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 third chapter of the book (a 11,500 word section). This focuses on the mid 1800s and the development of Manchester’s earliest known association football club Hulme Athenaeum and its long term impact.
Subscribing costs £3 per month (cancel anytime) or you could sign up for a year at the discounted price of £20 per year. Every subscriber gets access to everything posted on the site.
Subscribe to get access
Read more of this content when you subscribe today.
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 second chapter of the book (another 5,000 word section). This focuses mainly on the early to mid 1800s and talks of the development of Manchester and the sporting growth occurring at that time, including forms of football as well as cricket and horse racing etc..
Subscribing costs £3 per month (cancel anytime) or you could sign up for a year at the discounted price of £20 per year. Every subscriber gets access to everything posted on the site.
Subscribe to get access
Read more of this content when you subscribe today.
It has virtually slipped out of living memory but this goal is possibly the greatest ever scored at Maine Road. It is also the goal that was viewed by the largest paying audience of all time at the old stadium.
The goalscorer Eric Brook remains one of City’s biggest stars and he was idolised by thousands of Mancunians throughout his career. This goal was obviously popular with Maine Road regulars at the time but it has to be stressed that it was also highly significant in the Blues’ quest to re-establish themselves as a major force.
The idea of this ‘GOLDEN GOALS’ feature is to remember a significant or spectacular Manchester City goal from yesteryear. My hope is that supporters who were not around back then will learn more about these goals while those who were here will hopefully be reminded of them. If you would like to nominate a goal for possible use in a future feature then please comment at the end of this piece or email me with details of game, goal scorer and date.
This article, covering Brook’s goal is available for subscribers to the website below. It costs £20 a year (it works out £1.67 per month) and you get full access to all articles posted, including PDFs of the out of print Manchester A Football History and my first ever book about Manchester City. There are also audio interviews & more. Do a few searches on past content to see what’s available.
Subscribe to get access
Read more of this content when you subscribe today.
Yesterday I posted images of early Manchester City FA Cup final shirts and asked ‘which shirts are from which finals’ with a bonus question of ‘can anyone work out the players’ who wore these (no searching on t’internet for matching player numbers please!).’ So here are the answers and further details on these players/shirts.
The shirts and players who wore them are:
4, pale blue, top right – Ken Barnes 1955 FA Cup Final
Unnumbered maroon, top middle – Ernie Toseland 1934 FA Cup Final
5, shiny blue, top right – Paul Power 1981 FA Cup Final
4, maroon & white, bottom left – Ken Barnes 1956 FA Cup Final
Cornflower blue, bottom middle – Sam Cookson 1926 FA Cup Final
8, red/black, bottom right – Colin Bell 1969 FA Cup Final
Notice the two balls on the photographs? They are the 1956 FAC Final ball and the 1969 FAC final ball. All shirts and balls were on loan to the Manchester City Experience (the original club museum set up in 2003) as part of our exhibition.
I’ve got further images and more information on these shirts below but first it’s worth talking about the only City FA Cup final shirts missing when we did this exhibition in the mid 2000s (obviously City have reached multiple FA Cup finals since that time) being 1904 and 1933. We simply could not track down shirts from either final, though we kept getting close to borrowing a scarlet shirt from the 1933 final. We put the shirts together and I took these photos of them.
Here’s a contemporary photo of the 1904 FA Cup final shirt. The player here is James McMahon.
James McMahon wearing his 1904 FA Cup final shirt
The 1933 FA Cup final was the first final to feature numbered shirts (Everton wore 1-11, City 12-22) and City’s shirts were usually described as being scarlet. City had word what they called ‘Lucky Scarlet’ a few times in the previous decade, though it never quite seemed that lucky! Here’s a contemporary image of the 1933 FA Cup final shirt back, worn by Matt Busby, showing the numbering used.
Matt Busby in the 1933 FA Cup Final
The oldest shirt we had on display was Sam Cookson’s 1926 FA Cup final shirt and here’s a close up of the Manchester coat of arms worn on that shirt. This was the first time City had worn the coat of arms in a final (City didn’t wear any emblem in 1904):
Notice the shade of blue too. It’s a darker blue than City were known to wear and was known as cornflower blue at the time. It was a special colour for the final against Bolton. Someone at City must have remembered (or maybe it was the FA) that there had been some comments in 1904 that City’s blue and Bolton’s white were too close in colour. I’ve always found that a bit odd but I guess City didn’t want to take any chances when the two sides met again in 1926.
The 1933 final was scarlet as mentioned earlier and the players wore numbers for the first time but in 1934 numbers were not worn. Personally I’d have thought they’d keep up the idea but maybe someone somewhere moaned about these new fangled ideas like wearing numbers in a similar way to how some moaned when squad numbers were introduced and player names were added. Here’s a close up of Ernie Toseland’s 1934 shirt badge. The shirt was described as maroon and the shorts were revolutionary…. We had an expert from Umbro come to visit and he looked at the shorts (we had Toseland’s full kit on display) and was delighted to see an exclusive design. They contained a diamond shaped piece of fabric stitched in and he told me that this was a pair of Umbro’s ‘crotch resistant’ shorts. He explained more, but whether they gave benefit is open to question.
Here’s Ken Barnes’ 1955 emblem. A more traditional blue but it’s interesting that the away colour of maroon makes its way on to the emblem. I wonder if they thought City would wear maroon at some point when the sew on patch was created?
In 1956 the emblem colour was red with yellow edging (to match the numbers on the back). People often try to suggest yellow is not a traditional City colour but it has been used on plenty of kits, including the numbering in 1956 and as the main colour of the away shirt in 1959-60.
Here’s Colin Bell’s 1969 FA Cup final shirt in front of the old honours board. I believe this honours board is still held in City’s archive somewhere. Maybe we should dig it out and update it. I may post another feature on the board itself another day – people think it’s as old as Maine Road but Bernard Halford had it made in the mid 1970s, just after the League Cup win if my memory is working today!
Here’s the special emblem to mark the 100th FA Cup Final. People get confused about this cup final with some saying it was the Centenary Cup Final (as the emblem does!) or the 100th FA Cup Final. The FA were quite clear at the time – the 1972 FA Cup Final was the Centenary Cup Final (marking 100 years since the FA Cup was established) and 1981 was the 100th FA Cup Final. So City or Umbro got this wrong and if you look at the First Day Cover (below) or any of the match programmes, souvenirs etc. you’ll see they created a special 100th cup final emblem.
I’ve done a lot of research on City’s kits over the decades. There’s lots of comments on them in my books, especially Manchester The Greatest City, Farewell To Maine Road and my City Folklore book. There are also other features across this website. Some only for subscribers and some for all. Why not subscribe (see below) and read all the content on this site? You can subscribe for a month at £3 per month or sign up for a year at £20. Why not try it for a month?
If you enjoy all the free material on my website and would like to support my research and keep this website going (but don’t want to subscribe) then why not make a one-time donation (or buy me a coffee). All support for my research is valued and welcome. It allows me to keep some free material available for all. Thanks.
In the mid 2000s we set up a FA Cup final display as part of a special exhibition at the Manchester City Experience (the original club museum set up in 2003). We managed to borrow shirts from several star players and their families with the only City FA Cup finals missing being 1904 and 1933. We simply could not track down shirts from either final, though we kept getting close to borrowing a scarlet shirt from the 1933 final.
We put the shirts together and I took these photos of them. So which shirts are from which finals and can anyone work out the players’ who wore these (no searching on t’internet for matching player numbers please!).
I’ll post the answer tomorrow along with a lot more detail about these shirts and the other missing kits.
If you enjoy all the free material on my website and would like to support my research and keep this website going (but don’t want to subscribe) then why not make a one-time donation (or buy me a coffee). All support for my research is valued and welcome. It allows me to keep some free material available for all. Thanks.
Manchester City’s 1930s captain Sam Cowan is often reported to have said something like ‘We’ll be back next year’ to the King when City lost the 1933 FA Cup final to Everton BUT this cannot have been true. So, here to spell it all out is the story… City reached the FA Cup final in 1926 (losing 1-0 to Bolton), and again in 1933 (losing 3-0 to Everton). Sam Cowan had played in both these games and felt bitterly disappointed with each defeat. By the time of the 1933 final Cowan was City’s captain and that defeat had hurt him more than the 1926 final. He hated being runner up and was determined to see the Blues triumph. He vowed to guide the Blues to glory and promised supporters that City would be back in 1934 to win the trophy. His promise became a reality and over the years Sam’s promise has become part of City folklore with various publications, including official City magazines and other works, claiming that Sam had told King George V at the 1933 final that the Blues would be back in 1934 to win the trophy. Sadly, the story has become corrupted and Sam never did make a promise to the King.
So what did Sam say and why did everyone believe he had made a promise to the King? The Guest of Honour at the 1933 final was the Duke Of York, the present King’s grandfather and the future King George VI. He attended because King George V was too ill to make the final, and so that simple fact proves Sam could not have made a promise to the King.
Lawrence Furniss, the City President, told journalists immediately after the 1934 final that Sam had predicted that the Blues would be back twelve months earlier, and he also suggested that Sam had mentioned this to the Duke Of York. So it’s possible this comment is the one which later became adapted by journalists looking for an even better story.
As an aside here’s a photo of the King at City’s Hyde Road ground in 1920 and Lawrence Furniss is the man stood immediately behind the King:
The King with the Mayor in Hyde Road’s ‘Royal Box’. Notice Lawrence Furniss stood, behind the King. Furniss was a major figure from the 1880s to the 1940s at City.
What is known is that Sam appeared on a newsreel shortly after the 1933 final with Everton’s Dixie Dean where both men toasted each other for the future and Sam stated that he hoped his team, Manchester City, would win the Cup in 1934. This film was shown across the country and made it clear that Sam wanted to return to Wembley.
In 1934 Sam guided City to a 2-1 victory over Portsmouth. Apart from Furniss’s comments nothing was said of a prediction by Sam to the King or Duke of York, it was only years later when it was mentioned. In fact the first time the story was quoted appears to be in 1955 when City’s fifties captain Roy Paul talked of emulating Sam Cowan by guiding City back to Wembley the following year. Books and articles from the period then made the claim that Sam had told the King in 1933 the Blues would return. Clearly, this was a corruption of the truth, but the story sounded great and future generations accepted this as fact.
Clearly, reaching Wembley in successive seasons was a major achievement for Sam and his team. Likewise any losing captain is likely to make a statement saying ‘We’ll be back’. As Sam was not a boastful character it is unlikely he would have said anything more than he was determined to guide his side back to Wembley for what he hoped would be a successful trip.
Regardless of the validity of Sam’s prediction it is clear that Sam was a major influence with the Blues, and he became the first City man to appear in three FA Cup finals while with the club.
If you enjoy all the free material on my website and would like to support my research and keep this website going (but don’t want to subscribe) then why not make a one-time donation (or buy me a coffee). All support for my research is valued and welcome. It allows me to keep some free material available for all. Thanks.
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 first chapter of the book (a 5,000 word section). This focuses mainly on the middle ages up to the early 1800s and talks of the 1608 ban on football in Manchester, Peterloo and leisure activities such as cockfighting and early cricket activity, as well as football of course. There is material in every section of the book that should interest fans of Manchester football, no matter which team you support, or academic researchers/historians.
Subscribing costs £3 per month (cancel anytime) or you could sign up for a year at the discounted price of £20 per year. Every subscriber gets access to everything posted on the site.
Subscribe to get access
Read more of this content when you subscribe today.
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 introduction to the book. There is material in every section of the book that should interest fans of Manchester football, no matter which team you support, or academic researchers/historians.
Subscribing costs £3 per month (cancel anytime) or you could sign up for a year at the discounted price of £20 per year. Every subscriber gets access to everything posted on the site.
Subscribe to get access
Read more of this content when you subscribe today.
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 had no idea whether it was either year but I hoped someone out there could help. Obviously, the year of construction could help identify the year the photo was taken. Well, the call for help worked and various people contacted me with suggestions.
John Nisbet found a piece on the engine and wrote to me after identifying the train numbers 349: ‘I found this with a search showing a loco with the number 349. It mentions that it was withdrawn after a 35 year working life which suggests it was built around 1922 ish.’
If that’s true then the train was not around in 1904 and therefore the image seems to be more likely to be 1926.
While you’re here why not subscribe to the site and see all the material posted over the last five years or so?
If you enjoy all the free material on my website and would like to support my research and keep this website going (but don’t want to subscribe) then why not make a one-time donation (or buy me a coffee). All support for my research is valued and welcome. It allows me to keep some free material available for all. Thanks.
Every Monday starting on 3 August 2025 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. There is material in every section of the book that should interest fans of Manchester football, no matter which team you support, or academic researchers/historians.
Subscribing costs £3 per month (cancel anytime) or you could sign up for a year at the discounted price of £20 per year. Every subscriber gets access to everything posted on the site.
Gary James' Football Archive 