Post by Deleted on Jun 12, 2011 20:24:42 GMT
One last posting about football before the Great War based upon Association Football & English Society 1863-1915 published back in 1980. This is to do with the type of people who watched football in those days and how they followed it.
Tony Mason, the book’s author, dug out information about who had shares in Darwen FC one of the early exponents of professionalism. Some of the job titles are amazing but, generally speaking, it’s a pretty working-class and lower-middle class crowd and probably quite indicative of who watched the club:
Next, drawn from report in the Glasgow Herald, there’s a list of those caught up in the Ibrox disaster of 1902 (Scotland v England). Again it’s probably a good reflection of football’s audience in those days and of the jobs done by people in the building trades, metalworking and shipbuilding in that part of the world:
One thing from the book that surprised me was just how soon newspapers started to bring out Saturday night “football specials”, an aspect of footballing life that has now almost totally vanished. I knew about sporting newspapers such as Athletic News but hadn’t realised the longevity of some of these titles (anything in Leigh’s Locker?):
Likewise gambling on football – or at the very least something equating to the football pools – is a relatively early innovation. Here’s an example of the Skill Competition dating, you'll note, from around the time of Torquay United's inception. I wonder if our founders used to compare coupons before matches?
Tony Mason, the book’s author, dug out information about who had shares in Darwen FC one of the early exponents of professionalism. Some of the job titles are amazing but, generally speaking, it’s a pretty working-class and lower-middle class crowd and probably quite indicative of who watched the club:
Next, drawn from report in the Glasgow Herald, there’s a list of those caught up in the Ibrox disaster of 1902 (Scotland v England). Again it’s probably a good reflection of football’s audience in those days and of the jobs done by people in the building trades, metalworking and shipbuilding in that part of the world:
One thing from the book that surprised me was just how soon newspapers started to bring out Saturday night “football specials”, an aspect of footballing life that has now almost totally vanished. I knew about sporting newspapers such as Athletic News but hadn’t realised the longevity of some of these titles (anything in Leigh’s Locker?):
Likewise gambling on football – or at the very least something equating to the football pools – is a relatively early innovation. Here’s an example of the Skill Competition dating, you'll note, from around the time of Torquay United's inception. I wonder if our founders used to compare coupons before matches?