Forest FC, October 1863
Forest FC in October 1863. It is the earliest known image of a football club.
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Sheffield representative football team, April 1876
The Sheffield representative football team was a city-wide team composed of players drawn from the dozens of Sheffield clubs of the time. This picture appeared in the Sheffield Portrait Gallery: A Journal of Literature, Criticism, and Satire in April…
‘Maories’, 1888/89
Fifteen players in all black kits pose against a backdrop of a United Tribes flag and the Union Jack. The ‘Maories’ were the New Zealand Native Football Team who toured Britain (including Ireland) in 1888-89.…
Yorkshire County Football Team, 1 March 1883
Fifteen players in full kit gather round an oval ball, posing in three tiers of standing, sitting, and lounging. While most players wear club caps, two dandies sport lounging caps. Yorkshire County Football Team were…
Wales’ extinct deadly sport that saw hundreds of naked men beat each other with rocks and sticks
Wales Online Winter 2025 Badminton Magazine of Sports and Pastimes. Volume VI, January to June 1898, pp. 521-524. Today rugby is considered to be a combative, relentless, and sometimes brutal sport that is central to…
SPORTS BOOKS THAT TELL THE STORY OF IRELAND’S GAMES AND GAMEMAKERS
Review by Irish America Magazine. Winter 2025 Irish sport is seldom just about the field of play. It’s often tangled up with history, migration, religion, class, politics, pride, heartbreak (inevitably) and occasionally unfettered joy .…
Burnley Union Star FC 1885
Union Star were formed in 1881, primarily by cotton mill workers. They reached their pinnacle in 1885, when they won the Burnley Hospital Cup at Turf Moor, beating Haggate 3-0 before an estimated 10,000 spectators.…
Hellgate wins best feature script at the Liverpool Indie Awards
A nobleman squanders his vast inheritance to earn the approval of his father. When he realises he prefers the simple life, a tragedy changes everything. Set in Cork and London at the end of the…
BRENDAN MURPHY REWRITES THE ORIGIN STORY OF FOOTBALL ITSELF
Review by The Irish Post The Game That Would Be King sets out to do something audacious: rewrite what we think we know about the origins of soccer. Brendan Murphy’s new work, published by Meyer…
The Beautiful Game’s TARDIS-Bending Journey Through Time
Review by Soccer Books UK In an era where soccer dominates global sports culture, Brendan Murphy’s “The Game That Would Be King” arrives as a revolutionary text that challenges everything we thought we knew about…