For as long as I can remember, the FA Charity Shield match (now known as the FA Community Shield) has been played in August as a curtain-raiser to the new season. It is usually competed for by the champions of the Premier League and the winners of the FA Cup. However, this was not always the case.
The Charity Shield match evolved from an even earlier fixture, where two invited teams competed for the Sheriff of London Shield, itself sometimes known as the Dewar Shield and in honour of its founder. An impressive and sizeable trophy (possibly the largest ever in football history and standing at over 6 feet in height), it was presented in 1898 by Sir Thomas Dewar, the then Sheriff of London, on the proviso that proceeds from the designated match would be donated to charity.
The game for the Sheriff of London Shield was an annual affair, with the matches featuring a leading professional team of the day, who faced the famed amateur club, Corinthian F.C., although on one occasion the Scottish team Queen’s Park was invited to take their place. Historically, the most notable game was the 1904 encounter when the Corinthian spirit was more than evident, as the FA Cup holders Bury received a mighty blow via a 10-3 hammering!
Despite this shock, later games saw dominance by the professional teams, while a rift between amateur sides and the Football Association brought to an end the charitable endeavour in this form. Relaunched by the FA in 1908 as the FA Charity Shield, initial games pitted the English League and Southern League champions against each other. At the end of the 1907/08 season, Manchester United were Football League champions for the first time ever, after which they beat Southern League champions Queens Park Rangers, to win the inaugural Shield fixture. United triumphed 4-0 following a 1-1 draw, with both matches played at Stamford Bridge. No Shield match has ever been replayed since that time.
When the Cobblers met the First Division Champions and north-east giants Newcastle United at the end of the 1908/09 season, the contest was for the second-ever Charity Shield match. Northampton Town was invited to participate as Southern League champions and proudly accepted the offer. Effectively playing in what was the third tier of the Football League, lower level teams were starting to prove their worth and FA Cup upsets against higher division opponents had already been achieved by some of the smaller outfits. For the Cobblers, a further year was to pass before they claimed their first major scalp … that of 1st Division Wednesday, during an FA Cup away-day replay.
Played on Wednesday 28th April 1909 and kicking off at 5 pm, Stamford Bridge once again hosted the Charity Shield match. Attracting a disappointing crowd of 7,500, the gate receipts were £227. Prior to the game, the Northampton Daily Echo reported that the Jolly Cobblers (as the local press liked to call them at that time) “have recognised that they have a hard task before them.”
And so it proved to be … on a windy evening and on a hard-baked pitch, the Cobblers donned their alternate white shirts, so as to avoid a perceived clash of the stripes. Adopting the standard formation of the day, the Cobblers lined up as follows ….
Various newspapers commented on the action but The Sportsman published a lengthy report. The match appears to have been a relatively even affair and although the Cobblers battled valiantly, they rarely looked like beating their more illustrious opponents. Newcastle was particularly strong in defence, where at times their offside tactic ensnared the Cobblers’ attack and brought voices of dissent from the crowd. A first-half mistake handed Newcastle the lead, while another goal after the break ensured victory for the Novocastrians and the Cobblers went down 2-0
No photos of match action seem to exist. I have an extensive collection of early Cobblers photos but only four comprise match action prior to 1909 and none appear to have been published in newspapers. This should come as no surprise: newspapers of this period were still dense typeface affairs, with photography an extravagant luxury. In an era before radio and television, the daily papers were the main means for dispensing news and information to the masses and excessive use of photographs or illustrations was generally considered to be a waste of important space.
In February 2020 an original programme from the match surfaced on eBay. As rare as the proverbial hen’s teeth, it was described as being in excellent condition. It attracted 28 bids, with the electronic auction hammer crashing down at £3,650.00. One might consider that it went rather cheaply when prices realised by other Charity Shield programmes for the period are revealed. In 2015 a programme from the first-ever 1908 Charity Shield sold at auction for £13,000, while slightly later programmes from 1911 and 1912 have sold for £11,500 and £8,800 respectively in the last couple of years.
From the Cobblers’ perspective, the match might be considered the club’s only appearance in a major final, but ultimately, little more than an anecdote in the history of football. Given that their place was by invitation only (albeit a right earned following a season’s long toil), I suspect that today’s fans might claim that those two Wembley play-off finals from the late 1990s are of greater significance?
