FA Cup

The 2nd FA Cup is currently on display at Leeds City Museum. I will at some point venture across to see it. I have wanted to see it for a long time and can't believe it is now so close to where I live.

Obviously the trophy has a special connection to Fred as he scored both goals that enabled Wednesday to be the first team to lift this particular trophy. I personally prefer it to the current shape, and apparently it is a very beautiful object when seen close up.

The exhibition is called 'Saved for the Nation' and is at Leeds until January. The museum itself was only opened a year ago and is meant to be worth a visit. I believe it won best museum award for the whole of the UK this year.

The FA Cup for me is the heart and soul of Football. I love it.

Going Away

I'm off on holiday for a bit, so will not be able to update this blog for a short time. When I get back I'm going to be doing a couple of things.

Stopping off in London to get hold of those England and Scotland team photographs for the 1894 and 1898 matches. May stop off at the National Library too and read some more of John Goodall's book from 1898.

I am excited at the prospect of getting a copy of the England 1898 picture as this was regarded as the best ever England team to take to the field for a long time. Even in the 1920's it was considered the best team in the history of the game - according to the times newspaper. Although Fred thought that the 1892 side, which he did not play in, was slightly better.

I do have several live action shots of the 1898 match. Although most are very poor quality I have two excellent ones, unfortunately one is of Scotland scoring their only goal. I was very pleased with this, but had to spend many hours digitally resorting it.

this week

WEll, I went to Sheffield Library and printed off the final match reports needed for Sheffield Wednesday. One was for an 1898 match where Fred missed a penalty in the last minute in a 2-1 defeat against Blackburn.

Fred seemed to forget this penalty in his autobiography. He had told a story of a previous miss much earlier in his Wednesday career and claimed that he never took any more penalties. Ambrose Langley rememebered this miss and that's why I looked it out.

It is unusual for Fred to have forgotten something, becasue out ofthe hundreds of stories he documented this is probably one of only 3/4 that are not exactly how he stated. And out of 20 years of stories I think we can forgive him a couple of facts. Especially as he was writing some of them 30/35 years after the event.

So I did all that work. My dad is getting closer to finishing the 1890-91 Midland League Triumph season chapter. Probably still a couple of weeks off.

Some nice Sheffield United cigarette cards have gone on ebay this week, they are from about 1901/02 and I have certainly not seen them before. Shame they are Shefield United. I like cigarette cards like these becasue they picture players that I will have read about or got a story about.

I recently found one of the Burnley player who broke Fred's ribs in 1893. Hopefully I'll be able to get copywrite passed to include as many cards in the book as possible.



I had to buy an extra potfolio for the photo's/illustrations for the book this week. I think we are close to 350 different illustrations for our book. But how many we manage to pass copywrite on is anyone guess. I'm working hard to get as many original source images as possible. But I think we will have to pay something at some point.

Anyone wondering if there will be any new stuff on Sheffield Wednesday in the book - I promise you that you will be amazed with some of the images that I have that have NEVER been published. (Well some of them were published in the 1890's but good luck finding them.) My greatest find is possibly 4 live action shots of the 1896 FA cup final, or the 5 live action shots inside Olive Grove. There are plenty of treats to be seen!

Research this week

Well, looks like I'm off to Sheffield Library again this week. Been given a long list of matches that we need reports for. Most of which relate to Sheffield Wednesday escaping a relegation play-off match in 1894. It's quite a good story really. Will also be trying to find match reports for 2 elusive Sheffield Vs Glasgow matches. I struggled to find them last time.

Sheffield Wednesday Books

Decided to write out a bibliography for all the Sheffield Wednesday books we have been using/have copies of.

I must say that we have been so fortunate with Wednesday books. There are few clubs with such a collection of well written history books.

The main heros have to be Farnsworth, Sparling and Jason Dickinson of course.

It may be worth pointing out that since The Wednesday Boys the quality of books has plumited somewhat. Examples being -

Legends of Sheffield Wednesday, possibly the poorest book ever made about the club/it's players;

Head to Head - Breedons attempt to redo the 'A Complete Record' series, and completely and utterly failing. The Complete Record is a Bible of a book when it comes to stats. Thank goodness they made them. All they should have done was update them and republish, would have been much better than the Head to Head books.

I recently purchased 'The Steel City Divide' for £2 in a bargin bookshop in York. They have loads of the things. It was worth the £2 but not a great deal more. The Sheffield Wednesday half is of far superior quality to the United half, which I had to stop reading after a while.

Top books are (in no particular order)

The Romance of the Wednesday - Sparling

A complete record - Farnsworth

A hundred years at Hillsborough - Dickinson

Wednesday! - Farnsworth

Sheffield Football, Volume 1 - Farnsworth

Football in Sheffield - Percy Young

The Wednesday Boys - Dickinson and Brodie

Book Jacket

I thought I should just add a little bit about the Book Jacket design, which is on this page.

It way end up being different from this. It is basically just an idea at the moment and my name will probably be added at some point. I quite like it though.

The image is a section of a larger photograph that shows Fred on the wing playing at Olive Grove. It was taken in Wednesday's last season at Olive Grove and therefore Fred is looking a little older and in most images I have of him as a footballer.

The match happens to be the last ever Sheffield Derby at Olive Grove. I am particularly fond of the image because it shows the stretch of ground where Fred made his name as the 'Olive Grove Flyer'. The rammed grandstand adds to the atmosphere, no doubt it was a buzzing ground to play on.

I am very lucky to have been able to locate this photograph, a good friend of mine bought it and has let me use it.

In the past books on Sheffield Wednesday's history have always regarded the photograph of Olive Grove from a distance to be the only surviving image of the ground. It captured the ground by accident when someone was photographing their allotment. It appears in Romance of the Wednesday and Owl's vs Blades and probably an other book I can't remember.

Anyway... I have managed to track down 5 images of football being played on Olive Grove. Most in the 1898 season. 3 show the stand in the background and 2 looking the other way. These combined with numerous drawings and illustrations have made it possible to work out what Olive Grove would have looked like in 360°.

Midland League 1890-91

My dad has been writing the Midland League Champions chapter today. It's a good story. The Midland League was a strong league that Fred played in for Gainsborough Trinity. He won it with them the season before he left to join The Wednesday.

My dad has just got to the point in the season where Fred agrees to join Wednesday. He still played out the rest of the season with Trinity.

The transfer to Wednesday is a story that has been told many many times. We have got Fred's version, which is much more detailed than other versions. He tells it in his 1920 autobiography.

The Midland League could be considered the 2nd division of football at that time as there was only one league for the Football League at the time. The next rung of football down was spread across two leagues, The Midland League and the Alliance. Many consider the Alliance to be the stronger of the two, and in truth I think it did contain a higher proportion of strong teams, including The Wednesday and Nottingham Forest. However, the top few of the Midland would probably be as good as the top teams in the Alliance and therefore the Midland should not be considered a 3rd division.

Fred Spiksley the imposter

Some Sheffield Sednesday supporter has given themselves the screen name 'Fred Spiksley' for a Wednesday message board.

He posts quite a lot and ever time he does he makes it harder to search the internet for new items that are actually about Fred. Believe it or not they do surface occassionally, but are hard to spot. Now it'll be even harder.

But part of me likes the fact that he called himself that, so all's good!

1894 Scotland Match

Just got my recent ebay purchase. It is a page out of a victorian magazine with a full page (a3) illustration of the 1894 England Vs Scotland Match at Celtic Park. I am particularly pleased with this 'find' for two reasons.

1. This is a bit of a lost match. Fred played in 2 matches against Scotland, the greatest honor for an English footballer of that time. The 1893 and 1898 matches are historically much more important and also easier to access in terms of what is out there about the matches.

The 1894 match was a 2-2 draw and therefore a little forgetable considering it was the year after the match at Richmond. I have never been able to gather much research on the match, but things are changing. I am now aware of original photographs of the two teams, which I will be obtaining copies from soon, and then there is this picture.

The illustration seems to be a reproduction of a watercolour. It is in the crowd undercover of the main grandstand. Scotland have just scored and the crowd are animated. Importantly there is also another interesting feature, which is my second point....

2. The picture clearly shows Victorian floodlights, that were being used at Celtic Park at that time. I managed to get some Celtic historians to confirm they used them at this time, apparently the first trail was Christmas 1893, which links in perfectly with April 1894. When the picture arrived they are clearly electric pendant lights hanging from very tall posts.

Obviously they were no used for this match, but I am pleased that the victorian flood light experiments can be linked quite smoothly into the biography. A little footnote will be all hat is needed.

I have never seen an illustration of victorian floodlights before, although I may have seen a diagram of them once, but not in a picture of a game. 1894 must have been close to the end of the experiments as they were not very successful. I think the first trail of floodlights was in 1878, so it's not new news in terms of our book. But a great and unusual illustration.