The City Ground

CONSECUTIVE PLAYERS APPEARANCES

With squad rotation now in place, it's highly unlikely players will play every game of a season. Back in the 60's and 70's however, it was the norm for clubs to have much smaller squads and for players to play twice as many games per season as they do now.

As for consecutive appearances, our leading player was Bob McKinlay. Starting on April 25 1959 he played in all 294 games for the next 6 years. He missed the next game (in the League against Aston Villa on Oct 23, 1965) and another in the FA Cup against Hull on Feb 12 1966, but started the following game on Feb 19th to begin another 140 game streak, which also appears on this list! If he had played in those 2 League and Cup games, he would have played in 451 consecutive games over an almost 10-year span.

These are the players who played more than 100 consecutive competitive games:

Pos	Game Count	Player	Start Date	End Date
1	294	Bob McKinlay	Apr 25, 1959	Oct 16, 1965
2	239	John Robertson	Dec 27, 1976	Nov 29, 1980
3	171	Mark Crossley	Nov 21, 1993	Feb 22, 1997
4	158	Jack Burkitt	Sep 04, 1954	Dec 26, 1957
	158	Peter Shilton	Mar 25, 1978	Oct 22, 1980
6	145	Henry Newton	Jan 18, 1964	Mar 25, 1967
7	138	Bob McKinlay	Feb 19, 1966	Dec 14, 1968
8	137	George Needham	Sep 02, 1911	Dec 12, 1914
9	127	Billy McKinlay	Dec 25, 1931	Nov 17, 1934
10	126	Henry Newton	Oct 14, 1967	Apr 07, 1970
11	123	Ian Bowyer	Oct 06, 1982	Dec 29, 1984
12	121	Peter Hindley	Aug 20, 1969	Dec 11, 1971
13	120	Jack Armstrong	Apr 17, 1906	Apr 12, 1909
14	116	Nigel Clough	Aug 27, 1985	Dec 26, 1987
15	114	Ben Osborn	Aug 27, 2016	Oct 30, 2018
16	113	Sammy Chapman	Nov 29, 1969	Mar 18, 1972
17	111	Bob Wallace	Aug 25, 1923	Jan 09, 1926
18	110	Adam Scott	Nov 19, 1892	Feb 22, 1896
19	105	Freddie Scott	Jan 14, 1950	Apr 05, 1952
20	103	Jack Burkitt	Dec 25, 1951	Apr 03, 1954
21	102	Walter Dudley	Mar 04, 1905	Nov 23, 1907
	102	Len Langford	Sep 05, 1925	Oct 29, 1927
	102	Bill Morley	Nov 12, 1955	Jan 04, 1958
	102	Mark Crossley	Aug 25, 1990	Mar 14, 1992
25	101	John Winfield	Dec 02, 1967	Jan 03, 1970

For comparison, here are the active consecutive appearances:

Game Count	Player	Start Game
2	Harry Toffolo	Feb 18, 2023
2	Neco Williams	Feb 18, 2023
1	Jesse Lingard	Feb 25, 2023
1	Sam Surridge	Feb 25, 2023