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Cup Finals: Football Stories of Great Games, Heroes and Villains

Cup Finals: Football Stories of Great Games, Heroes and Villains 

Our busy club at Stenhousemuir enjoyed a great afternoon recently when Cliff Hague, author of Cup Finals and Programmes Programmes, entertained the group with excerpts from the former book.  

When Cliff isn’t writing and researching his favourite topic, football, he is still a town planning practitioner and Emeritus Professor of Planning and Spatial Development at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh.  

Where it all started 

Cliff hails from originally from Manchester where he grew up, and like many did in those days he played football in the back streets and alleys with whatever ball could be found and the ubiquitous jerseys or jackets for goal posts. 

Cliff kept the Stenhousemuir group entertained for over an hour and needless to say the stories he regaled the audience with are far too many to recount here.  

However, he did share the information that he had had uncovered about cup finals and how they all started with the very first Football Association Challenge Cup final which was played Kennington Oval on the 16th of March 1872.  Yes, you are right: that ground is also the home to Surrey County Cricket Club. The two teams in the finals were the Wanderers who beat Royal Engineers one nil.   

Another little snippet for you - the Wanderers adopted this name because they didn’t have a home ground and were just an itinerant group of players performing around the London area though with some links to Epping. These young men were mostly former pupils of prominent public schools in the South of England and Harrow in particular. Of course they were amateurs in those days/ 

Who started it all 

It was a chap called Charlie Alcock who really got the whole concept off the ground. He had been educated at Harrow where he did play football. With his older brother John in 1859 he founded Forrest Football Club, a club associated with fellow Harrovians. He was described as “a hard working forward player and usually a safe shot at goal” in the 1875 edition of the Football Annual. Yes, there was a Football Annual even back then but we don’t know though if boys of 1875 keenly anticipated this annual would be in their Christmas stocking each year.  

But back to Charlie - he was captain in the first five unofficial England versus Scotland games though the selection of those chosen to represent Scotland was confined to players domiciled in the London area. Charlie also captained England and scored in the 1875 full international against the Scots. Indeed, Charlie he on to become one of the earliest sports journalists which was how he earned his living.  

Thank you Cliff 

Cliff went on to share a whole raft of stories about footballing legends, both villains and heroes, but all with one thing in common names dates, occasions and places that the members at Stenhousemuir were able chaps chipped in frequently throughout the talk with their own special memories of players and games – it was a fascinating afternoon. 

Cliff has also been warmly received at quite a few of our other clubs in Scotland and indeed, his talks are so popular that we have a few dates in the Autumn lined up for him to share even more clubs and members. 

To purchase Cliff’s books either come along to a meeting where he is speaking or you can visit that well known online retailer Amazon.