Re: The Marquee Rule. : Thu Jan 17, 2019 10:48 pm  

rubber duckie wrote:

I'm ready from all the union clubs to smell the custard...and start knocking.
If there hadn't been the split the game of rugby may have developed to become a soccer equal.

In essence Rugby was bigger than soccer in the turn of the century for some clubs.

I went to a lecture at Central Library in Manchester about how football became big in Manchester at the turn of the 20th Century a couple of years ago.

Manchester was a rugby city, almost exclusively, in the late 1800s. There were numerous rugby clubs, big clubs too, with only Hulme Atheneum really being any sort of football club of any note.

It was only the railway built between the football city of Sheffield and Manchester that saw football clubs pop up along that train line with Glossop NE, then closer to Manchester they got with investors and founders of Newton Heath and Ardwick (who became United and City respectively) being involved in the railways.

Then City and United won major trophies in the first decade of the 1900s and there was no turning back for the city.

But what if that train line had not been built when it was? Or what if it was the reverse with rugby clubs flitering into Sheffield making Manchester and Sheffield more rugby cities than football? Or what if the rugby clubs had been the ones to win major rugby honours instead of City and United at the time?

Re: The Marquee Rule. : Thu Jan 17, 2019 11:30 pm  

Great post PC.
I didn't know much of that.
I was aware that clubs played rugby first and would then play soccer for a short season. Many early soccer clubs were rugby clubs 1st.

Re: The Marquee Rule. : Fri Jan 18, 2019 3:16 pm  

Psychedelic Casual wrote:

I went to a lecture at Central Library in Manchester about how football became big in Manchester at the turn of the 20th Century a couple of years ago.

Manchester was a rugby city, almost exclusively, in the late 1800s. There were numerous rugby clubs, big clubs too, with only Hulme Atheneum really being any sort of football club of any note.

It was only the railway built between the football city of Sheffield and Manchester that saw football clubs pop up along that train line with Glossop NE, then closer to Manchester they got with investors and founders of Newton Heath and Ardwick (who became United and City respectively) being involved in the railways.

Then City and United won major trophies in the first decade of the 1900s and there was no turning back for the city.

But what if that train line had not been built when it was? Or what if it was the reverse with rugby clubs flitering into Sheffield making Manchester and Sheffield more rugby cities than football? Or what if the rugby clubs had been the ones to win major rugby honours instead of City and United at the time?

So what your saying is around 100 years ago there was an opportunity to take a risk do something different and we didn't... Good to see things have really progresses in the rl community lol


Interesting story tho wasn't aware that's how football overtook rugby