The Archive, the Press and Victorian Football: the Case of the Glasgow Charity Cup

Abstract

Introduction ‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.’ [2] The well-known opening line from L.P. Hartley’s classic novel, The Go-Between, might easily be applied to the story of sports history, from its beginnings as an academic sub-discipline to its current state of play. If the subject matter of this article had appeared in print thirty years ago, it would probably have been presented as a simple narrative. What happened, to whom, when and where, and with what consequences would have unfolded in a straightforward, chronological fashion. Even in the 1970s the word ‘antiquarian’ might have been applied to a paper that outlined the origins of an early football cup competition as represented in the contemporary press and football authority yearbooks. It is possible that a critique of these sources might have been undertaken in an effort to lend credence to the mass of ‘facts’ uncovered. It is certainly to be hoped that our 1970s’ scholar would have contextualised his research – it would almost undoubtedly have been ‘his’, female sports historians being virtually unknown in those days – within the development of amateur football and the Victorian city. It is unlikely that a rationale for his study would have been deemed necessary at a time when the whole field of sports history lay open to discovery.