bert Dawes.

Bigg missed only one match the following season, and bagged a further hat-trick in a 3-2 win over Cardiff City in the opening fixture the campaign in August 1935, but lost his place in February 1937 (almost certainly through a bad injury) two weeks after scoring his third hat-trick in an 8-0 rout of Exeter City earlier the same month. He missed the whole of 1937-38 and only returned to the Palace first team in November 1938 when he played 9 matches through to the year end and a final match at Reading in March 1939. After 43 goals in 122 appearances for The Eagles, Bigg transferred to Aldershot in the 1939 closed season, playing twice for The Shots that August, scoring in a defeat at Brighton, before the outbreak of the Second World War days later forced the abandonment of peacetime football and effectively ended his career. He made a further appearance for Crystal Palace in Wartime League football in February 1940 but retired during the War.