Home of football statistics and historyAnd so to 1883-84 – when admission was obtained for a few pence with games starting “when everybody was ready!”
After London had given the game of Association football to the British Isles, the Northerners looked at it and liked it. Then they took it, applied their rich talents to it, re-shaped it, and handed it back to London and the rest of the country. London wasn’t sure it liked what it got after Lancashire had kicked it about. “London Rules” (as it was often called), was “the simplest game”, designed purely for the pleasure of the players, a brief encounter between two parties of gentlemen. The new interpretation insisted that football was not just for an afternoon, but all the time, morning, noon, and night. Not just for the players, but for everybody, (some of them quite clearly a long way removed from gentility). The North acted on the idea that pleasure is a very serious business, demanding the application of time, thought, and money.
The men of London and South might have scoffed and made rude remarks about the attitudes of the Northern Tribes. They might have shrugged their shoulders and left the rough Provincials to their own devices except that, over and over again, it was being proved that the Northerners were better at football than the Southerners; that the played it with greater success; that they organised it better.
But it was not quite the same game. The new football introduced new tactics, new enthusiasms, new ideas. It was all quite strange to London, but not, on that account alone, unacceptable. Yet with the good came the bad. Much of the new tactical thinking was based on ignorance of the ideals of football, and the new enthusiasms often engendered an unwanted fanaticism for success. So there were waves of abuse – even violence –directed against the referee and the visiting players if the home team got beaten. So there were instances, and allegations of instances, of professionalism.
Some county associations which had to deal with these matters acted swiftly and decisively, none more so than Birmingham and Sheffield, but the body most concerned with the problems of rowdyism, violence, and professionalism, the Lancashire Football Association, seemed unwilling, or unable to do much about it. That was not really surprising, for the most powerful members of the Lancs F.A. were also the chief offenders. How could Preston North End support action against Accrington for professionalism when the Deepdale club was itself doling out money (more than L1,200 a year) to its players? How could Bolton– Wanderers complain against crowd misbehaviour at Rawtenstall when Pike’s Lane was so often the resort of hooligans? Nobody wanted to bring these matters up for fear that their own misdemeanours would be laid bare to the world, – and to The Football Association in London.
There was a feeling in Lancashire that eventually some form of professionalism would have to be made legal. In the end The Football Association would have to agree that some players had to be paid. If it would not sanction the actual payment of wages, then there would have to be a system whereby men were compensated for time lost from work.
The business was brought up at a meeting of the national body on 25th June, 1884. The Blackburn Rovers representative said that if players could not be compensated for lost wages it would be the end of football for working people in Lancashire.
Major Marindin, from the Chair, said the proposal was to alter the rules so that as well as actual out-of-pocket expenses, loss of not more than one day’s pay could be claimed. He said the Committee did not like this “wages clause”, but he realised that its deletion would bear hardly on working men.
Mr. Forrest (Lancashire), said the would prefer that two days’ loss of pay could be claimed, whereupon Mr. Clegg argued, “if one, why not three, or even six?”. There ought not to be a wages clause at all.
Mr. Pierce Dix, of Sheffield, bitterly opposed the liberal attitude to loss of wages. They had gone over it before, he said, and decided against it; not they seemed to be trying to upset that verdict.
Mr. Crump (Birmingham), said he did not consider football should be limited to one class. He failed to see how a working man, receiving a single day’s pay for lost wages could be termed a professional.
The supporters of professional football argued lucidly and powerfully and left the door open invitingly for negotiation. Their opponents, honest men of principle though they were, could only fall back on honesty and principle and the pessimistic cries that football was being ruined. But for the most part, the true-blue amateurs of the South (and the Provinces), listened with growing sympathy to the words of the Lancashire men. However, they voted against the proposal.
Tactically, the North was showing London a thing or two; the pupil was teaching the teacher. Lancashire was teaching all its teachers, even the Scots from whom it received the “short-passing game”.
Right from the kick-off, it had something useful to offer. Hitherto, the custom was to start the game by the captain of the side taking a look kick into the opponents’ half of the field. The Northern clubs saw this as a “free gift” to the opposition, so they decided instead that one of the centres should kick off by making a short pass to a colleague.
All free kicks were “indirect”, but Blackburn Rovers and others made them “direct” by the simple means of a tapped kick.
The year before, Blackburn Olympic had beaten one of the leading exponents of the London style, Old Etonians, with a clever mixture of long and short passes. This year, Blackburn Rovers beat Queen’s Park, the best club in Scotland, by using the Scottish method. And they did it by playing the Scottish style so much better than the Scots. Moreover, they did it under the very noses of the London footballers, at Kennington Oval.