Liverpool v Sunderland 07.11.96

7th of November 1896, a match played at Anfield in rain and fog, Ned Doig (top  right) protesting that the light was too dim for the match to continue. Liverpool fielded 9 Scottish players, Sunderland 11. 
Following this win Liverpool went top of the League, but eventually finished in 5th place. 
Former Sunderland player Davy Hannah, playing at outside left, scored all 3 goals for Liverpool.

Ned Doig

Ned Doig joined Blackburn from Arbroath in 1889. His only appearance for Rovers was a 9-1 win over Notts County. 
Doig made his debut for Sunderland in September 1890 and went on to make 454 first team competitive appearances for Sunderland, winning 4 First Division Championships.
He joined Liverpool (in Division 2) in 1904 and made 53 appearances for the Reds spread over 4 seasons. 
Ned Doig represented Scotland 5 times over a 16 year period, finishing on the winning side 4 times. 
Doig was originally an outfield player who took to goalkeeping with Arbroath Reserves as a 17 year old. Concious of his hair loss, Doig was never seen without his cap, which he would fasten under his chin with a piece of string. 
On Easter Saturday 1900 Doig was involved in a curious incident-  Manchester City goalkeeper Charlie Williams appeared to become the first goalkeeper to score from open play in the Football League, his long clearance eluding Doig. Some contemporary reports (there was no dubious goals panel!) say that Doig made the decisive touch, and credit him with an own goal. ENFA credits City inside left Fred Williams with the goal. Sunderland won 3-1.

 Manchester Courier and Lancashire General 16.04.00

Knocker West

Enoch West signed for Sheffield United as a 17 year old, but he failed to break into the first team and returned to minor football.
2 years later, in 1905, he joined Nottingham Forest. He scored 100 goals in 184 appearances for Forest.
In 1910 he joined Manchester United.

West was one of the players suspended indefinately by the Football Association following the revelation that the Good Friday match between Manchester United and Liverpool had been fixed.
The sorry tale is covered in depth in Graham Sharpe's Free the Manchester United One: The Inside Story of Football's Greatest Scam.

Betting on the correct score was unusual in those days. Mr Giles , a bookie in Hucknall, gave evidence that an exceptionally large number of bets were placed on a 2-0 scoreline, so much so that he stopped taking them. He still lost over £150. The fixing took place in the context of concerns that players would face hardship when football was suspended (the War had begun in 1914 and the Football League had been criicised for proceeding with the 1914-15 season).

The ban extended to preventing the men from entering any football ground in the future...

West protested and sued the FA  and  the Hulton publishing group for libel. The case was heard in July 1917 and West was unsuccesful. 
 Sandy Turnbull was killed while serving in the war, but all the other players, except West, had their bans lifted by the FA in 1919 in recognition of their service to the country; Turnbull received a posthumous reinstatement.
I can only assume that West was omitted from the amnesty for having the temerity to challenge the authority of the FA.. With an element arch black humour West's ban was lifted in 1945 when he was 59 years old. 

The players suspended were:

Tom Fairfoul (wing half, 34yrs)   Liverpool

Reinstated but did not return to football.

Tom Miller (forward, 24 yrs)        Liverpool

When the ban was announced Miller had already joined the army. Following suspension Miller returned to his native Scotland. When his ban was lifted he rejoined Liverpool. In 1920 he signed for Manchester United! After finishing his career in Scotland he had a very brief spell as manager of Barrow.

Bob Pursell (full back, 26 yrs)      Liverpool

Rejoined Liverpool in 1919 and moved to Port Vale in 1920.

Jackie Sheldon (winger, 27 yrs)   Liverpool

Sheldon joined Liverpool from Manchester United in 1913. At the time the ban was announced he was on active service on the western front. After the war (and the lifting of the ban) he played 2 further seasons for Liverpool.

Sandy Turnbull (forward, 30 yrs) Manchester United

Turnbull didn’t play in the Good Friday match. Turnbull was killed in action in Arras (1917). His life ban was posthumously rescinded by the Football Association in 1919 (!).

Enoch West (forward, 28 yrs)      Manchester United

Life ban lifted in 1945 (!)

Arthur Whalley (half back, 29 yrs)             Manchester United

Returned to United for the 1919-20 season.

Lol Cook (centre forward, 30yrs)                Chester

Cook’s career was over by the time of the enquiry.

Fred Howard (centre forward, 24 yrs)      Manchester City

At the end of his 1-year suspension (imposed for the unsatisfactory way in which he gave evidence) Howard returned to City. He later played for Gillingham, Wrexham, New Brighton and Port Vale.

West

Alex Raisbeck

Between 1896 and 1898 Alex Raisbeck made 30 appearance for Hibernian, scoring 4 goals. In March 1898 he moved to Stoke on loan, making his debut against The Wednesday. Stoke were struggling near the foot of Division 1 and required a 'Test Match' win to keep them up.
In the close season, having made 8 appearances for Stoke (1 goal) Raisbeck was signed by Liverpool.
His debut for the Reds was also against The Wednesday.
Over the next 11 seasons he was a regular at centre half for the Anfield club, notching up 340 first team appearances and scoring 21 goals.
He was capped 8 times by Scotland (1900-08).
In 1909 he returned to Scotland and joined Partick Thistle, for whom he made over 130 appearances .

His great forte as a half back is a dashing, breezy versatility. He is like an intelligent automaton, fully wound up and warranted to last through the longest game on record. To watch him at play is to see a man pulsating to his finger-tips wth the joy of life. Swift, rapid movement, fierce electric rushes are to him an everlasting delight. One would think that he had discovered the secret of perpetual motion. He keeps on and on and never flags.
Association Football & The Men Who Made It by Alfred Gibson and William Pickford.

Footballers, although they earned tidy money, were bound by a draconian maximum wage rule . Clubs found ways to bypass these rules and Liverpool employed Raisbeck in a novel capacity to boost his earnings. He walked around Anfield and the neighbouring districts ensuring that the bill posters employed by the club were doing their job. 

I have heard it remarked that football is a vehicle of the devil...

Yorkshire Evening Post 19.01.31

James Jackson Jnr.
Son of  the former Woolwich Arsenal skipper James Jackson Senior, James Jackson Jnr. was an extraordinary man. Cousin of Australian test cricketer Archie Jackson, he began his career in Scotland, playing for Queen's Park, Motherwell and Aberdeen before moving to Liverpool.  Jackson represented both the Scottish League and the Football League in inter league fixtures.
On retiring from football he was ordained as a minister of religion having studied at Cambridge University whilst still playing for Liverpool.

Kenny Campbell
By the time this service was held Campbell was coming to the end of his football career, and was in his second spell with New Brighton. The heartthrob of Anfield , he had joined Liverpool from Cambuslang Rangers in 1911 and spent 9 seasons with the Reds, during which he was capped 8 times by Scotland. As well as New Brighton he later played for Partick Thistle, Stoke  and Leicester City.

1914 FA Cup Final

The FA Cup Final, the first to be attended by a reigning monarch in the person of  King George V. It was the first Cup Final appearance of both clubs, and the last to be played at Crystal Palace. 

The souvenir card shows Tommy Boyle the Burnley captain, and Harry Lowe of Liverpool.

Lowe was injured in the League match at Middlesborough the week before the final. Ephraim Longworth led the Reds for the game with Burnley.

Dawson missed the final through injury.

 Referee Herbert Bamlett (a future manager of Manchester United) signals as Bert Freeman (bisected here by the crossbar) scores the only goal of the final in the 57th minute. 

The King presents the Cup to Boyle- Lord Kinnaird extreme right. 

Matt Busby- Manchester City

Matt Busby's name is linked so strongly with Manchester United that it is strange to remember that he played all his club football with 2 of United's fiercest rivals- Manchester City and Liverpool.
Busby, a half back, made 227 appearances for City having signed as an 18 year old.  In March 1936 he was sold to Liverpool for £8,000 and made 125 appearances for the Reds.
He played once for Scotland (1933).

The last day of the the season...

 On the morning of Saturday April 29th, 1899 the top of the First Division table looked like this:

		P	W	D	L	F	A	PTS	GA
1	Aston Villa	33	18	7	8	71	40	43	1.775
2	Liverpool	33	19	5	9	49	28	43	1.750

In a thrilling climax to the season the two sides were due to play each other that afternoon at Villa Park.
Back in October Villa had beaten Liverpool 3-0 at Anfield.
 There were unpleasant rumours circulating about the results of Villa's 2 previous games, in which they had beaten Notts County 6-1 and West Bromwich Albion 7-1. 

 41,000 spectators saw Villa win the decider 5-0.

Aston Villa		Liverpool
Billy George	G	Bill Perkins
Howard Spencer	RB	Archie Goldie
Albert Evans	LB	Billy Dunlop
Tommy Bowman	HB	Rabbi Howell
Jimmy Cowan	HB	Alex Raisbeck
Jimmy Crabtree	HB	Charlie Wilson
Charlie Athersmith	OR	Jack Cox
Jack Devey	IR	John Walker
Billy Garraty	CF	George Allan
Fred Wheldon	IL	Hugh Morgan
Steve Smith	OL	Tommy Robertson

Devey opened the scoring after 4 minutes and in fact all the goals came in the first half. Devey added a second. Freddie Wheldon and Jimmy Crabtree were the other scorers, Wheldon getting the third and fifth. 
It was the first time in the 11 season history of the League that the title had been decided in this dramatic manner, and Mrs Bentley (wife of the President of the Football League ) was on hand to present the trophy to Jack Devey at the end of the match. Mr Bentley himself joked that he hoped Villa wouldn't loose this trophy (a reference to the theft of the FA Cup in 1895).

Aston Villa captain Jack Devey, 21 goals in 30 games in the 1898-99 season.

Scott

Belfast born Peerless Billy Scott played for Everton (1904-1912) and Leeds City (1912-14). He was an FA Cup winner in 1906. In first class English Football he kept 100 clean sheets in 315 games (289 for Everton)- 31.74%. He represented Ireland 25 times. Clean sheets: 5  W- 6, D- 3, L-16. He played for Liverpool during the 1914-18 war.

 Billy had a younger brother, 11 years his junior. Everton turned down Lish, who then went on to make 468 appearances for Liverpool in 2 spells (he returned to Ireland during the 1914-18 war) 137 clean sheets (29.27%). He won 2 league Championships with the Reds (1921/22, 1922/23)
For Ireland (1920-36)- 31 appearances . Cleansheets: 6. W-7, D-7, L- 17.
Scott won a number of honours in Ulster during the 1915-19 period and later managed Belfast Celtic with some success. 

The Sheriff of London Charity Shield

Introduced at the end of the 1897-98 season, this was a challenge match between the leading amateur club in the country and one of the leading professional clubs, for the benefit of charitable institutions, hospitals etc.
The competition was established by Thomas Dewar, the whisky magnate, and is sometimes referred to as The Dewar Shield. 
And the trophy was as big as a man!
The  Dewar Shield  lapsed in 1908 following a rift between the leading amateur clubs and the FA.

Let's look at the ten editions of the Shield.
Corinthians were chosen as the amateur representatives 9 times. This was good business, as Corinth usually featured a number of international players.The professional representatives were not necessarily the league champions or FA Cup holders.
Professional teams triumphed on 6 occasions
Amatuer teams (ie Corinthian FC) won twice.
The Shield was shared twice.

18981	Corinthians	0	0	Sheffield United	Crystal Palace
	Corinthians	1	1	Sheffield United	Crystal Palace
18992	Aston Villa	0	0	Queen's Park	Crystal Palace
1900	Corinthians	2	1	Aston Villa	Crystal Palace
1901	Aston Villa	1	0	Corinthians	Crystal Palace
1902	Tottenham Hotspur	5	2	Corinthians	White Hart Lane
1903	Sunderland	3	0	Corinthians	White Hart Lane
1904	Corinthians	10	3	Bury	Queens Club
1905	The Wednesday	2	1	Corinthians	Crystal Palace
1906	Liverpool	5	1	Corinthians	Craven Cottage
1907	Newcastle United	5	2	Corinthians	Craven Cottage

1 Sheffield United declined to play extra-time as they disagreed with some of the referee's decisions- the trophy was shared.
2 Shared, each club retained the Shield for six months.

Anfield

The Kop, 1906

The ground has now been completely walled in with fancy brick setting, with large exit gates on the four sides as well as numerous entrances. Therefore, there will be no difficulty in either entering or leaving the enclosure. The directors’ aim has to been to provide as compact and comfortable a ground as possible in which every person, no matter what position he may visit, will have a full view of the game.
Liverpool Echo August 1906

Liverpool took over Anfield when they were formed as a result of a rift in Everton in 1892.  Everton went on to develop Goodison park, the first great purpose built football stadium in England. Anfield remained modest in comparison.
The Anfield ground was redeveloped inn preperation for the 1906-07 season. 
The 2 most notable changes were the construction of the new stand and the raised bank constructed at the Walton Breck Road end of the ground.
Ernest Edwards, the Sports editor of the Liverpool Post & Echo, named it Spion Kop after the battle of Spioenkop that took place during the Boer War in 1900.
 Liverpool's Spion Kop  consisted of 132 steps reaching a height of 50 feet. It was 135 feet wide. This was constructed on a cinder bank topped with a six feet wall .The terrace was accessed by  12 feet wide steps that climbed to the top of the embankment from the level of the street below.

The first game in the restructured Anfield on September 1st 1906 attracted a crowd of 32,000 to watch defending champions Liverpool defeat Stoke 1-0.

Rab Howell

The only man from the Roma community to play for England.
Howell scored on his debut for England in 1895 in a 9-0 win over Ireland. His next (and last) cap came against Scotland 4 years later. Howell won a League Championship with Sheffield United in  1897-98.
The description is by Ernest Needham.