Home of football statistics and historyThe phenomenal increase in the number of football clubs and the need of so many of them to find a regular, well-kept ground on which to play, resulted in a number of properties being converted for use as playing-fields. Public parks, and common-lands were all very well, the turf at these places being good and preserved, but there was no privacy, and matches on them were too often subject to interference from crowds of people attracted by a spectacle they did not understand, as well as from idlers and loafers with nothing better to do than make a nuisance of themselves. These people had as much right to use public lands as the footballers, of course, though in exercising that right they should have accepted and upheld the rules of decent behaviour and refrained from spoiling the pleasure of other users of the amenity. But what they should have done, and what they actually were wont to do, was not necessarily the same thing, as footballers found out on lots of occasions.
Football on public parks was also subjected to local rules and bye-laws, (as is the case today, of course). More than one important match at Battersea Park had to be terminated early as the park-keepers there kept very strictly to the clock when came the hour to lock the gated for the night.
A private, enclosed ground was desirable in every way, except for the matter of cost,– the law of supply and demand tending to push up the price of securing a supply of that which was now very much in demand. The requirements of sites by the house builders also increased the value of any spare ground, and the landlords were not slow to take advantage of a lucrative position; if clubs wanted grounds, then the clubs must pay for it, and if they jibbed at the rent, there were plenty of potential customers desiring land who would not be so fussy about the money.
Some landowners, like the proprietors of Page’s Field at Tufnell Park in North London, contracted to provide a superior sort of playing fields complete with ground’s man, dressing-rooms, and much more that could be desired by the footballers. As such entrepreneurs found, however, the making of a football ground entails more than the simple provision of a field, a few sheds and a man to look after it. Complaints were made by tenants in the first year of the opening of the Tufnell Park enclosure, and Page’s had to improve the turf and lay decent pathways at the approach to their field.
The proposition of football as a “spectator sport” was not one which readily caught on with the clubs, the majority of which did not encourage the attention of members of the public; they would welcome their friends and supporters, and the interested parties who travelled with the visitors, naturally, but strangers, “why are they here? “…” what do they want?”. As for strangers en masse, it was a case of “certainly not”, But again, as the secretary of the Richmond rugger club pointed out, if the public wants to stand and stare at young men kicking a ball about, why not put a price on their pleasure? At sixpence a head (half-price for boys and ladies), you would soon have your rent-money. This view eventually prevailed; and it grew to such an extent that years later in Lancashire it was considered part of the duties of a “twelfth man” to count the cash taken at the gate. It would not be stretching things too far to assert that the consideration of “the gate” was a prime factor in the formation of The Football League.
But that is jumping ahead. In 1872/73, even at those places where spectators were welcome, they were not welcomed, exactly; they were not made comfortable. A rich, or a considerate club might provide a bit of banking with a few railway sleepers, might even throw down a few lengths of duck-boarding in the wet weather. Stands were not unknown, or if not stands proper, a bit of cover you could call a stand. In 1873 if you were fool enough to want to watch football, if you had nothing better to do with you time, you had to take your chance.