The Origins and Development of Association Football in Nottinghamshire c.1860-1915 Andrew Charles Cennydd Dawes Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for PhD Degree awarded by De Montfort University Submission date: April 2017 Contents Page Number Abstract 5 List of Tables and Figures 6 List of Abbreviations 6 Acknowledgements 7 Introduction 8 Football and History 9 Nottinghamshire 18 Professionals and Amateurs 22 Pride of Place: City and County 32 Sources and Methodology 40 Title and Structure of Thesis 44 Chapter One - The Emergence of a ‘football kicking fraternity’, c.1860-1880 49 The Foundations of Football in Nottinghamshire 54 Developing Networks 63 Rules, Officials, Players and Tactics: Towards Uniformity 77 Conclusion 91 Chapter Two - Nottinghamshire, its Press and the FA Cup: ‘Bringing professionalism to the front, 1880-1885’ 95 The Press, Local Patriotism and the FA Cup 100 The Clubs, the County FA and Professionalism 117 2 ‘It works in Cricket, why not Football?’ Nottinghamshire and Professionalism 124 Conclusion 135 Chapter Three - A Footballing Culture, c. 1885-1892 138 The Press and Football in Nottinghamshire 142 Establishing Respectability 152 Popular Culture and Fundraising 161 ‘Lamb-like’ Nottingham 164 Nottinghamshire and Developments in English football 172 Conclusion 185 Chapter Four - Football, Loyalties and Identity in Nottinghamshire c. 1890- 1900 187 City, Identity and Sport 189 Winning the Cup 193 Town, City and County 202 Nottingham as a Regional Football Capital 215 Conclusion 221 Chapter Five - Narrowing ambitions, widening horizons: Nottinghamshire football, 1900-1915 225 Nottinghamshire and English Football’s New Wave 228 The Press and Nottinghamshire Football 248 Nottinghamshire and English Football’s ‘Great Split’, 1907-14 253 Trade and Tours 267 Conclusion 278 3 Conclusion 281 Appendices 295 Bibliography 313 4 Abstract Home to two of the oldest football clubs in the world, Nottinghamshire was a hub of the association game. Yet it barely receives a mention in scholarly studies of football. Based predominantly on original research in the local press, this thesis offers new knowledge with regards networks, professionalism, amateurism and identity through its study of the game’s formation and development in relation to the county between 1860 and 1915. Nottinghamshire was especially involved in networks with Sheffield and the London based FA early in soccer’s history. Games continued to be played with differing rules depending on the region with Nottingham also having its own rules. This thesis demonstrates how it was mainly the FA Cup, but also other national events such as the North-South game and England-Scotland game, which were major influences in ensuring that the game played under the FA's rules became the dominant football code. This study examines how the FA Cup fuelled professionalism too as sides sought advantage over others. Nottinghamshire clubs felt justified in using professional methods because of professionalism in cricket. This aided their stance in the debates on legalizing professionalism which Nottinghamshire helped influence. Amateurism, meanwhile, remained a strong feature of the local game and Nottinghamshire’s staunch amateurs certainly played a prominent role in the Amateur Football Association during its split from the FA. Football was part of the identity of Nottingham and its county. This was expressed especially with the slightly varying FA Cup celebrations in 1894 and 1898. Civic leaders were keen to associate themselves with football early in the game’s development as it became a respected part of the county’s culture. The Notts-Forest rivalry was intriguing too: for a period it was class based; there was always an element of town versus county to it; sometimes the clubs were friends; at other times they were bitter enemies. The local press reflected and reinforced enthusiasm for the game. And when those from the area travelled, they took the game with them aiding the game’s expansion through work links or tours either primarily for the love of the game or as promoters of the sport. 5 Tables and Figures Page Number Table 1.1 – The Forest and Notts networks, 1864-78 66 Table 1.2: Numbers of Clubs from each network with which Forest and Notts were involved with between 1864 and 1878 67 Table 1.3: Recorded acquisitions of land by Nottingham Town/City Council and its use for football 69 Table 3.1: Future Football League Sides that Notts and Forest Played in 1886 181 Figure 5.1: Notts’ League Positions and Relative Crowds Positions 240 Figure 5.2: Forest’s League Positions and Relative Crowds Positions 240 Table 5.1: Percentage of the Populations of Nottingham, Sheffield and Liverpool attending Football Matches 242 List of Abbreviations AFA – Amateur Football Association BFA – British Football Association FA - Football Association 6 Acknowledgements I am especially grateful to my supervisors Matthew Taylor and Dilwyn Porter for their guidance and expertise. I am also extremely grateful to my wife, Christine, my daughter, Cerys, and my mother and my father for their support and patience with me as I worked on this thesis. I would also like to thank my friends who listened and fed back to me as I shared my findings with them. These discussions were very valuable in helping me formulate my ideas. 7 Introduction Home to two of the oldest football clubs in the world, Nottinghamshire was a hub of the association game. Yet it barely receives a mention in scholarly studies of football. Based predominantly on original research in the local press, this thesis offers new knowledge and interpretations of the networks, identities and professional and amateur trajectories of football through a study of the game’s formation and development in Nottinghamshire between 1860 and 1915. Academic writing on the history of association football is actually no longer in its infancy. It is now over forty years since James Walvin’s first scholarly study, The People’s Game, appeared in the mid-1970s.1 Since then, a series of monographs, PhD theses and journal articles have been produced, developing and refining our understanding of both of the history of the game and its place in the broader social and cultural history of Britain. It is perhaps not surprising that football’s early years – or what is variously described as its ‘origins’, ‘emergence’ or initial ‘development’ – have interested historians the most. Understanding how a range of varying popular and public school games were transformed into a small number of ‘football’ codes in the middle decades of the nineteenth century has preoccupied historians and sociologists alike for a number of years. Nottinghamshire was especially involved in networks with Sheffield and the London-based FA early in soccer’s history. Games continued to be played with differing rules depending on the region, with Nottingham also having its own rules. This thesis demonstrates that the FA Cup particularly, as well as other national events such as the North-South game and England-Scotland game, were major influences in ensuring that the game played under the FA's rules became the dominant football code. This study examines how the FA Cup fuelled professionalism, too, as sides sought advantage over others. Nottinghamshire clubs felt justified in using professional methods because of 1 Walvin J., The People’s Game: A Social History of British Football (London: Allen Lane, 1975). 8 professionalism in cricket. This aided their stance in the debates on legalizing professionalism which Nottinghamshire helped significantly to influence. Amateurism, meanwhile, remained a strong feature of the local game and Nottinghamshire’s staunch amateurs certainly played a prominent role in the Amateur Football Association during its split from the FA in the early 1900s. The question of how and why football came to represent something significant and meaningful in the civic life and culture of many late Victorian and Edwardian towns and cities has also been of significant interest to historians. Football was part of the identity of Nottingham and its county. This was expressed especially in the varied FA Cup celebrations in 1894 and 1898. Civic leaders were keen to associate themselves with football early in the game’s development as it became a respected part of the county’s culture. The Notts-Forest rivalry was intriguing too: for a period it was class based and there was always an element of town versus county to it. Sometimes the clubs were friends while at other times they were bitter enemies. The local press reflected and reinforced enthusiasm for the game. And when those from the area travelled, they took the game with them aiding the game’s expansion through work links or tours either primarily for the love of the game or as promoters of the sport. This introductory chapter will explore the current state of the scholarly writing on the history of football. It will seek to locate the present study within this literature and demonstrate what the study of the game Nottinghamshire adds to existing knowledge. Football and History The first academic studies of football in the late 1970s and 1980s emerged from a wider interest among social and labour historians in the leisure and non-work lives of the British working class. For both James Walvin at York and Tony Mason at 9 Warwick, association football’s central role in the lives of so many workers meant that it needed to be taken seriously and studied in the same way as other facets of working class culture such as the music hall, the public house and the cinema. For Walvin, sport was ‘an essential ingredient in the social and physical well-being of any nation worldwide’ whilst his book was an attempt to ‘make good the discrepancy between the social importance of football in English history and the virtual absence of football from historiography’.2 Walvin and Mason’s books stand out as the key formative studies in the history of football.