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 a rugby side. Football games were a chimera of football and rugby until the establishment of the Football Association in 1863. Breakaway teams who preferred a rugby style of play refused to join the association and this led to the formation of the Rugby Football Union in 1871. The Football Association specified round balls in 1872, while the Rugby Football Union made oval balls compulsory in 1892.
The first known mention of the team is in an 1877 edition of the Sporting Chronicle and they appear to have survived until 1926. The 1888 New Year’s Eve edition of the Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer references them, as well as advertising upcoming matches, including Bradford v Fettes-Loretto. The latter was a combined team from two private Scottish colleges. The most famous Old Fettsonian is James Bond.
Of considerable interest are two advertised games – Bradford v Maories and Park Church v Maories. The Maories were the New Zealand Native Football Team, who toured in 1888. The paper devotes an entire page to rugby and association football, including lengthy rugby match reports. The sport had exploded in popularity in the north of England. The Boxing Day tie between Bradford and Halifax tie attracted 16,000 spectators.
Long-lost rugby clubs mentioned include Bankfoot, Hipperholme & Lightcliffe, Salterhebble, Scupham’s United, and Keighley Zingari. Similarly, Association clubs include Dundee Harp, Halliwell, Cleveland and South Shore. South Shore – who would later merge with Blackpool FC – beat Notts County to reach the FA Cup quarter finals in 1885/86, a famous giant-killing result of the era. The game was played at their home ground, Cow Gap Lane.
Elsewhere on the page, a brief match report of Bolton Wanderers v Wolverhampton Wanderers reports that the 5,000 spectators had to watch the end of the game in darkness; while Robert Buchanan of the Paisley Abercorn Football Club and Alexander Lochhead of Third Lanark Football Club were fined “two guineas and 30s respectively” for fighting during a fixture.
– Monday 31 December 1888