Category Archives: Manchester United

Recently I’ve been contacted by someone who had in their possession a couple of Manchester City match programmes from 123 years ago. These were from the first season the club did its own official match programme (there was an earlier joint effort between 2 rugby and 2 football clubs that was described as official from the 1890s – see below – but 1900-01 was the first for MCFC on their own). He sent me scans of them and one programme was produced for a match played on this day (29 September) in 1900. Here are some images and details from it.

This was a special game for City, though the programme was not produced because it was a special game. This was the fifth issue of the season and contained eight pages, like the others. The significance of the game however was that Arthur Balfour MP was a visitor that day. Balfour would become Prime Minister in 1902 and was still in that role when City won the FA Cup for the first time in 1904 (he wore a City rosette at the final!).

The back page talks about Balfour’s visit. Both the front and the back pages are quite difficult to read as they’ve faded. It is interesting that the club felt able to make light of Balfour’s lack of enthusiasm for ‘socker’ (yes, socker or soccer as we grew to call it, was an English word for association football before the Americans became recognised for their use of it). Balfour preferred golf (after the 1904 FA Cup final he called himself a football ‘ignoramous’. Bob Hulmes, who sent the programme scans to me, managed to transcribe the wording regarding Balfour:

Says Balfour: “What shall I do with the sphere?”

We have specially desired fine weather today as the Right Hon. Arthur James Balfour is due to make his first appearance on the Hyde Road Football enclosure this afternoon. Some little decoration will be made, for the most pleasing sight to the hon. gentleman will be a mighty crowd of enthusiastic well wishers. It is not often that we have a leader of the nation at such functions, and the occasion is historic as far as Manchester is concerned.  No doubt our honoured guest wishes he had the opportunity to open a game of golf instead of socker but we are ready to excuse a “miskick” on this occasion. We are grateful for kind acceptance of our invitation. Mr Balfour and Lord Rosebery have patronised the Palace ground, now the former honours the Manchester City ground.

Surely the City Team will rise to the occasion and cause some of the rampant enthusiasm to be showered upon them by a dashing display.

It’s worth noting some of the advertisements. There’s one for Joseph Alexander’s coaches and carriages (the Alexander family business. Note: The Alexanders remained key members of City’s management/directorship/shareholding for most of the 120 years that followed!). There’s also the Wellington Hotel, Stockport Road, which was run by the ever popular City official Joshua Parlby, and the Matlock House Hydro – one of City director John Allison’s business.

The game was against Stoke and they are wearing their then home colours of ‘claret shirts and blue knickers’.

Bob also nudged me towards page 8 which included a wry comment about the previous Wednesday’s friendly at Newton Heath (United):

Did anyone try to count the spectators at the match with Newton Heath on Wednesday? If so, did they succeed in getting past double figures?

The official attendance was estimated by Newton Heath as 600 (I wonder if they had a mickey-take name along the lines of Emptyhad for United’s games at Bank Street?

Before the 1900-01 season there was an official match programme produced for both Newton Heath and Manchester City, alongside a couple of rugby clubs. It was first ‘mocked up’ in May 1898 but went into production for the 1898-1899 season. It continued into the 1900-01 season by which time City were producing their own official programme. Both programmes were in competition throughout that 1900-01 season.

Thanks to Bob Hulmes for allowing me to us images of his match programme. The programme belonged to Bob’s grandfather. He lived in Ardwick, near Hyde Road, and he followed City until his death in 1964. Bob found two programmes from 1900 lining a drawer when his grandfather died in 1964, which shows exactly how rare these images are. It’s a pure fluke in many ways that they survived and fortunately the family looked after them over the decades.