Tag Archives: Burnley

Finding 1904 Objects

As a trained historian I am always wary about saying that something is the first or that something’s an absolute fact unless I can properly prove it. It’s important to not jump to assumptions and to act responsibly. The quest to uncover football’s history and ensure the facts not the fiction are recorded drives me on. In addition, I am keen to locate items that can link us directly with a particular moment or achievement. So I’d just like to talk about a few items that I’ve been desperate to locate for several years…

There are many items from Manchester City’s long history that I have been searching for over many, many years. I could write a book about them but here’s the story of a few objects connected with the 1904 FA Cup final and one item I’m after tracking down survived for years and I’ve discovered that it was housed in Burnley for at least 40 years.

Many objects connected with Manchester’s first major trophy success still exist including the original-style FA Cup (housed at the National Football Museum – go and take a look when you can); a watch presented to manager Tom Maley (and some of the others presented to the players); a banner made by members of the Alexander Family (club officials and directors from 1894 through to the modern day; the flag is in City’s archive); players’ medals and various newspaper cuttings and photographs. However, there are three important items that I know existed that have vanished.

I am going to start with the 1904 FA Cup final ball, which was stored in Burnley into the 1950s.

Hillman’s Ball

At the end of the 1904 FA Cup final goalkeeper Jack Hillman charged past an opponent to pick up the ball and claim it as his own. The 1904 FA Cup final became the possession of City’s Hillman and he kept hold of it throughout his life. For many years he had it on display in his sweet shop on Thurston Street, Burnley and it is believed it was still in that building at the time of Hillman’s death in 1952.

According to reports the ball was painted in City’s colours – Cambridge Blue and White was worn for the 1904 final – and was inscribed as the 1904 English Cup winning ball. Back then the FA Cup was more commonly known as the English Cup.

Following Hillman’s death there is uncertainty over what happened to the ball. It seems it stayed in Burnley, so if there’s anyone reading with information please get in touch. If the ball managed to survive into the 1950s then it is possible it is still around somewhere.

I managed to get a Burnley newspaper to do a piece on this a few years back but sadly no one came forward with any information.

Film of the Final

The 1904 FA Cup final was filmed and shown in pubs and exhibition halls for at least a month after the final. Several copies of the film must have existed as it was shown in multiple locations at similar times but, to date, none of these copies have been found. Many photos from the 1904 final (including this one of Meredith scoring) are believed to have been taken from the original footage. In recent years older football films have been located in the north-west and I live in hope that one day a metal film cannister will be found with the words ‘1904 English final’ scrawled across will be identified.

The Players’ Shirts

Not one of the 1904 FA Cup final shirts has ever been found despite many of the players saving other equally important shirts. The 1904 shirt carried no badge and as City played a League game only 2 days after the final and travelled straight to Everton from London, it’s possible the same kit was worn again. Players such as Billy Meredith and Sandy Turnbull did save other important shirts and it’s possible the kits may have stayed within family circles but not recognised for their significance due to the lack of a badge. Frank Booth, a prominent member of the team, died in 1919 and is buried in Denton – maybe his family retained the shirt and it still resides in the region?

If you know of any of these items and can help locate them then please do. The film is probably the one that appeals most to me, but both the ball and a shirt would be great finds too.

You can find out more about 1904 here:

Manchester City – FA Cup Winners Since 1904

City v Burnley

Today’s game with Burnley provides a great opportunity to remember some key games and stories from years gone by featuring the two clubs. I’ve written a lot about City & Burnley games over the years so sit back and get yourself in the mood for tonight’s game by having a look at these articles:

A game in 2001:

Capacity Crowd Watch City And Burnley

An amazing crowd for a second tier match:

69,463 watch MCFC and Burnley in Division Two

Another incredible crowd for a City-Burnley match:

An Incredible Crowd and Day in 1921

Sterling inspired City here:

Sterling Double

One of my quests to find missing objects involves the 1904 FA Cup final ball. I know it was in Burnley for over 40 years and was still there in the 1950s but where is it today? Can you help find it? Have a read of this:

Finding 1904 Objects

Jimmy Ross was a brilliant footballer for both City and Burnley but he’s often forgotten. You can find out who he was here:

The Great Jimmy Ross

More on Ross here:

The Death Of Jimmy Ross

John Bond managed both. Here’s an exclusive interview I did with him many years ago where we talked about his career at both:

John Bond Interview – Part 5

A season when City and Burnley challenged each other for the title:

MCFC 20TH CENTURY CHRONICLE – SEASON 1920-21

The earliest known surviving film of a City Ladies (now Women) match was against Burnley:

Manchester City Ladies – The Earliest Film

There are of course several articles mentioning Burnley manager Vincent Kompany’s time at MCFC. You can access some of them here:

https://gjfootballarchive.com/tag/vincent-kompany/

The Great Jimmy Ross

On this day (24 February) in 1899 the great Jimmy Ross signed for Manchester City.  Ross was one of football’s leading names and earliest heroes when he played for the famous Preston side that won the League and Cup double of 1889. He had scored an incredible eight goals when Preston beat Hyde 26-0 in the record breaking F.A. Cup tie of 15th October 1887 – a game in which the referee is reputed to have lost his watch and allowed play to last two hours!  (you can read about that game here: https://gjfootballarchive.com/2021/02/22/hyde-v-preston-a-record-breaking-day/ ).

In addition, he was the Football League’s top scorer in 1890 (24 goals), and was quite a character.

He signed for Manchester City from Burnley for a reported £50 after previously captaining Liverpool to promotion. He had also played for the Football League.  

At City he was influential from the start. He netted an incredible seven goals in the final nine games of the 1898-99 season (his first nine games at City too!) brought the Division Two title for the first time – this was the first national success of either of Manchester’s professional clubs.  

Years later the legendary Billy Meredith, looking back on his City days, remembered Ross with great affection: “I must confess that Ross will always be my favourite hero.  He was good at everything he put his hand to and what he didn’t know about football wasn’t worth knowing.  At billiards and card games he was an expert.  Though he must have been thirty-four at least when he joined us, he was able to win seventy yards handicaps with ease and did so.  He could talk like a lawyer and on and off the pitch his comic sayings had us in stitches.”  

Today many of the heroes of football’s earliest years as a professional sport are forgotten and in Manchester’s case people often talk about Meredith as if he was the first and only hero in the city. But Jimmy Ross was a major figure and he was absolutely essential in City’s early development. Without him they may not have achieved that first Second Division title success. He helped develop Meredith into a star and should never be forgotten.

The leading sports newspaper of the day, the Athletic News, often praised Ross. When the club was making its first steps in the top flight the newspaper talked of City’s right sided players and stressed the importance of Ross and of course Meredith:  “For real brilliance the right wing took the biscuit….In fact, there are few, if any, better men at outside right  (Meredith).  His partner, the veteran Ross, of whom it is predicted every season that he has had his day, is in reality taking a second lease of footballing life, despite the paucity of head-covering, and as a wing the two will cause some trouble”.

At one point a newspaper article claimed that Meredith was absolutely brilliant when he was being well served by Ross but when the going got tough, Meredith disappeared.  It seems that at this stage in the Welshman’s career he needed the experienced Jimmy Ross more than Ross needed him.  One article claimed that Meredith: “doesn’t like donkey-work and if his partner is off, Meredith is off too.”

By the end of the 1901-02 season it looked as if Ross and Meredith, despite Ross’ age, would go on forever. Sadly, tragedy struck in 1902. Ross died on 12th June that year after an illness described as “an acute skin disease and a raging fever.”

Ross’ last appearance was appropriately against Preston North End in the First Round of the F.A. Cup in January 1902.  Ross died of an infectious skin condition.  City helped his mother, whom he was looking after at the time of his death, financially.  They also arranged the funeral.

Ross helped Meredith develop and over time the legend of Meredith grew, while Ross’ name has slowly faded. This is a major shame as Ross’ influence on Preston, Liverpool and City’s development is immense. Ross helped City establish their name at a time when Meredith was not quite the finished article. So many players have been described as legends in the decades that have followed. Many of them become forgotten over time, but it is important that once in a while we pause and remember those players. 

Today let’s think about Jimmy Ross and remember him as one of the men who made Manchester City.

Why not now read about the game when Ross played for Preston against Hyde? It already appears on my blog here:

Hyde v Preston – A Record Breaking Day

Capacity Crowd Watch City And Burnley

On this day (29 December) in 2001 a Paulo Wanchope hat trick helped Manchester City to a 5-1 victory over Burnley.  The game, watched by a capacity crowd of 34,350 (this included lots of temporary seating to increase the capacity of Maine Road during its final seasons), came during the Division One Championship winning season. The Blues were of course managed by Kevin Keegan. Here’s a contemporary report of the game:

John Bond Interview – Part 5

Here’s the fifth part of the 1995 interview I performed with former Norwich City, Manchester City and Burnley boss John Bond. In this section, exclusive to subscribers, Bond talks about the great players he had at City. Most notably he talks about Dennis Tueart, Kevin Reeves, Joe Corrigan, Paul Power and Tommy Caton.

He was extremely frank, open and honest – which delighted me because he was a great talker. It’s well worth listening to. At the time we did this I was researching my in-depth history of the club called Manchester The Greatest City (later updated as Manchester The City Years). 

I met John at his home and spent a good few hours with him chatting about the Blues and his career. I loved doing this interview and was always grateful for the time he gave me. He was also happy for me to quote everything he said in the interview. I did end up quoting him extensively in the book (and in others I’ve produced) but, until now, none of the interview has ever been heard by the wider public.

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If you would like to listen to the fifth part of this frank interview (and the other parts) and read all the in-depth articles on this site (including the entire Manchester A Football History book) then please subscribe. It works out about £1.67 a month if you take out an annual subscription (£20 per year, above) or £3 a month (here) if you’d like to sign up for a month at a time. Monthly subscribers gets full access to everything posted since 1 October 2022.

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Guest Blog – James Ernest Mangnall, The Architect of Manchester Football by Iain McCartney

The links between the blue and the red half of Manchester are many, although there are some who will quickly deny the others mere existence. Fortunately, there are others who will embrace those historic, and often welcome links between the two bitter rivals, history being more important than the colour of a football shirt.

The links, as I said, are many, but if only three were to be listed, it is arguable that these would be, in no particular order, Sir Matt Busby, Billy Meredith and Denis Law for self-explanatory reasons. There is, however, one man who should nudge all three of those legendary figures out of the way, a man from the distant past, but one whose place in the history of both City and United is assured, but sadly, often forgotten. His name? John Ernest Mangnall.

Born in Bolton in January 1866, Mangnall also stakes a claim in the history of his local club, and that of near neighbours Burnley, a proud Lancastrian, but it is in Cottonopolis that he comes to the fore and more so during his time with Manchester United.

But for the meantime, let’s push Ernest Mangnall’s footballing credentials to the side [his given first name being lost in the mists of time] and look at the man from a much different sporting angle.

It might be said that football, a game that he played with the same enthusiasm that he carried forward into his managerial positions, was not even his first love, as he was more than a keen cyclist, being a member of various clubs, entering races and most notably cycling between John O’Groats and Lands End, at a time when bicycles were certainly not built for comfort.

Having cut his managerial teeth with Burnley, although he had helped steer Bolton along the way from the boardroom, as a director, he found is way to the dull, dreary surroundings of Clayton in 1903, with many possibly correct in thinking he was a glutton for punishment, as United were little more than a struggling side and had been rescued from what could easily have been oblivion by J.H. Davies. They had also recently changed their name from Newton Heath to Manchester United.

Appointed in place of James West, who had resigned as secretary, Mangnall embraced the role of the man not simply answered the mail and carried out other menial tasks, but took on the running of the club as a whole. Purchasing postage stamps of players made little difference.

Slowly Mangnall began to blend a team together and following a handful of near but not quite near enough finishes, he guided United out of the Second Division and into the top flight at the end of the 1905-06 season where, thanks to his now neighbours City finding themselves in a spot of bother, he ‘stole’ Burgess, Meredith, Bannister and Sandy Turnbull from his rivals and with the likes of Charlie Roberts and Dick Duckworth already at United, he had a more than capable team at his finger tips, creating a team that gave Manchester United their first domestic trophies with the League championship in 1908 and the FA Cup in 1909. The former was also won in 1911, plus success in the FA Charity Shield in 1908 and 1911.

Not only was he instrumental in building a strong United team on the field, he was more than involved in dragging the club away from its slum like home at Clayton and moving to pastures new at Old Trafford.

But all good things come to an end at some point or other and having perhaps achieved as much as he could at Old Trafford, Mangnall made the surprise move across town and joined neighbours City in August 1912. What the club and manager hoped to achieve failed to materialise, but as he had done with United, he played a major part in City’s move to Maine Road.

So, that is the career of Ernest Mangnall in a nutshell, but if you want to learn more about that man then his biography is available now from Empire Publications, 229 Ayres Road, Old Trafford, Manchester, M16 0NL UK Tel: 0161 872 3319 or 1 Newton Street, Manchester M1 1HW – telephone 0161 872 3319.

As something of a postscript.

I created ‘The Manchester United Graves Society’ a couple of years or so back, whereby I am trying to locate the burial places [or cremation details] of as many former players and officials as possible and to date have found over 500. One of the early finds was John Ernest Mangnall, who died at Lytham St Annes in January 1932, and is buried in the Lytham Park Cemetery.

Upon obtaining a photograph of his grave, I was saddened to find that the headstone was broken and the grave in general was in need of some TLC. So, enquiries were made with the cemetery as regards to any red tape that would cause problems in restoring the grave to its former glory and thankfully there were none. To be honest, they were more than delighted that someone wanted to carry out restoration work on the grave.

Funds were raised, a stone mason contacted and the work was carried out. Photos of before and after are shown here.

Should anyone want to visit the grave, it can be found at – A – 512 C/E. Go in the main gate and head up to your right.

Sterling Double

On this day (30 September) in 2020 Manchester City defeated Burnley 3-0 in the League Cup at Turf Moor. City’s scorers were Raheem Sterling (2) and Ferran Torres. Here are some highlights of the game:

https://www.mancity.com/citytv/mens/burnley-0-3-city-match-highlights-63737092

The Death Of Jimmy Ross

One of the earliest stars of League Football died on this day (12th June) in 1902. Jimmy Ross, who was a major figure for almost three seasons with Manchester City and had competed in every season of League football since the League was established in 1888, died with an illness described as “an acute skin disease and a raging fever.”

Ross was one of the Preston ‘Invincibles’ in 1888-89 and also scored 7 (sometimes reported as 8) against Hyde in the famous FA Cup record breaking game (read more on that game here: https://gjfootballarchive.com/2021/02/22/hyde-v-preston-a-record-breaking-day/ ).

At the time of his death Ross was a Manchester City player. His last first team appearance was appropriately against Preston North End in the First Round of the F.A. Cup in January 1902.  

City helped his mother, whom he was looking after at the time of his death, financially.  They also arranged the funeral and he was buried at Southern Cemetery (according to newspaper reports of the time he was buried in a grave that contained another City player – Bride – who had died a couple of years earlier). Several City players/personalities carried the coffin, including Billy Meredith.

More can be read on Ross’ life here:

https://gjfootballarchive.com/?p=1799

MCFC 20TH CENTURY CHRONICLE – SEASON 1920-21

The Matches

By the time the 1920s commenced City were regarded as one of football’s major clubs.  So much so that in March 1920 King George V chose to attend Hyde Road for City’s 2-1 defeat of Liverpool.  The Blues finished that campaign in 7th place but it was the 1920-21 season which proved City deserved to be regarded as a major force on the pitch.

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69,463 watch MCFC and Burnley in Division Two

On this day (May 10) in 1947 a solitary goal from Alec Herd against Burnley was enough to give Manchester City promotion.  The attendance for this Second Division game was recorded by the media at the time as 67,672 but official records reviewed almost sixty years later showed that City actually recorded the attendance as 69,463.

Typically, the attendance figures City used to give the media for League games through to the 1960s tended to exclude season tickets. So the Blues’ management would give the figure of tickets or pay on the gate admission for the game but exclude season ticket holders. Back in 1946-47 City had around 1,800 season ticket holders and almost every League attendance back then is understated by that amount.

FA Cup games were the actual attendances as these were always sold game by game.

As this practice of excluding all season ticket holders continued for many, many decades at Maine Road attendance figures for League games are usually understated (they were often understated in the 1970s & 1980s as well but for different reasons and back then Peter Swales, Bernard Halford and the others involved in calculating attendances would deny any discrepancy despite many fans, fanzines and others challenging them often).

For comparison purposes it’s worth looking at the attendances of the Division One champions in 1947 to see how the Blues compared. This attendance against Burnley was almost 17,000 higher than Division One champions Liverpool’s highest crowd that season (52,512 v Wolves in December) and the Merseyside Reds nearest home game to City’s Burnley match was watched by 48,800 and that was Liverpool v Manchester United (May 3). Liverpool did average 45,732 that season, whereas City averaged 39,283 but they were a Second Division club.

The City-Burnley crowd was the Second Division’s record at the time and it was higher than every First Division crowd since the 1937-38 season (The Second Division record is now held by Tottenham v Southampton which had 70,302 in 1949-50).

Film of City v Burnley does exist but it’s in a most unlikely place. It was actually filmed as part of a Mancunian Films drama called Cup Tie Honeymoon. The company was run by a Manchester City fan who made this film, which starred Sandy Powell and Pat Phoenix (under her original name of Pilkington). A football game is crucial to the plot and scenes were filmed at Maine Road and interspersed with real action from the City-Burnley game to add credibility.

Myself and Will McTaggart have shown these scenes in our Boys In Blue film shows which have been staged at the Dancehouse and Cornerhouse in Manchester over the last decade. Maybe I’ll explain more about the film and those talks another day.

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Don’t forget you can order Peter Barnes’ biography now (before May 20th) and get your name printed in it (and a copy signed by both Peter and myself). Details here:

Peter Barnes Talking About His Biography