The England men’s senior football team has played in a number of places across the North West, including Liverpool and Manchester, Blackpool and Burnley. But the place it played first was Blackburn – on a snow-covered ground that wasn’t really meant for soccer.
The match in question took place on Saturday, 26 February 1881 and saw England taking on Wales. Queen Victoria was in the fifth decade of her reign by then, with WE Gladstone enjoying his second term as Prime Minister. The First Boer War was raging, and closer to home, an Irish republican bomb had recently exploded outside a barracks in Salford.
Taking place nine years after England’s inaugural football match, this would be the sixth the team had played on their own turf. The venue for it would be the East Lancashire Cricket Ground on Alexandra Meadows in Dukes Brow, which would become the national side’s first home outside London.
Opened in 1864, the cricket ground had for the last three years been the home of Blackburn Rovers, and it made for an interesting choice. The authorities were looking to promote football beyond the public schools and the Home Counties, and the town was in any case becoming a hotbed of the game. Two clubs – Rovers and also Olympic – had been founded there lately, and both were clearly bound for glory. Rovers would reach the FA Cup Final in 1882, while Olympic would go one step further the following year and become the first side from the North to actually win the Cup.
Brass band
There were around 4,000 people in the ground as kick-off approached, which was considered a creditable turnout given the poor weather. Early frost had been followed by heavy snow that began to melt when a weak sun broke through at noon. As a result, many spectators had to stand on wooden planks laid across the slushy grass.
The team they had come to see included no less than five Lancastrians, and they included two brothers, Fred and Jack Hargreaves, both of Blackburn Rovers, whose late father had been the Coroner for the town. Fred had been the first Rovers man to be picked for England. He would play in the 1882 Cup Final side, while Jack, who was making his England debut, would be part of the side that actually lifted the trophy in 1884.
A third Rovers player, 18-year-old Jimmy Brown, was also in the England team that day. He would lift the trophy not only in 1884, but in 1885 and 1886 as well. And when, in his next international match, he scored a goal, he would become the youngest Englishman ever to do so. The three of them had just returned from a tour of the South that had seen Rovers thrash the current FA Cup-holders Clapham Rovers 7-0. They had been greeted by a brass band as they pulled into Blackburn station and were taken on a triumphant horse-and-cart tour of the town.
Duke of Edinburgh
England’s Lancashire contingent was rounded off by Tommy Marshall and Tot Rostron, who both played for Darwen FC. Founded a decade before, this club was probably the first to pay men to play football. It was certainly the first from the north of the country to enjoy success in the FA Cup, reaching the quarter-final in 1879.
Both Tommy and Tot worked in a mill, and their teammates included a Sheffield cutler and a Birmingham gunsmith. But there were other England players with a somewhat different background. The goalkeeper, John Hawtrey, had been educated at Eton, where his clergyman father was a master. And defender Arthur Bambridge’s brother was private secretary to the Duke of Edinburgh.
The Wales team’s preparations hadn’t been entirely smooth. Forward Knyvett Crosse had insisted on playing under a pseudonym, lest his employer discover that he had taken part. The selectors had found it necessary to offer the players subsidised rail travel to Blackburn. And full-back Jack Powell had missed his connection at Chester and wouldn’t now be available. A spectator, Llewelyn Kenrick, volunteered to stand in for him. Kenrick was in fact the chairman of the Wales FA, and had played for the national side himself. But he had been retired for two years.
Tweed trousers
England took to the field in their already traditional white jerseys. Wales also wore white, albeit with a sash of ribbon to set them apart. But Mr Kenrick, the late replacement, was dressed differently from everyone, in long tweed trousers and a classic Oxford shirt.
Kick-off had been advertised for “2.30 prompt”, but because of the conditions, the match didn’t get underway until almost 3pm. Snow fell again, and the pitch quickly became a quagmire. But the game was fast and even, nonetheless. Jack Hargreaves hit the crossbar with a fierce shot and Jimmy Brown also went close, before Wales took the lead early in the second half. The Darwin boys acquitted themselves well and England had a goal disallowed for offside. Llewellyn Kenrick, perhaps wishing he hadn’t come out of retirement, was forced to leave the field with ten minutes of the match remaining, having dislocated his knee and had a few of his teeth knocked out. But the visitors held on to claim their very first international victory. It was England 0, Wales 1.
It would be another eight years before England played at Anfield, and almost 50 before they made Old Trafford their home. Rovers would soon quit Alexandra Meadows, and eventually fetch up at Ewood Park. But though a century-and-a-half has passed since then, the national side still hasn’t found its way back to Blackburn.
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