The Media - Figures, Facts and Fantasies

Introduction

Modern football has its roots in the mid-nineteenth century games played by public school and university teams. The early years of the FA Cup were dominated by such teams but the game spread to the workers of the industrial north and midlands.

The supremacy of the teams with aristocratic origins in the public schools was over. From then on the game became a working class interest centred around factories, textile mills,
churches and organisations that lay at the heart of the new industrial communities.

In the mid 1880’s a number of these teams became professional and with the formation of the Football League in 1888 football became increasingly important as a spectator sport. It was, according to Thomas Hughes (1822-1896) author of Tom Brown Schooldays, “the child of the railways, free Saturday afternoons and the popular press”.

The developments in education which followed the Education Act of 1870 meant a dramatic increase in the number of people able to read. With sport in general and football in particular a major interest a substantial increase in books, magazines and newspapers was both logical and profitable.

In 1883 Blackburn Olympic - (not to be confused with Blackburn Rovers who were then a team of aristocrats from public schools and universities) won the FA Cup. They beat the elite Old Etonians 2-1.

For the first time not only was the FA Cup taken north but it was won by a team of workers from the Lancashire cotton mills.

Newspapers

By the turn of the century, attendances at football matches were still comparatively low. The game needed more widespread publicity. There was no radio or television and information came only through newspapers.

Although there were 2510 newspapers in 1901, their coverage of football was quite basic. It relied heavily on just reporting the results. Because of the limitations of early photography, action shots of fast moving players taken during matches produced only blurred images and so photographs were restricted to:

long distance shots,

individual portraits and

posed team pictures.

An artist's impression of Ernie Needham in action.

The Tabloids

1888

Football supporters in Liverpool were lucky. Their local newspaper (The Echo) introduced a football edition to coincide with the formation of the Football League.

1904

Improvements in technology made it possible to:

take fast-moving action pictures without blurring

reproduce quickly photographs for printing in newspapers.

The Daily Mirror is launched - this was the first tabloid newspaper. It allowed pictures, large headlines, simple sentences and short paragraphs to tell the story. It reached out to many thousands who previously would never have read a newspaper.

Sport, which was printed on the back pages, became an essential ingredient of the newspaper.

"From Our Own Reporters by Special Wire from the Crystal Palace".

An artists impression of the 1906 Cup Final

1907

A system of transmitting photographs by telegraph was devised.

One problem faced by football supporters was having to wait for Monday’s newspapers to discover the results of Saturday’s matches.

Even so the inside pages were history rather than news because they had to be prepared well in advance leaving little more than the results to be inserted on Saturday. These were sent by messengers rushing to their nearest telegraph offices to wire the latest news to the Football Echo office.

1921

The Third Division North and the Third Division South of the Football League had been introduced. Newspapers had to respond by allocating more space and more reports to cover football.

1923

The attention of the press was captured by the events of the first Cup Final at Wembley Stadium.
This could have been a disaster if it had not been for one police officer mounted on a white horse. The Daily Mirror had no doubts that he was the hero of the day.