Sheffield FC
Sheffield: Where football kicked offThe world’s very first football club was born in Sheffield on October 24th 1857.
Football in some form had been around for years. As early as the 14th century, a game was being played in the streets and fields of England by two teams with a ball. Mob Football, as it was known, was very violent and could be played on pitches that ran the length of the town with anything up to 500 players.
By the mid 19th century the game had evolved, but it was still nothing like the game we know and love today. It wasn’t uncommon for 20-a-side games to go on until dusk and there wasn’t even a standard set of rules. People in different towns played by completely different laws to each other.
The club is bornEverything changed in May 1857 when two keen cricket lovers, William Prest and Nathaniel Creswick, chatted late into the night about the need for an organized sport to keep their fitness levels up during winter. They decided on football.
Five months later the world’s first football club was formed. Offices of the club were elected, with Creswick named as Secretary and Captain, and headquarters were established in a potting shed and green house at the bottom of East Bank Road.
The first thing Sheffield Club did was to study the existing sets of rules and lay down its own code of laws, which were the foundation stones for the first commonly accepted set of rules.
Sheffield Club attracted a lot of interest and members organised themselves into teams so they could play matches, like Married Men vs Unmarried Men and Professional Occupations vs The Rest.
The world catches onSoon other clubs began to spring up and by 1862 there were 15 clubs in and around the Sheffield area.
The following year, the first association of clubs was set up. Sheffield Club representatives appear to have attended as observers though they did not agree to join immediately.
Sheffield FC has pioneered many innovations in football over the years. Heading was unheard of in the south of England until 1875. When Sheffield travelled to the Oval to play London, the sight of the Sheffield players butting the ball reduced London’s players and fans to fits of hysterics.
In those days the crossbar was just a length of rope strung between the uprights. The Sheffield Laws introduced, for the first time, the notion of a solid crossbar.
Other innovations included the first use of corner kicks, the first free kicks for fouls, the first proper throw-ins and the first floodlit match.
Proud amateur dramaticsSheffield FC was closely involved in the formation of Sheffield United in 1889. They provided some of the players for United’s early games and used to join in practice sessions with the United professionals.
Over the next few years, professionalism took over the game and Sheffield Club’s imprint on the national game diminished. Sheffield’s finest hour on the pitch came on April 4th 1904, when they beat Ealing 3-1 in front of 6,000 fans at Valley Parade to lift the FA Amateur Cup.
In 1957 Sheffield FC became the first club to reach the magic 100 years old mark. To celebrate, a Sheffield XI played an England XI at Hillsborough and a banquet was held at Cutler’s Hall attended by HRH The Duke of Edinburgh and Sir Stanley Rous.
On the pitch successes have been few and far between, but in 2001 the club regained the FA Amateur Cup they won in 1904 and recently progressed to the Fourth Qualifying Round of the FA Cup for the first time since 1959.
Proud history, bright futureOff the field huge progress has been made in securing the future of the world’s oldest club. When Richard Tims became Chairman, he set the target of making the club financially self-sufficient. Not only are the club now on a sounder financial footing than ever, but they also now have their own ground for the first time in their history.
Now there’s two senior teams, nine junior teams, one women’s team and one disability team plying their trade at the club’s Bright Finance Stadium in Dronfield on the outskirts of Sheffield.
And with a global membership scheme and website recently launched, it seems that at last, the club with the illustrious past has a future to match.
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