On thinking about a series of programme articles to span the season I ended up channelling Rudyard Kipling via CLR James viz “what do they know of Maidenhead United who only Maidenhead United know”, and helped by a subscription to the Blizzard, have decided to write twenty five thumbnail sketches of footballing innovators who have had a lasting impact on the global game.
I begin the series with a man who
has become known as not just someone with a lasting influence on modern
football, but is also described as the “father of modern sport”, Charles W
Alcock. This is fair comment given he had a hand in the first FA Cup, the first
football international, the creation of cricket’s county championship and the
first test match between England and Australia which of course in time became
The Ashes. He was not just an administrator but a player and tactician of a
note years before the concept of the manager coach became an established role.
Born in Sunderland in 1842, he moved
to Chingford at an early age, being educated at Harrow, the famous footballing
public school. Eschewing the family shipbroking business he became a sports
reporter and looked to carry on his playing career as a centre forward by
forming The Wanderers in 1862, a club created for Harrow old boys. A year later
the Football Association was created with Alcock joining the committee in 1866,
publishing the first ever football annual two years later. He was appointed FA Secretary
in 1870, making his mark by organising the first international match between England
and Scotland in March of that year, captaining England at Kennington Oval in a
1-1 draw against the Scots.
This was the first of five games
leading up to what FIFA have since recognised as the first official
international which was played at the West of Scotland cricket ground in Partick,
Glasgow in November 1872, the earlier matches being discounted as the Scotland
team were all London based and selected by the English FA!
In the meantime in 1871 Alcock
proposed:
'That it is desirable
that a Challenge Cup should be established in connection with the
Association, for which all clubs belonging to the Association should be invited
to compete'
Based on Alcock’s experience of
inter-house knockout football at Harrow, this turned into the world’s first
national football tournament, the FA Cup, with Maidenhead and Marlow two of the
fifteen clubs which entered the first competition. Alcock went onto captain The
Wanderers to victory in the first ever FA Cup Final, beating Royal Engineers
1-0. Following retirement, Alcock refereed the 1875 and 1879 finals.
Alcock was as much an organiser on
the pitch as off it. Having become in 1866 the first player to be penalised
under the new offside law, he went onto become a leading advocate of the
“combination” (i.e. passing) game which advocated teamwork especially defence
linking with attack. This had been developed by the Sheffield club formed in
1857 and reflected Alcock’s lack of class prejudice. Unlike many of his former
school mates who sought to denigrate the status of professional clubs like
Sheffield from the north who favoured team work, in favour of individualistic
amateur clubs who saw football as self-expression with players taking it in
turns to make solo runs, Alcock argued that professionalism in sport was not a
problem, rather that shamateurism or in his words “veiled professionalism is
the evil to be repressed”.
Alcock continued as FA Secretary
until 1895, combining the role with that of secretary of Surrey County Cricket
Club. It was in this latter role that he organised the first England v
Australia test match in the northern hemisphere in 1880 and formalised the
County Championship in 1890.
The FA Cup, international football
and professionalism, the first two suggested by Alcock and the latter strongly
supported by him in the face of wholesale opposition from his peers, prove him
most surely to be a man who made modern football.
