1876 FA Cup final

1876 FA Cup final

The second FA Cup trophy, pictured here, is identical in design to the one awarded in 1876, which was stolen in 1895 and never recovered.[1]
Event	1875–76 FA Cup
Wanderers Old Etonians
Final
Wanderers Old Etonians 1 1
After extra time
Date	11 March 1876 (1876-03-11)
Venue	Kennington Oval, London
Referee	W.S. Buchanan (Clapham Rovers)
Attendance	3,500
Replay
Wanderers Old Etonians 3 0
Date	18 March 1876 (1876-03-18)
Venue	Kennington Oval, London
Referee	William Rawson (Oxford University)
Attendance	3,500
← 1875 1877 →

The 1876 FA Cup final was an association football match between Wanderers F.C. and Old Etonians F.C. on 11 March 1876 at Kennington Oval in London. It was the fifth final of the world's oldest football competition, the Football Association Challenge Cup (known in the modern era as the FA Cup). The Wanderers had won the Cup on two previous occasions. The Etonians were playing in their second consecutive final, having lost in the 1875 match. Both teams had conceded only one goal in the four rounds of the competition prior to the final. In the semi-finals the Wanderers defeated the Swifts and the Etonians beat the 1874 FA Cup winners Oxford University.

The match ended in a 1–1 draw, the second consecutive FA Cup final to finish level. John Hawley Edwards scored for the Wanderers, but the Etonians equalised with a goal credited in modern publications to Alexander Bonsor, although contemporary newspaper reports do not definitively identify him as the scorer. A week later, the replay took place at the same venue. The Etonians were forced to make a number of changes due to players being unavailable, and the revised team was no match for the Wanderers, who won 3–0. Charles Wollaston and Thomas Hughes scored a goal apiece in a five-minute spell before half-time, and Hughes added the third early in the second half.

Background

The Football Association Challenge Cup (commonly known in the modern era as the FA Cup) was the first formal competition created for the sport of association football, which had first been codified in 1863.^[2][3] The creation of the tournament had been proposed in 1871 by Charles W. Alcock, the secretary of the Football Association (the FA), who wrote 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".^[4] His inspiration had been a similar competition between houses during his time as a pupil at Harrow School.^[4][5] The first FA Cup competition took place during the 1871–72 season and 15 clubs entered.^[5] The Wanderers won the final, defeating Royal Engineers,^[6] and Alcock himself was the winning captain.^[7] The members of the Wanderers club were wealthy gentlemen who had attended some of the leading English public schools, including Harrow and Eton College. Old Etonians, the team specifically for former pupils of Eton,^[8] had reached the 1875 final but been defeated by the Royal Engineers in a replay after the initial match finished in a 1–1 draw.^[9] The Wanderers had followed their victory in 1872 by retaining the trophy in 1873 but had not progressed beyond the quarter-finals in the subsequent two seasons.^[10]

Route to the final

The 1875–76 FA Cup had 32 entrants, all joining the competition at the first round stage. The Wanderers and Old Etonians were both allocated matches at home.^[11][10] The Wanderers defeated the 1st Surrey Rifles team, representing the army regiment of the same name, 5–0, and the Etonians overcame Pilgrims 4–1. In the second round, the Wanderers defeated Crystal Palace^[a] 3–0 and the Etonians had an easy win over Maidenhead, scoring eight goals without reply.^[12][13] At the quarter-final stage, Wanderers took on Sheffield and won 2–0, and the Etonians gained a 1–0 victory over Clapham Rovers.^[14][15] Both semi-final matches took place at Kennington Oval in London. The Etonians beat the 1874 FA Cup winners Oxford University 1–0 in the first semi-final, and a week later Wanderers clinched their place in the final, defeating the Slough-based club Swifts 2–1.^[16][17]

Match

Summary

The final also took place at Kennington Oval. Three sets of brothers played in the match: Francis and Hubert Heron lined up for the Wanderers, while the Etonians' team included Hon. Edward Lyttelton and his brother Hon. Alfred Lyttelton and Albert Meysey-Thompson and his brother Charles. The latter pair's surname had been simply Thompson until it was legally changed in 1874, and for the final Albert played under the name Thompson and Charles under the name Meysey.^[18] As of the 21st century it remains the only FA Cup final in which two or more pairs of brothers played.^[19] The Etonian team also included Julian Sturgis, who had been born in the United States and was the first player to appear in the Cup final who was not born either in Britain or to British parents residing in the territories of the British Empire.^[20] Hon. Arthur Kinnaird, who had captained Wanderers to victory in the 1873 FA Cup final, was also in the Etonian team.^[21] Wanderers began the match with two full-backs, two half-backs and six forwards, while the Etonians opted for one full-back, two half-backs and seven forwards.^[18] The crowd was estimated at 3,500, the largest for an FA Cup final up to that point.^[22]

Wanderers won the coin toss and chose to start the game defending the Harleyford Road end of the Oval. The match was played in a strong wind, to the extent that when Frederick Maddison took a corner kick for Wanderers, the gale blew the ball back out of play.^[18] The Wanderers dominated the early stages of the game, but the Etonians kept them at bay for around 35 minutes until Charles Wollaston eluded Thompson and passed the ball to John Hawley Edwards, who kicked it narrowly under the crossbar of the Etonians' goal to give Wanderers the lead.^[23]

The Old Etonians had the wind in their favour in the second half and had the better of the play. Around five minutes after the interval, a corner kick to the Etonians led to a "scrimmage" (a term in common use at the time to describe a group of players struggling to gain possession of the ball) in front of their opponents' goal, which resulted in the ball and a number of players being forced over the goal-line, uprooting the goalposts in the process. Modern sources credit the goal to Alexander Bonsor,^[24] but contemporary newspaper reports in The Sporting Life and Bell's Life in London do not mention his name, merely noting that the goal was scored "from a scrimmage".^[23] Neither team could manage to score another goal, and the game finished with the scores level, meaning that for the second successive season a replay would be needed to determine the winners of the competition.^[24]

Details

11 March 1876

Wanderers	1–1 (a.e.t.)	Old Etonians
Edwards 35'		Bonsor 50' (unconfirmed)[25]

Kennington Oval, London^[18]

Attendance: 3,500^[18]

Referee: W.S. Buchanan (Clapham Rovers)^[18]

Wanderers

Old Etonians

Replay

Summary

The replay took place one week later at the same venue. The Wanderers fielded an unchanged team, but the Etonians had to make a number of changes, as Meysey was injured and three other players were unavailable due to other commitments. One of the replacements, Edgar Lubbock, had not long recovered from a bout of illness and was noted as being out of practice, and Kinnaird was still suffering the after-effects of an injury sustained in the original match.^[26] Francis Wilson, normally an outfield player, played in goal in place of Hogg, who was unavailable.^[27][28]

The weather on the day of the match was extremely cold, with the threat of snow. The Etonians began the match playing in a rough manner,^[26] and there were also many appeals from the players for handball, which disrupted play. After around half an hour, the Wanderers' forwards surged towards their opponents' goal and Charles Wollaston got the final kick which sent the ball past Wilson.^[25] Almost immediately afterwards, another massed attack by the Wanderers led to Thomas Hughes doubling the lead.^[25]

Soon after half-time, Edwards, Francis Heron and Jarvis Kenrick combined in a skilful attack and set up Hughes to score his second goal of the game.^[25] Although the Wanderers' goalkeeper, W. D. O. Greig, was called into action several times, the Etonians were unable to get the ball past him, and the match finished 3–0 to the Wanderers.^[26] The winning team's captain Francis Birley was praised for his performance by the press, as were both Lyttleton brothers for the Etonians.^[26]

Details

18 March 1876

Wanderers	3–0	Old Etonians
Wollaston 30' Hughes 33' 50'

Kennington Oval, London^[18]

Attendance: 3,500^[18]

Referee: William Rawson (Oxford University)^[18]

Wanderers

Old Etonians

Post-match

As occurred each year until 1882, the winning team did not receive the trophy at the stadium on the day of the match, but later in the year at their annual club dinner.^[29] In addition to receiving the Cup, the winning team each received a gold medal from the committee of Surrey County Cricket Club, the primary tenants of the Oval.^[26] A week after the replay, four of the victorious Wanderers players were included in a select team which represented London in a match against an equivalent side from Sheffield. Despite their presence, the London XI lost the game 6–0.^[30]

The Wanderers won the Cup again in each of the next two seasons; as of the 21st century, this remains one of only two occasions when a team has won the competition in three consecutive seasons. The club's fortunes declined rapidly thereafter, partly because many of the team's leading players opted to play instead for the clubs set up specifically for the former pupils of their individual schools. The Wanderers last took part in the FA Cup in the 1879–80 season,^[31] and by the mid-1880s the club had ceased to play matches altogether.^[32][33] The Etonians won the Cup in 1879, defeating Clapham Rovers in the final. They reached the final again four years later but lost to Blackburn Olympic, the first occasion on which a team from a working-class background had won the Cup. The victory marked the end of the domination of the competition by teams of upper-class amateurs; no such team won the FA Cup again and the Etonians did not enter the competition after 1888.

Footnotes

a. ^ This Crystal Palace club is not generally regarded as being the same as the modern club of the same name. In 2020, the modern club, which had long been regarded as having been formed in 1905, began asserting that it was a direct continuation of the team which existed in the 1870s based on new research by club historians,^[34] but this was disputed by other football researchers and rejected by the English football authorities.^[35]

References

Works cited

• Barnes, Stuart, ed. (2009). Nationwide Football Annual 2009–2010. SportsBooks Limited. ISBN 978-1-899807-81-9.
• Collett, Mike (2003). The Complete Record of the FA Cup. SportsBooks Limited. ISBN 1-899807-19-5.
• Soar, Phil; Tyler, Martin (1983). Encyclopedia of British Football. Willow Books. ISBN 0-002-18049-9.
• Warsop, Keith (2004). The Early FA Cup Finals and the Southern Amateurs. SoccerData. ISBN 1-89946-878-1.

This page was last edited on 15 April 2024, at 11:36