History of Sheffield Football 1857 – 1889

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Harry Thickett

Harry Thickett

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I have written a book covering the period when the world’s first football club, Sheffield FC, began in 1857 upto the foundation of Sheffield United in 1889 and the other 93 football clubs that existed in Sheffield in between.

We are all Blades on this forum, but we need to remember that besides our tribal conflicts, Sheffield is the home of football and has an amazing story to tell about the beginning of our national game. If our footballing heritage had happened in any other place, like Manchester or London, we would never had heard the end of the subject with dedicated museums and books, yet in Sheffield we barely mention the subject.

Association football began in Sheffield and was the centre of early world football for over 25 years until professionalism took over the amateur game. Sheffield also had a massive influence over the formulation of the Laws of the game. Sheffield had a rule book in 1858, five years before the Football Association came up with their version and actively lobbied the London meetings in 1863 to ensure that the Laws did not include running with the ball in your hands nor hacking.

The game continued to thrive in Sheffield after 1863 but the FA struggled to engage enough clubs to play by their laws. Without the intervention of William Chesterman of the Sheffield Football Association in 1867, the London F.A. would have voted to dissolve. He enrolled 16 Sheffield clubs and 1,000 players at the crucial time to save the London organisation.

There is more information about the book here together with some reviews:

http://www.englandsoldestfootballcl...-football-1857-1889-speed-science-and-bottom/

Book Cover.jpg
If you decide to order, enter ‘football’ as a coupon code when prompted and you will receive a 10% discount off the usual RRP of £15.95. There is also an online option to add a dedication if you want the book to be a gift.

I am donating 10% of the book proceeds to Prostate Cancer UK.
 

Interesting subject.

I was always interested why a long established club like Sheffield FC never became professional whilst Thr Wednesday did.

Also when the Bramall Lane committee decided to play football during the Winter months to maximise income. Why advertise for new players to form a new club called Sheffield United when you would have thought they’d approach Sheffield FC to use the Bramall Lane stadium.

Suppose my question is why did the worlds first club get left behind during the nationwide growth of football and professionalism.
 
Sheffsteel said:
Interesting subject.

I was always interested why a long established club like Sheffield FC never became professional whilst Thr Wednesday did.

Also when the Bramall Lane committee decided to play football during the Winter months to maximise income. Why advertise for new players to form a new club called Sheffield United when you would have thought they’d approach Sheffield FC to use the Bramall Lane stadium.

Suppose my question is why did the worlds first club get left behind during the nationwide growth of football and professionalism.
Click to expand...
It might be in the book. I've always assumed that SFC just didn't want to turn professional. A lot of clubs didn't and thought it was wrong. They realised that it would become more about money than sportsmanship. Similar to rugby I suppose and the league/union split.
 
Sheffield FC and the Sheffield Football Association were devoutly amateur and campaigned long and hard against the rise of professionalism coming from Lancashire fuelled by Scottish players. If they could have evolved into the professional game Sheffield FC could well have been a major Premier League team today.

I talk in the book about the input from Sheffield FC when the newly formed professional Sheffield United were formed. Of the 22 players who answered the advertisement to play eleven were former SFC players. Indeed a Sheffield press report in 1890 said that ‘ I believe that there was a proposal made to the players of the Sheffield Club to link them selves with a professional organisation in the early part of the season, but longer heads and wiser counsels prevailed, so that the old club, whose Sheffield football traditions can never fade remains, as I earnestly hope it never may , the Amateur Sheffield Club.’
 
Bayingblade said:
Good on you, Harry. Just one thing, I hope you don't mention "Sheffield Wednesday" in the book because they didn't exist until 1928.;)
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This, all day and every day.

Those cunts were actually The Barnsley Wednesday as far as I care. They chose not to associate themselves with the city until forty years after our establishment, so there was only one original team in Sheffield.

pommpey
 
Olive grove rovers should be eradicated from this history as they walked away from the centre of the football universe namely Bramall Lane
Its when the arrogance started, they thought they could run it better , chose The Wednesday deliberately snubbing their Sheffield roots.
Took them forty years to realise theyd be better off being a Sheffield team rather than an Ecclesfield parish team , just outside Sheffield
 
Harry Thickett said:
I have written a book covering the period when the world’s first football club, Sheffield FC, began in 1857 upto the foundation of Sheffield United in 1889 and the other 93 football clubs that existed in Sheffield in between.

We are all Blades on this forum, but we need to remember that besides our tribal conflicts, Sheffield is the home of football and has an amazing story to tell about the beginning of our national game. If our footballing heritage had happened in any other place, like Manchester or London, we would never had heard the end of the subject with dedicated museums and books, yet in Sheffield we barely mention the subject.

Association football began in Sheffield and was the centre of early world football for over 25 years until professionalism took over the amateur game. Sheffield also had a massive influence over the formulation of the Laws of the game. Sheffield had a rule book in 1858, five years before the Football Association came up with their version and actively lobbied the London meetings in 1863 to ensure that the Laws did not include running with the ball in your hands nor hacking.

The game continued to thrive in Sheffield after 1863 but the FA struggled to engage enough clubs to play by their laws. Without the intervention of William Chesterman of the Sheffield Football Association in 1867, the London F.A. would have voted to dissolve. He enrolled 16 Sheffield clubs and 1,000 players at the crucial time to save the London organisation.

There is more information about the book here together with some reviews:

http://www.englandsoldestfootballcl...-football-1857-1889-speed-science-and-bottom/

View attachment 33883
If you decide to order, enter ‘football’ as a coupon code when prompted and you will receive a 10% discount off the usual RRP of £15.95. There is also an online option to add a dedication if you want the book to be a gift.

I am donating 10% of the book proceeds to Prostate Cancer UK.
Click to expand...

I look forward to reading it. I started writing a history of United years ago. I wrote this as the first chapter...

http://triumphanddisastersufc.blogspot.com/2010/02/chapter-1-sheffield-and-its-football-to.html
 
blade too long said:
Olive grove rovers should be eradicated from this history as they walked away from the centre of the football universe namely Bramall Lane
Its when the arrogance started, they thought they could run it better , chose The Wednesday deliberately snubbing their Sheffield roots.
Took them forty years to realise theyd be better off being a Sheffield team rather than an Ecclesfield parish team , just outside Sheffield
Click to expand...



As an Ecclesfeldian Bert would like to point out that Ecclesfield had a very strong team and many of United's early players were from Ecclesfield including our record goalscorer, his brother and father , all who played for United.
 
Harry Thickett said:
I have written a book covering the period when the world’s first football club, Sheffield FC, began in 1857 upto the foundation of Sheffield United in 1889 and the other 93 football clubs that existed in Sheffield in between.

We are all Blades on this forum, but we need to remember that besides our tribal conflicts, Sheffield is the home of football and has an amazing story to tell about the beginning of our national game. If our footballing heritage had happened in any other place, like Manchester or London, we would never had heard the end of the subject with dedicated museums and books, yet in Sheffield we barely mention the subject.

Association football began in Sheffield and was the centre of early world football for over 25 years until professionalism took over the amateur game. Sheffield also had a massive influence over the formulation of the Laws of the game. Sheffield had a rule book in 1858, five years before the Football Association came up with their version and actively lobbied the London meetings in 1863 to ensure that the Laws did not include running with the ball in your hands nor hacking.

The game continued to thrive in Sheffield after 1863 but the FA struggled to engage enough clubs to play by their laws. Without the intervention of William Chesterman of the Sheffield Football Association in 1867, the London F.A. would have voted to dissolve. He enrolled 16 Sheffield clubs and 1,000 players at the crucial time to save the London organisation.

There is more information about the book here together with some reviews:

http://www.englandsoldestfootballcl...-football-1857-1889-speed-science-and-bottom/

View attachment 33883
If you decide to order, enter ‘football’ as a coupon code when prompted and you will receive a 10% discount off the usual RRP of £15.95. There is also an online option to add a dedication if you want the book to be a gift.

I am donating 10% of the book proceeds to Prostate Cancer UK.
Click to expand...
Excellent work.
Bert has an old book that gives some history also.
IMG_20171201_233552.jpg
 
Bert said:
As an Ecclesfeldian Bert would like to point out that Ecclesfield had a very strong team and many of United's early players were from Ecclesfield including our record goalscorer, his brother and father , all who played for United.
Click to expand...

The Johnsons also played a significant role in the formation of my old club Whitley Hall CC. The fact that most of my team mates were Wednesday made this quite satisfying.
 
In terms of the nicknames Sheffield FC were called the ‘Gentlemen’ because the team from 1857 were all upper middle class but all the Sheffield teams were referred to as the ‘grinders’ by the London football establishment due to industrial reputation of the town in the Victorian era. Hallam FC were always called the ‘Countrymen’ because they played a good distance away in the countryside, far from the smoke and industry that followed the course of the river Sheaf. Wednesday FC were referred to in the Sheffield papers for many years as the ‘Blades’ and in my book, I print the 1906 cartoon which finally cemented the nickname switch between the two clubs. It features the ‘Blade and the Owl’ with Wednesday finally relinquishing the Blade name and becoming the Owls in recognition of their move to Owlerton which had happened in 1899.
 

Pigs moved to Owlerton. Owlerton wasn’t incorporated into the Sheffield boundary until 1929. So they couldn’t really call themselves ‘Sheffield Wednesday’ as they technically weren’t in Sheffield until then.

That’s not me sticking up for em but that’s why
 
Alfreton14Blade said:
Came across this over the weekend. Written by a porker but hell of an interesting read. Not entirely convinced by the reasons given for Sheffield lingering in football's doldrums though.

https://www.theblizzard.co.uk/article/city-apart
Click to expand...

To be fair to the author, it's the only article about Sheffield football ever written by a Wednesdayite that doesn't mention 26 December 1979. I remember being underwhelmed by it but it at least has that going for it.
 
Ainsley Harriott said:
Pigs moved to Owlerton. Owlerton wasn’t incorporated into the Sheffield boundary until 1929. So they couldn’t really call themselves ‘Sheffield Wednesday’ as they technically weren’t in Sheffield until then.

That’s not me sticking up for em but that’s why
Click to expand...

No, Owlerton cane into Sheffield in 1901. They were extending the tram out there when Wednesday moved there in 1899 (their second choice site - they wanted one at Carbrook but lost out).
 
Revolution said:
No, Owlerton cane into Sheffield in 1901. They were extending the tram out there when Wednesday moved there in 1899 (their second choice site - they wanted one at Carbrook but lost out).
Click to expand...

To the B&C Co-op? I think they got their revenge later, to the tune of £7m.
 
snootyfenooty said:
Excellent read until you get to the last paragraph when the delusion sets in.
Click to expand...

Yeah, definitely. Pretty ironic with the hindsight of just 9 months too. The complaints about "frugality" & "restraint" being the curse of Sheffield football prior to the coming of Wendy's Tuna Baron. And then (prior to this season's collapse in faith, of course) glossing over pretty much all the negative aspects of the Dolphin Killer's reign to glorify the "financial & management stability" that's been brought to them (??), the unquestionable benefits of "globalisation" (??) and the "best football being played since the 90s" (lol!).

He's a fan, he's getting carried away a bit, but it does undermine his stance of objectivity in surveying Sheffield football as a whole. As I say, I don't buy the thesis about Sheffield football being hidebound because of it's leading figures' early glorification of amateurism & wanting to "play by the rules", nor the suggestion that economic factors generally have held Sheffield football back (compare to, say, Liverpool?). But it's a really interesting overview.
 
Thanks for pointing me to the Blizzard article as I had not seen that before. My book is a thorough history of Sheffield Football (1857 -1889) and I cannot fault his short overview of that Victorian era. My quibbles would be that I found no evidence of the Sheffield & Hallamshire C.F.A. trying to form a team in 1889, nor is it true to make it sound that United poached Wednesday players to start the club in the same year. Of the original 22-man squad who made up the first United players, 11 were from Sheffield FC, 6 were Scottish professionals and 5 local professionals, of which only two came from Wednesday - J. Hudson and Billy Mosforth.

I liked his hypothesis about the lack of rich Sheffield business men at the crucial time, being the reason why United and Wednesday didn’t push on in the 20th century and I will research that further. The conclusion that I reached in my book as to why Sheffield didn’t retain its position as the worldwide centre of Association football (after the mid-1880s) was that it was due to the aversion that the city felt towards professionalism. That explains the decline of Sheffield FC and Hallam FC but that doesn’t fully explain why the two professional clubs didn’t initially prosper.
 
 
Harry Thickett said:
Thanks for pointing me to the Blizzard article as I had not seen that before. My book is a thorough history of Sheffield Football (1857 -1889) and I cannot fault his short overview of that Victorian era. My quibbles would be that I found no evidence of the Sheffield & Hallamshire C.F.A. trying to form a team in 1889, nor is it true to make it sound that United poached Wednesday players to start the club in the same year. Of the original 22-man squad who made up the first United players, 11 were from Sheffield FC, 6 were Scottish professionals and 5 local professionals, of which only two came from Wednesday - J. Hudson and Billy Mosforth.

I liked his hypothesis about the lack of rich Sheffield business men at the crucial time, being the reason why United and Wednesday didn’t push on in the 20th century and I will research that further. The conclusion that I reached in my book as to why Sheffield didn’t retain its position as the worldwide centre of Association football (after the mid-1880s) was that it was due to the aversion that the city felt towards professionalism. That explains the decline of Sheffield FC and Hallam FC but that doesn’t fully explain why the two professional clubs didn’t initially prosper.
Click to expand...

Don't really get the argument about aversion to professionalism being the major cause of Sheffield football's historic problems?

If so, why so much success early on in football's history (at a time when the amateur/professional divide would have been so much more important)?

Whatever the answer, your book looks great (& I'm certainly aiming to buy it).

P.S. Do you cover the Zulus, mentioned in that Blizzard article? Fascinating in terms of football's early relationship with Empire/what was going on in South Africa at the time, especially with Kops being called Kops (which I know relates to the battle of Spion Kop, but little more than that).
 
Alfreton14Blade said:
Don't really get the argument about aversion to professionalism being the major cause of Sheffield football's historic problems?

If so, why so much success early on in football's history (at a time when the amateur/professional divide would have been so much more important)?

Whatever the answer, your book looks great (& I'm certainly aiming to buy it).

P.S. Do you cover the Zulus, mentioned in that Blizzard article? Fascinating in terms of football's early relationship with Empire/what was going on in South Africa at the time, especially with Kops being called Kops (which I know relates to the battle of Spion Kop, but little more than that).
Click to expand...

I think the point is that, once upon a time, there weren't any professionals. As soon as there were, amateur sides were finished. Look at the list of FA Cup winners around the time Blackburn Olympic won it. In Sheffield, the opposition to professionalism lasted longer than elsewhere.
 
WalthamstowBlade said:
I think the point is that, once upon a time, there weren't any professionals. As soon as there were, amateur sides were finished. Look at the list of FA Cup winners around the time Blackburn Olympic won it. In Sheffield, the opposition to professionalism lasted longer than elsewhere.
Click to expand...

Take the point about the early stranglehold of amateurism, but if you look at the FA Cup from the point after the amateurs dominated (Blackburn Olympic's last win in 1885/86) up until United's last appearance in a final in 35/36, Sheffield was the single-most dominant city (10 finals - 8 wins, 2 losses).

If amateurism was the reason for subsequent failures, it had to be because of some sort of delayed impact (which doesn't seem realistic), rather than it crippling football in the city when the bitter struggle was being fought out. So it seems anyway.
 
 

Alfreton14Blade said:
Don't really get the argument about aversion to professionalism being the major cause of Sheffield football's historic problems?

If so, why so much success early on in football's history (at a time when the amateur/professional divide would have been so much more important)?

Whatever the answer, your book looks great (& I'm certainly aiming to buy it).

P.S. Do you cover the Zulus, mentioned in that Blizzard article? Fascinating in terms of football's early relationship with Empire/what was going on in South Africa at the time, especially with Kops being called Kops (which I know relates to the battle of Spion Kop, but little more than that).
Click to expand...

Yes the last section of the book is all about professionalism and the Zulus (and the Sheffield Rovers) were a large part of that. The clash between the old guard of amateurism resisting the professionals is fascinating. Of course the personification of professionalism is the birth of United in 1889 (which was an out and out professional club from the start) as opposed to Wednesday who had started off as amateur but the club had to cave in 1887 when players were threatening to leave.
 
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