Alexander Jackson, your book deals with Association Football during the First World War. Just how popular was the game in Britain by the time the war started in 1914?
By 1913 much of the modern game had emerged. On the one hand, there was a grassroots game, ranging from old Etonians to Durham pitmen, while at the top were the professional clubs, attracting millions of fans each season and generating huge amounts of media coverage. In 1914 the game got the royal seal of approval when King George V became the first monarch to attend the FA Cup final [Burnley 1 Liverpool 0].
Why was the season not suspended, as it was in the Second World War, at the outbreak of hostilities?
There were several factors at play; uncertainty about how events would unfold; the government’s call for “business as usual”; and a genuine feeling that the game could help the war effort by raising morale and money for charity.
However, this was hugely controversial and led to an anti-football campaign amongst the right-wing press. This is sometimes mistaken as successfully shutting down football in 1915. Contrary to the popular impression, football did not stop in the summer of 1915. Instead, the FA encouraged the game to go ahead, but with some crucial changes to make it acceptable to wartime opinion.
The Football Association banned the payment of players in 1915 – what was the make up of the FA at the time, in particular the class aspect?
The FA Council was very middle-class in background and attitude. Its Chairman was Charles Clegg, a Methodist teetotal lawyer from Sheffield. His favourite saying was “no one got lost on a straight road.” Clegg and many of his board first played the game when it was a purely amateur affair and were uneasy about some aspects of the commercial game. Their decision to ban the payment of players was partly about responding to wartime criticism. But it was also an ideological decision targeting working-class players since they did not stop anyone else connected with the game from being paid.
Contrary to popular perception, football did not finish in 1915. You mention a pivotal moment in July 1915 when Tom Maley persuaded the football league to continue the season. By this stage, do we know the percentage of volunteers, and how that impacted on the playing staff left behind?
At the elite level, roughly 25% of professional players volunteered, although this area is still being researched. It meant that in the summer of 1915, some clubs had many of their pre-war players now working in coal mines or munitions factories. But other clubs had to replace volunteers with new players. With players no longer under contract, many returned home and played for local clubs. Other clubs shut down, so these players were in demand. Blackpool became known as ‘Blackpool Rovers’ after recruiting several Blackburn Rovers players.
Maley’s Bradford team contributed a number of young men to the trenches, and several were killed. How were clubs from the 1914/15 season impacted by casualties during the Great War?
This is a really challenging question. On the one hand we can talk statistics and how clubs tended to lose small numbers of players. On the other, this underplays the profound sense of loss felt by many at different times. While some clubs might have a limited connection to their club, others were popular members of the club and its community. For managers who were father figures like Tom Maley, the loss of any of his ‘boys’ could be deeply painful.
How did the introduction of conscription in 1916 impact the game in England?
Conscription impacted in several ways – for club managers, it increased the problems they had in finding players and fielding a side. Leicester Fosse (now Leicester City) had one player called up the morning of a game – apparently a director tried to get the NCO in charge of the player to let him off for the day, but to no avail!
It may also have encouraged fans to return to game. While crowds dipped to their lowest in 1915/16, after that they began to rise again. Once conscription came in, male fans had less reason to feel like they might be singled out for criticism.
1915 FA Cup Day, the ‘The Khaki Cup Final’ [Sheffield Utd 3 Chelsea 0], was controversial as the last before suspension of the competition. How close was it to being cancelled?
In the winter of 1914, there were debate about whether it should go ahead, partly in response to the anti-football campaign. A proposal to cancel was put forward at the FA Council, but it was rejected. In contrast, the Scottish FA cancelled the Scottish Cup. The Admiralty had taken over the Crystal Palace ground where the final was normally held, so it was held at Old Trafford. It was called the ‘Khaki Cup Final’ because of the number of soldiers in attendance, including wounded men.
Between 1915 and 1919 football continued – in many ways as usual including gambling and corruption. What was the corruption that took place during this period?
One of the biggest worries for the game’s administrators, was the spectre of match-fixing, organised at the behest of the sort of bookmakers you might see in Peaky Blinders. There were several attempts, the most famous being 1915 Good Friday fix. Seven players from Manchester United and Liverpool arranged a 2-0 win that both helped Manchester United avoid relegation and earned the players extra money in side-bets. It was investigated, and the players received bans. Later in the war, another Manchester United player was caught trying to fix games on behalf of some shadowy bookmakers and sentenced to prison.
You’re curator at the National Football Museum which I’m sure is a busy job, but what are you working on next?
Well, before this book, I wrote a history of Barnsley’s famous cup side of the 1910s. It would be nice to get that published. I’ve looked at how the club’s story connects with the growing professionalism and commercialism of the game, the mining industry that once dominated national life, and the industrial unrest and politics of the period.
I’m also considering whether I could do another book from the unused research for Football’s Great War. I’m still researching, and I’d really love to write more about some of the individual stories, and the visual and material culture that I unearthed.
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Alexander Jackson is the author of Football’s Great War: Association Football on the English Home Front, 1914-1918, published by Pen & Sword Books.
