120 years ago, today, the Toffees won their first FA Cup final. A Sandy Young goal from a Jack Sharp cross secured victory. Skipper Jack Sharp lifted the trophy.
Our member Kieran Smith wrote Sunday’s EFC programme article about that season & has a book on it due out soon.
6 of 6 So What? I am NEVER giving up, because of this sort of AI shite. BTW Tony Collins is an absolutely top chap who I have known for almost 40 years. I do not think ChatGPT represents his ideas accurately, BUT - it is a representation of 'ideas'. That is the problem. #scotchprofessor AMEN.
5 of 6 I will not ever allow the people of the Dodoball myth to define me and mine as 1) not a ‘mainstream’ scholar (whatever that is); or 2) push an understanding that they are entitled to decide on the criteria to assess the history of AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT COUNTRY. These are colonial rules.
4 of 6 Now it is the last bit which has angered me greatly. John Hope fails because MAINSTREAM SCHOLARSHIP does not recognise it. What we have here is the Anglocentric ‘mainstream’ have rules which SHOCK HORROR exclude the Scottish claim. The people whose history is wrong, get to set the rules.
3 of 6 ‘Tony Collins [etc] argue that for something to count as “oldest rules,” it needs: 1 A surviving primary document, 2 Clear, structured rules, 3 Scholarly verification and consensus. The John Hope material (as currently recognised in mainstream scholarship) doesn’t meet all three criteria.’
2 of 6 I sometimes amuse myself by quizzing AI. I asked ChatGPT to tell me how Football was founded in the 19th century. It pushed back when I told it of all the facts it was missing - basically anything to do with Scotland e.g. John Hope’s FC. It defended its attitudes, using 2 English historians.
1 of 6 #scotsfoundedfootball The Dangers of Artificial Intelligence. The esteemed historian Andy Mitchell made the point to me, recently, that AI is ‘like arguing with Wikipedia, no matter how wrong, it is 'a source’. No-one ever grades these sources. For me they ‘flood the zone’. © Steve Bannon
6 of 6 So what? Even before I knew of Scotland’s pre-eminent position in the creation of football, I thought all this ‘inventors of football’ stuff was decidedly dodgy. The Great Men theory of History. These books were never meant to be read by plebs, which is how and why they give themselves away.
5 of 6 A heart-warming story about how Alfred was loved. Is anyone channelling their inner Dick Van Dyke? An unhygienic female plebeian worships Lyttelton. A funny story, if people like Lyttelton hadn’t stolen the game of the #scotchprofessor from historical truth. Even their lies are lies.
4 of 6 How about this piece of self-regarding fiction? From the Oval (p.28) ‘About 1876, a diminutive unwashed tapster hailed me with cordiality. ‘Ha Lyttelton, I’m glad to see you - but it’s your brother we all love so - to see him knock ‘em down at football, oh it does my ‘eart good, it does!’
3 of 6’... lightly flicking with a whip any one he met or passed. The joke was not always appreciated and the victim would sometimes descend from his cart or carriage and hurl stones after him...’ (p 15) This is what passes as ‘humour’ for the upper classes who snort founded Football guffaw.
Studio portrait of Alfred and Edward Lyttelton at Eton c.1872. They are casually leaning on a vine covered tree branch, which runs horizontally. They are dressed in white trousers, white shirts and white caps. I assume this to be cricket whites. Self importance oozes out of the picture.
2 of 6 Here is why you pay scant attention to their claims. Edith spins a tale of what a lovely guy he was. Facts might suggest a family not exactly in tune with the masses. Or maybe sociopaths. He and his brother Edward would go out in the gig with dad, Lord Lyttelton who never could resist...
1 of 6 #scotsfoundedfootball I’ve been reading biogs of footie poshies. So you don’t have to. ‘Alfred Lyttelton: An Account of His Life’ by Edith Lyttelton (1917) His second wife. The one in 'The English Game' - Laura Tennant d. 1886 - a few days after giving birth.
5 of 5 So what? Alcock allows the reader to understand that the nation of the Enlightenment was a barbarous place for football. Why does he do this when the old records would have been known to him? It does not suit his agenda. BTW - the players were ‘restrained by no fixed code’. Implied chaos...
4 of 5 P.11 Mentions Shrove Tuesday (Fasterns E’en to you. Bub!) games at the Cross of Scone. Ball got carried. Bachelors v Married Men. Played 2pm until sunset. Violence. Scone gave rise to a saying ‘All is fair at the ball of Scone’. This has &*£$ ALL to do with the game of the #scotchprofessor
3 of 5 ‘...than the relaxing temperature of the Southern Counties.’ If I didn’t know the lies Alcock would write over the next 40 years, I’d think this was satire. Chucky has confused Clapham with the Costa Blanca. We can blame Alcock for the link between mob football and the Scottish Game.
2 of 5 p. 9 ‘It is essentially to the North that we must look for tidings of football, in its primitive state, [...] it was 'first instituted in the North of England or Scotland, where it thrived in the cold climate obviously more suited to the game ... PRIMITIVE i.e. not London.
Front cover of 'Football Our Winter Game' by Charles Alcock 1874 Hard back royal blue cover with inlaid silver line framing, in the middle of which is a very stylised goal with tensioning ropes at each corner upright and in the middle of the goal, as a pattern, two flags crossed as in a saltire and four balls in each quarter. At top and bottom is the same decorative border of flower petal and leaves in a very basic neo-classical style.
1 of 5 #scotsfoundedfootball Charles Alcock was nothing if not constant. In dissembling. Note his recollections. He started his nonsense early - in 1874 with ‘Football: Our Winter Game”. Number of pages? 139. Uses of the words Scot/Scotch/Scotland? FIVE. I feel a sense of foreboding.
ADDENDUM: I shall have a comment on Iain Campbell Whittle's analyses of tactics and team dispositions in a future series of posts.
5 of 5 So what? The Scots did do a bit of kicking a ball to one another. The Yorkies had a go but Cambridge - oh yeah - POSH PEOPLE perfected the #scotchprofessor game A group that was still dribbling madly in 1883. ‘General acknowledgement’, no less. Alberto Brandolini - you were right.
4 of 5 ...Cambridge University elevens[...]. The practical outcome of the exhibition given by Cambridge... in 1883 was a general acknowledgment of the merits of the new formation. [...] it is worthy of remark that the Scotch players were the most backward ..in accepting the third half-back.’
3 of 5 ‘to occupy a position as centre half-back, a post akin to that taken in the Eton game by the flying man’. Who could possibly cope? Charles has the answer. ‘The first team to bring the theory of combination into practice, or at least to carry it out to any degree of perfection, was the...
2 of 5 p. 37 ‘The next move - and the most important of the many changes which have taken place in the formation of a team — though, was essentially the work of English; rather than of Scotch footballers.’ And Alcock’s mic drop? p. 38 England is central to the reduction in the number of forwards.
1 of 5 #scotsfoundedfootball Anent Alcock’s dissembling. This ex-Harrovian just KNOWS that the southern English amateur founded football. The #EnglishExceptionalism oozes out of him. I do respect him as a clever mind. He spent 30 years rewriting the history of football.
5 of 5 So what? Olympic were trained by Sheffield English international Jack Hunter. He had enjoyed pumpings from Scotland whilst at Sheffield Heeley. Seems like he learnt from those 7-2, 5-4 and 6-1 games. Does Alcock genuinely not know or is he... LYING? AS FAR AS I CAN REMEMBER. Seriously, dude.
4 of 5 ...in London was the Blackburn Olympic...’ When they won the EFA Cup in 1883. Olympic apparently played a DIFFERENT game to the Scotchmen. ‘...an alternation of long passing and vigorous rushes which, effectual enough as it proved as a novelty [it] did not impress the southern players.
3 of 5 ...Blackburn furnished two clubs...’ Notice the rhetorical skill: mention Sheffield, then E. Lancs and allow people to link them in their own minds. Alcock has another sleekit flourish: ‘As far as I can remember, the first English team to give any exhibition of a systematic passing game...
2 of 5 ... on their neighbours, and combination of some kind or other was cultivated in other of the northern districts. E. Lancashire had meanwhile taken up the Association game with enthusiasm Just about the time when passing began to be considered essential to the success of a team...’
1 of 5 #scotsfoundedfootball Charles Alcock is a trier. He does not stop digging. He has to push forward with his hypothesis that both Scotland AND Sheffield are the inventors of the Combination Game. Won’t you try this lovely non sequitur? p. 37 ‘The example of the Sheffield players was not lost...
5 of 5 So What? Like all History, Football really is a subject where ideas are king. If you remember one player in any year you are doing well. You remember the general way the game was played. But you must have an overarching concept for Football. If you just remember facts, you remember nothing.