Sheffield — The Home of Football & City of Footballing Firsts
In July 2018, a reported 1.12 billion people tuned in to watch France defeat Croatia in the final of the FIFA World Cup. To put that into context, around 15% of the Earth’s total population watched the match. It is a staggering statistic. Football is undoubtedly the global game; the undisputed leading sports in Europe, Africa, Asia and South America. But how did it get to this? Where did it all begin?
Most followers of football are probably aware the game as we know it today started in England. However, it’s quite possible that you’re unaware of the industrial city in the north of England which can lay claim to having:
- The oldest football club in the world
- The oldest football stadium in the world
- The oldest professional football stadium in the world
- The world’s first football cup competition
- The world’s first floodlit game of football
- A set of rules from 1858 that the modern game is still built around today
Sheffield is the city that gave birth to the most popular sport on the planet. Here are the beginnings of the beautiful game as we know it.
In The Beginning: Sheffield FC
It’s 1857, and Nathaniel Creswick is fed up. As well he might be; he is an accomplished fencer, cricketer and footballer, but he can't play football nearly as much as he would like. Sure, he can play the occasional game with his teammates at Sheffield Cricket Club, but that’s not really going to suffice. Football, played in various forms at this point, had been an extremely popular pastime in English villages and public schools for quite a few years now. But there were no leagues, no stadiums, no clubs, not even any real rules. Some people preferred to pick up the ball, others used their feet. Some were rugby tackling each other down to get the ball off the opposition, others felt that to be totally against the spirit of whatever this burgeoning game was. So it was time Nathaniel did something about it.
Fortunately, a teammate of his at the same Sheffield cricket club was having similar feelings. William Prest, not just a proficient cricketer and footballer but a supremely talented athlete to boot, also wanted an outlet to play football. And yes, he felt too that this strange game could do with a little refining. Today the aim of the game is still to get the ball in the opposition’s goal, but it’s fair to say that the means of accomplishing that have changed somewhat. Football matches in the early 1800s between opposing villages could last for several days, often ending up with serious injuries and even deaths. By the time Creswick and Prest decided to form a football club the sport had moved on slightly from village bloodbaths of old, yet almost every public school in England who played football had different rules for it. It was time for the two of them to change things.
On 24 October 1857, at the Adelphi Hotel in Sheffield, Nathaniel Creswick and William Prest got together and officially formed the world’s first football club: Sheffield FC. They would play matches at the Olive Grove ground in Sheffield, and a yearly subscription to the club would cost 5 shillings. The pair of them were also keen to establish a codified set of rules that their club would play under. The club was created out of necessity in that they had no formalised outlet in which to play football, but it was also created in an attempt to codify the rules of the game. And so The Sheffield Rules were born.
The Sheffield Rules
Although VAR didn’t make the cut, the original set of Sheffield Rules included many of the rules that we still play by today. Here are some of the innovations outlined in the 1858 rules:
- Kick-offs from the centre of the pitch
- No handballs
- Throw-ins
- Corner kicks
All of these rules were introduced in the first draft, then in subsequent years things such as 90-minute matches ( The 1867 Youdan Cup rules introduced the concept of the golden goal and that matches should last for ‘one hour and a half’), headers (initially developed in Sheffield but not mentioned in the rules; they didn’t realise how alien it was to others until it generated laughs from members of the London FA during a match in 1866), the ‘D’ just outside the penalty area and crossbars also arrived into the game by way of Sheffield.
It’s difficult to imagine just how fractured the game of football was when Prestwick and Crest sat down to write down these rules. If you were transported back in time as an interested onlooker to one of these early football matches then it would bare very little resemblance to the game as we know it today. Although it’s difficult to say exactly, in the mid 1800s football appeared to be more of a mix between football and rugby than anything else — which explains the subsequent divergence of the two codes when the Rugby Football Union was established in 1871. Early games of football could also involve up to 20 players on each team, a lot of ‘charging’ and a scoring system that combined goals with something called rouges.
When the Football Association published their first ever laws of the game in 1863, it’s little surprise that they encompassed most of the Sheffield Rules that had been published several years earlier. It’s worth remembering that at this point in history Sheffield was the dominant force in football; home to 11 of the first 20 football clubs ever established and keen proponents of a more gentlemanly style of play. This was totally at odds with the football teams from public schools and universities in the south of England, who favoured hacking, charging, catching the ball and other characteristics we now associate with the modern game of rugby.
Still, whilst there was a lot of squabbling about the rules, Sheffield FC still needed somebody to play against. And although intra-club matches kept them ticking over in the early years, the spark that paved the way to the formation of a new club came from an extremely unusual source: Napoleon Bonaparte.
Hallam FC & The World’s First Football Derby
It’s the late 1850s, and Britain is getting increasingly worried that Napoleon is going to invade their shores. In response, a series of volunteer corps are established around the country in order to bolster the ranks of the army should he decide to attack. One of those corps was the Sheffield Volunteer Rifle Corp. And who were some of the earliest recruits into the newly-established regiment? Messrs Prestwick and Crest of course — the two co-founders of Sheffield FC. Another member of that same corp was a gentleman called Tom Vickers — also a member of Sheffield FC. Now, according to the excellent book A History of Sheffield Football 1857–1889, author Martin Westby speculates that a falling out between Crestwick and Vickers, which led to Creswick resigning from the corps, may well have resulted in Vickers going on to form his own club in protest.
Could this public disagreement in late 1860 in some way have formed a rift that led to the formation of a rival club to Sheffield FC? Pure hypothesis of course on my part, but it does exactly coincide with the formation date of Hallam FC.
A History of Sheffield Football 1857–1889
With very little physical evidence from the time, it’s almost impossible to know for sure the circumstances leading to the second football club in the world being formed. What we do know, however, is that once Hallam FC was founded by Vickers and a man called John Charles Shaw, they certainly didn’t mess about. Three months after the formation of the club, on Boxing Day 1860, they faced off against Sheffield FC at their Sandygate Road ground in what can be considered the oldest football derby match in the world. Indeed, Sandygate is still an active football stadium today, hosting the very same team, and is officially recognised by the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest football ground in the world.
Despite fielding fewer players than Hallam, Sheffield triumphed 2–0 on the day. Not only did that groundbreaking match establish the very concept of a derby match, but it also established a tradition that still persists in English football today: the Boxing Day fixture. The round of games played on December 26 in England traditionally attracts one of the biggest crowds of the season — at a time when every other major league in Europe is taking a winter break.
Hallam FC vs Sheffield FC, known as ‘The Rules Derby’, is a fixture that is contested to this day, though Hallam FC are currently a couple of divisions below Sheffield in the English league pyramid.
Bramall Lane — The World’s Oldest Professional Ground
Originally built back in 1854 as a cricket ground, Bramall Lane would go on to play a pivotal role in the development of Sheffield football. Football games started to be played there in 1862 and the stadium is still in use today as the home of Sheffield United — making it the world’s oldest professional football stadium.
It is centrally-located in Sheffield and appeared to be a major stimulus for the plethora of football clubs that popped up in the very early years of association football. Clubs such as Sheffield FC, Hallam FC, Norfolk FC and The Wednesday all played at Bramall Lane at some point, with the ground able to house many more spectators than equivalent playing fields across the city such as Olive Grove, Sheaf House and Norfolk Park. Looking at a map from the time of Sheffield football grounds, it is clear that a lot of playing fields are clustered around Bramall Lane to the south of the City Centre.
By March 1867 Bramall Lane’s status as the region’s major football ground was such that it was due to host the final of a brand new football cup competition. That cup was called the Youdan Cup, and was the first of its kind in the sport.
The Youdan Cup
In 1867 Sheffield had a thriving local football scene, and one entrepreneurial local businessman was going to take advantage. Thomas Youdan was a jack of many trades, starting out as a labourer before going on to be employed as a silver stamper and then owning a local pub. He even served as a Sheffield councillor for six years! However, he made his fortune as a theatre proprietor, building the Surrey Theatre on West Bar, Sheffield in 1851. Yet in 1865, just two years before he established the Youdan Cup, the theatre burnt to the ground — a disaster which cost him an estimated £30,000 (that’s an incredible £3.8m in today’s money). Never one to know when he was defeated, he simply established another theatre — the Surrey Music Hall — which he was the proprietor of when he posted the following notice in February 1867:
Mr. THOMAS YOUDAN having offered for COMPETITION, by the Football Clubs of the Town and Neighbourhood, a Valuable SILVER CUP, will award a Premium of One Sovereign to the most original and appropriate Design, which may be sent, under cover, to Daily Telegraph Office, endorsed ‘Design for the Youdan Football Cup’
A History of Sheffield Football 1857–1889
This was the announcement of a competition to design the Youdan Cup, a competition organised by the Sheffield Football Association and sponsored by Thomas Youdan. A total of 12 teams took part, minus Sheffield FC, who declined to take part on the basis that they wished to “groom themselves for the national stage”. Very snooty. Anywho, the twelve teams that took part in the world’s first football cup competition were as follows: Norton, United Mechanics, Garrick, Mackenzie, Hallam, Heeley, Norfolk, Fir Vale, Broomhall, Pitsmoor, Wellington and Milton.
The eventual winners were Hallam, who drew 0–0 with Norfolk in the final at Bramall Lane, but won courtesy of scoring two rouges to their opponents’ zero. Contemporary reports the final attracted a crowd of 3,000, a figure which the FA Cup Final would not better until 1878. This demonstrates the popularity of the fledgling game of football in Sheffield, and the fact that the city at this time truly was the epicentre of the beautiful game. The FA Cup, which is often erroneously believed to be the world’s first football cup competition, was not established for another five years.
The Decline of Sheffield Football… and the Floodlight Experiment
By 1878, the rest of the country had caught up with the footballing pedigree of Sheffield. Football had taken hold of the British Isles, with London, the Midlands and the North West all producing an astonishing amount of new clubs in the intervening years — 51 new clubs were formed across the country in 1877 alone. Blackburn Rovers, Everton, West Bromwich Albion and Newton Heath (soon to be Manchester United FC) had all appeared, whilst various social and economical factors were beginning to determine the powerhouses of football.
The cotton mills of Manchester and the North West were providing steady employment and economic empowerment to the region. In 1850 the Factory Act had given working men the freedom to pursue leisure activities after 2pm on a Saturday, and by 1878 football clubs had sprouted all over the country to satisfy the working man’s desire for a Saturday afternoon activity. It meant that clubs in the North West could attract huge crowds and subsequently draw huge revenues, facilitating a subsequent push towards professionalism. Sheffield’s football clubs were steadfast in their opposition towards professionalism, and this stance meant they were left behind by their rivals across the country.
However, the city wasn’t quite done yet. That year saw the first ever floodlit football match between ‘two teams of leading players of the Sheffield Football Association’. It was staged at Bramall Lane and an estimated crowd of 20,000 showed up to see the spectacle — thought to be a record at the time in association football.
Various reports of the game state that most of the entertainment was to be had off the field that night, with local engineers desperately trying to ensure the insufficient floodlights were able to illuminate the pitch. The Sheffield & Rotherham Independent stated in their report:
“At first the light was certainly too powerful to be looked at with comfort. The distinguishable colours of the two sides were clearly visible, although it was rather difficult to discern the individual movements on the top side of the ground.”
The Manchester Times meanwhile, had the following comments:
“Some amusement was caused by the brilliance of the light, which dazzled the players sometimes, and caused some strange blunders.”
As always, it’s difficult to say exactly how successful this experiment was, but after some more attempts in next few weeks the idea appeared to be binned off. Floodlights weren’t properly introduced into English football for another 70 years. Still, all in all it sounds like pretty good fun.
In 2007 Sheffield FC celebrated its 150th year anniversary with a special game vs Inter Milan at Sheffield United’s Bramall Lane stadium. Sheffield FC, who are one of only two clubs in the world to have been awarded the FIFA Order of Merit, could count upon the legendary Pelé as one of their guests that night. Yet in the history of football, they and the city they originate from remain oddly sidelined.
The city of Sheffield provided the world’s first football club, the world’s second football club and subsequently 11 of the first 20 football clubs in existence. It is home to the oldest football ground in the world and the oldest professional football ground in the world as well as the world’s first football cup competition. The role of these pioneering clubs and individuals from this unassuming city should not be forgotten, for they set the wheels in motion for football to become the dominant sport in the world today.
Much of the information for this article was taken from the book A History of Sheffield Football 1857–1889 by Martin Westby. It is a definitive account of the early years of Sheffield football and I implore you to buy a copy.
