Football fandom has long been about belonging to a tribe: this player was ours, and we quite liked him, then he was theirs for a bit, and we hated him, and now he's ours again, so we bloody love him. Meanwhile supporters talk of 'holding' trophies: capturing them, owning them, protecting them from others.
London's footy fans may not know that FA Cup — the world's oldest football tournament — in a way, really does belong to the capital city. The first ever FA Cup, of 1871-72, was competed by only 15 teams, eight of which were London sides with six of the remaining seven hailing from towns on the outskirts of modern-day Greater London.
Partly this was because the Football Association was born in London — in 1863 in a pub in Holborn. The FA gradually managed to codify the sport by persuading clubs to sign up to a set of standardised rules — rules which would evolve and ultimately govern the game worldwide.
The brainchild of the FA's secretary Charles Alcock, the debut FA Cup was ultimately won by London side Wanderers in a match at the Kennington Oval. It's doubtful the play itself would have been recognisable as the beautiful game we enjoy today. This was a sport of low tactics, and no goalkeepers... or even crossbars.
This was an amateur sport played by gentleman enthusiasts; even the tournament's final was refereed by the head of the Inland Revenue. But this inaugural competition, with its strong London showing, was still a big result in the development of competitive football.
Almost all of the London teams of 1871-72 have vanished — but as they were all history-makers, we wanted to see what their fates had been.
Barnes
Barnes got to the second round of the tournament. The club actually survives to this day, although only playing rugby union — a sport which blurred somewhat with football in the early days of both sports.
There are some who claim Barnes as the world's oldest club playing any type of football (including rugby football) — although it's probably safer to date its emergence to the 1860s.
Civil Service
While they lost in the very first round of that very first FA Cup, Civil Service FC were playing a long game. Having celebrated their 150th birthday in 2013, they're the only surviving club considered a founder member of the FA.
Their long history means they've helped influence the sport across the world, and even take on — and beat — the likes of Barcelona and Real Madrid. For almost a century they've played home games at a ground in Chiswick.
Clapham Rovers
The Rovers played football and rugby on alternating weeks in the parks of south-west London. In 1871-72, their player Jarvis Kenrick scored the first ever FA Cup goal in a 3-0 win away at Upton Park. The team went on to win the trophy in 1880, and survived much longer than most of the early FA Cup entrants — lasting almost until the first world war.
Crystal Palace
The original Crystal Palace FC came some time before the team which today plays in South Norwood. They were thrashed in the semi-finals of the first FA Cup, and met their demise later that decade, supposedly when the club's owners — also the proprietors of the Crystal Palace exhibition hall — got into financial trouble after being sued by their refreshment providers.
Hampstead Heathens
The Heathens' unceremonious departure from the first FA Cup was the last match they ever played; their brief rise and fall typical of the fleeting nature of early football clubs. Some of their players are believed to have renounced footy for 'respectable' careers, such as in the church.
Harrow Chequers
The Chequers failed to even get a team together for their FA Cup first-round match in 1871. But one of their players did go on to net the first ever FA Cup final goal — playing for the team Wanderers under the pseudonym AH Chequer.
Before the team folded, they contributed a player to the England national side: Reginald de Courtenay Welch. (Yep, that really was once the name of a top-level footballer.)
Upton Park
While this on-and-off east London club didn't make many waves in the inaugural FA Cup, it did go on to win an extraordinary and slightly baffling honour: the Olympic Games. They were allowed to represent Great Britain at the 1900 tournament in Paris. So, you win some, you lose some.
Wanderers
The first FA Cup final was a match between two clubs which still exist. Played at the Oval in front of about 2,000 people, and with a familiar Saturday-afternoon kick-off time of 3pm (ish), London side Wanderers beat Kent's Royal Engineers 1-0. The result was all the more impressive given that the much-vaunted Engineers were pioneering a radical new footballing manoeuvre called… 'passing'.
Wanderers — whose name referred to their lack of permanent home ground — retained the trophy the next year, also scoring a hat-trick of three consecutive FA Cup wins later that decade. Their fortunes waxed and waned. They were dissolved in 1887, but reformed in 2009 in aid of charitable causes, and now play near Croydon.
