The 150th anniversary of the first FA Cup competition, the earliest
knockout tournament in the history of football, will be celebrated
during the 2021-2022 season. The first set of matches was played on 11
November 1871, with the Engineers reaching the final played at
Kennington Oval on 16 March 1872.
During the first decade of the competition three teams associated with
the military, Royal Engineers, 1st Surrey Rifles and 105th Regiment,
were involved in 74 matches. They won more than half of them and scored
154 goals. The Army also produced one of the most respected
administrators in the history of football, in the form of Major Francis
Marindin, who was involved in the founding of the FA Cup, played in two
finals, and refereed a further nine.
Military men and units provided a number of 'firsts' in the early years
of football. The Royal Engineers played in the first ever FA Cup final;
Lieutenant James Prinsep of the Essex Regiment was the youngest
footballer to appear in an FA Cup final until 2004, although he remains
the youngest to complete a full match; Lieutenant William Maynard of the
1st Surrey Rifles played for England in the first ever official
international match against Scotland; Captain William Kenyon-Slaney of
the Grenadier Guards scored the first ever goal in an official
international match, while playing for England; and Lieutenant Henry
Renny-Tailyour of the Royal Engineers scored the first ever goal for
Scotland in the same match.
At a time when there has been talk of a financially-motivated breakaway
European Super League, James gives the reader the opportunity to look
back at a time when football was played for the game itself. Using his
vast knowledge concerning Victorian football and military history, The
Early Years of the FA Cup explores the fascinating history of the
Army's involvement in the early years of the world's most popular sport.
With detailed descriptions of the finals and other matches involving the
military teams during football's heyday, this book, for the first time,
then follows the men as they went on campaigns to build roads and
bridges in hostile territory, provide maps for commanders in famous
conflicts such as The Zulu War, Afghanistan, the Sudan, and the Boer
Wars, and saw active service on the Western Front during the First World
War. In some cases they never returned.
Often great footballers are referred to as 'heroes' - in the case of the
men who played for the Army teams in the early FA Cup competitions, such
an epithet is genuinely true.
