Nottingham Forest pose with the trophy
April 16, 1898: An FA Cup Final between local rivals is rare these days. On this day, it was an "East Midlands Derby," between aptly named Derby County of Derby, in Derbyshire, and their ach-rivals, Nottingham Forest of Nottingham.
And, in each case, the English pronounce it "DAR-bee," not "DUR-bee," like we do in America.
While the City Ground, home to Forest, and Meadow Lane, home to Notts County, are merely on opposite sides of the River Trent in Nottingham, Notts County have always been a smaller club. So Forest fans have looked to the next-biggest team in the East Midlands, Derby County, 20 miles to the west. Forest had won the Football League in 1892. Derby finished 3rd in the League in 1894 and 2nd in 1896.
In 1898, Forest finished in 8th place, 11 points behind winners Sheffield United. Derby finished 10th, 14 points off the pace. But they both reached the FA Cup Final, held at the Crystal Palace stadium in Southeast London. This should not be confused with Selhurst Park, built in 1924 as the home of Crystal Palace F.C.
Derby got there by beating the leading English team of the 1890s, Birmingham club Aston Villa; then Wolverhampton Wanderers, and then the 2 main clubs on Merseyside, first Liverpool (needing a replay but winning it an Anfield), then Everton. Forest's path was a bit easier, beating Lincolnshire teams Grimsby Town and Gainsborough Trinity, Birmingham-area team West Bromwich Albion, and Hampshire team Southampton, needing a replay.
Derby, as familiar to fans today, wore white shirts with black shorts. Forest wore red shirts with blue shorts. Arthur Capes, Forest's inside left, opened the scoring in the 19th minute. Steve Bloomer, Derby's sensational inside right, equalized in the 31st. Capes scored again in the 42nd. Centre half John McPherson made it 3-1 Forest in the 86th minute.
It remained 3-1 Forest, and their Captain, Frank Forman, accepted the Cup from Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales, later to be King Edward VII, representing his mother, Queen Victoria, who, unlike her son, didn't care about sports other than horse racing.
Steve Bloomer was the biggest star in English "football" at the time -- such as stardom was, as there was no "mass media" as we understand that term today. Even printing photographs in newspapers and magazines was a new phenomenon. Motion pictures were new, and hadn't yet developed "newsreels." Radio broadcasting was, as yet, impossible. And television was barely an idea. If you wanted to watch Steve Bloomer, and to see what he was watching, you had to go to the ground and buy a ticket.
He never won a major trophy for Derby, who would also lose the Cup Final in 1899 to Sheffield United, and in 1903 to Bury (a game Bloomer missed due to injury); and finish 3rd in the League in 1897, a height they would not reach again until 1930. But he was the English Football League's all-time leading goalscorer until surpassed by Jimmy Greaves in 1969. He still ranks 2nd, over a century past his last game.
Actually, he did win 3 major trophies for Derby County, league titles – in baseball. Derbyshire was one of the few places in England where, if only briefly, the sport caught on. Indeed, from 1895 to 1997, long after new construction prevented it from looking like a ballpark anymore, Derby's home stadium was known as The Baseball Ground.
Steve's playing career ended in 1914, with the start of World War I. At the time, he was in, of all places, the German capital, having signed a contract to manage a club named Britannia Berlin 92, now known as Berliner SV 1892. To this day, their colors are the same as Derby's, black and white. Steve's contract was canceled, he was arrested, and he became a prisoner of war. He was held in a camp of about 5,000 Allied prisoners, who, by all accounts, were treated well. They included many once-and-future footballers, and, despite being past his 40th birthday, Bloomer captained a team.
He was released in March 1918, after a farewell match in his honor, a rather bizarre way of holding what English football fans would call a testimonial match. Twice in the early 1920s, he was caretaker manager of Derby. In 1924, he managed Real Unión to the Copa del Rey (King's Cup), Spain's version of the FA Cup. He returned to Derby as groundsman, and died in 1938.
Derby's theme song, "Steve Bloomer's Watching," is played before every home game at Pride Park, which replaced the Baseball Ground in 1997. To keep this honest, a bust of him was dedicated, overlooking the pitch, in 2009.
Arthur Capes lived on until 1945. Alf Spouncer, Forest's left wing, was the last surviving player from this game, making it until 1962.
It became a bit of a joke that Derby couldn't win the Cup, and they've only won it once, in 1946. Forest would win it again, but not until 1959, and not since. Like Derby, Forest have spent most of their history in the 2nd tier of English football. Both teams -- first Derby in the late 1960s, then Forest in the mid-1970s -- would be revived by the one man beloved by both fanbases, Brian Clough. He would win just about every trophy there is to win -- except, oddly, the FA Cup, never as a player and never as a manager.
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April 16, 1898 was a Saturday. There was only 1 professional sports league operating in America at the time, baseball's National League, and its season had just started the day before. These games were played on this day:
* The New York Giants lost to the Boston Beaneaters, 4-2 at the Polo Grounds. The Beaneaters went through some name changes until becoming the Braves in 1912.
* The Brooklyn Bridegrooms beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 7-6 at National League Park (later renamed Baker Bowl) in Philadelphia. There was an off-season in which 4 players from the team then known as the Brooklyn Grays got married, so, "Bridegrooms." In 1899, Ned Hanlon became their manager, somebody remembered a circus troupe named Hanlon's Superbas, and they became the Brooklyn Superbas. They became the Dodgers, short for Trolly Dodgers, in 1911, were known as the Robins while Wilbert Robinson managed them from 1914 to 1931, and became the Dodgers again.
* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Washington Senators, 8-3 at Oriole Park in Baltimore.
* The Cleveland Spiders beat the Cincinnati Reds, 3-1 at League Park in Cincinnati -- not to be confused with the Spiders' home, also named League Park.
* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Louisville Colonels, 3-1 at Eclipse Park in Louisville.
* And a fire at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis postponed the game that day between the Chicago Orphans and the St. Louis Browns. They were able to play again the next day. But the makeup was moved to the West Side Grounds in Chicago, on May 18. The Browns beat the Orphans, 11-4.
Huh? "Orphans"? The year before, Adrian Constantine Anson, their 1st baseman since 1876 and their manager since 1879, retired as a player and left as their manager -- and was now managing the Giants. That only lasted one season. Anyway, he had long been known as "Cap," for "Captain." As he got older, people started calling him "Pop."
The team was founded in 1870 as the Chicago White Stockings. In 1890, because they had so many young players, they became the Chicago Colts. But after Anson left, a sportswriter called them the Orphans, because they "missed their Pop." Another youth movement, in 1903, led to them adopting the name everyone knows them by: The Chicago Cubs. Their arch-rivals, the Browns, became the St. Louis Cardinals in 1900.
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