Welcome to Gary James’ Football Archive

Manchester 1840-1919 (Part One)

Every Monday I’m posting a section from my book ‘The Emergence of Footballing Cultures: Manchester 1840-1919’. It tells the story of the origins of men’s football in Manchester and discusses the birth of both City and United plus the clubs that predated them such as Hulme Athenaeum, Manchester AFC, Birch etc. Today’s section is the…

1904 or 1926 FA Cup Train: The Answer

A few days ago I asked for train enthusiasts to help identify a train so that I could work out whether this photo I was given about twenty years ago was from 1904 or 1926. The person who gave it to me was certain it was from 1904 but someone else suggested 1926. Personally I…

Peter Barnes MCFC Return?

On this day (2nd August) in 1981 the Sunday Mirror published an interview with Peter Barnes saying he would return to Manchester City if he could. The player was at WBA and, following Ron Atkinson’s move to Manchester United, it looked like Peter was to move from the Hawthorns.m Both City and Leeds United seemed…

The John Tueart Manchester Corinthians’ Film Show

I had a nice reminder this morning that a year ago (Saturday 2 August 2025) we managed to stage another wonderful free event celebrating the pioneering Manchester Corinthians women’s team. This included a film show, talk and (most importantly) interviews with 6 Corinthians covering every era of the club’s existence. There were other Corinthians in…

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About this Website

On this site you will find articles, posts and other material about football. Some of this material is free to access (select ‘Free Content’ from the menu above) while other material is available to those who subscribe to the site. 

The site was launched on 1 January 2021. Since then hundreds of articles, interviews (audio & written), history talks and both my PDFs of my first book (From Maine Men To Banana Citizens, published 1989 and out of print since 1990) and the 2010 edition of Manchester A Football History book (this originally cost £24.95 and has been out of print since 2012) have been posted.

To get a feel for the volume and type of article available visit the ‘Search The Archive’ page (or use either the search function at the bottom of this page or by selecting a category in the Posted Content Categories field below).

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