FREE FEATURE: To Play or Not to Play

Having a go at overprivileged footballers is fun, but in 1914 it wasn't fair...

In 2015 I published a book with Andrew Holmes about Chelsea FC in the First World War. It wasn’t so much an evangelical praise of our club so much as the story of the war through the eyes of one club which made an average contribution. We told lots of tales of fans and players who went to war, but we also looked at what happened to football on the home front. Footballers who didn’t rush straight to war were hammered by the public, the press, and even in Parliament. However, when I started digging, it turned out that this was actually extremely unfair…

The Chelsea FC Chronicle marked the outbreak of war with contemplative thought at a friendly game against Fulham at the end of August 1914. The 1914/15 season was about to open ‘under the shadow of the greatest and most momentous war in the history of the world’. There had been suggestions that it was improper for the Football league to continue, but for now, it was more of a low, discontented rumbling in the background.

Several clubs put on friendlies to raise funds for the war, but despite these early gestures and deferential editorials supporting the war effort, the reprieve was short. An impassioned campaign began to suppress the playing of professional matches in particular. How, it was asked, when there was a war on, could men justify watching a game of football? How too could all of these able-bodied young men, these professional athletes, decline the opportunity to display their physical prowess on a battlefield when their country was calling for them? Some newspapers began to refuse to publish match reports and a number of high profile men, such as Arthur Conan Doyle, spoke out against such frivolity continuing in the face of war.

Early on, one notable campaigner managed to draw attention to the cause. Frederick Charrington was heir to the brewery of the same name, but at some point in his youth had had an epiphany about the evils of drink. He turned his back on the business and devoted his life to missionary work in London’s East End with a special emphasis on temperance. Charrington obsessively led the charge against football and even petitioned the King to intervene in the matter. He asked Fulham if he could address the crowd at a match shortly after their visit to Chelsea at Craven Cottage, a mile and a half from Stamford Bridge. The club did not object to his presence so long as if he spoke he encouraged men to enlist, rather than attempted to attack the sport. He refused and was told that he would be removed if he attempted to protest. According to a friend who went with him, he intended to cause a scene ‘even if the crowd tore him to pieces’.

In front of some 12,000 present, including the secretary of the Football Association, Charrington was removed from the ground for getting to his feet and attempting to condemn football despite the club’s warning. The savvy campaigner milked the incident for all it was worth, accusing Fulham’s employees of beating him up as they tossed him out. On 23 September his farcical case pressing the matter came up in court and on evidence from the directors of the club and the FA’s representative, as well as the Fulham manager, it all came to nothing. It transpired that despite being ‘assaulted’ Charrington’s silk cap had not even fallen off and the magistrate subsequently ordered costs against him.

Frederick Charrington protests at Fulham in 1914

The reason that football was singled out as an example of unnecessary vice and pilloried at the outbreak of the Great War actually went all the way back to the origins of the modern game. The idea of kicking a ball to and fro had been in existence for hundreds of years, but it was not until the nineteenth century that the version recognisable as today’s association football began to take shape. It did so at the instigation of the public schools, where it was believed that games should foster a team mentality, selflessness and courage. In the years following the formation of the FA in 1863 the rules began to be standardised and refined and the game was dominated by Old Etonians, Old Carthusians and the like.

Then things began to change. Embraced by the working classes, new teams from industrial areas like Birmingham, Blackburn and Wolverhampton began to dominate the upper echelons of the sport. The working classes had embraced the modern game wholeheartedly. Then came the crunch issue. It ‘rolled up on football like a huge black cloud in an otherwise blue sky.’ After years of bickering and skulduggery revolving around the complexities of what might be construed as payment, the FA finally legalised professionalism in 1885. It contradicted the very nature of the public school ethos as far as games were concerned. Playing for money was undignified and ungentlemanly. Also mystifying to those against professionalism in the game was the idea of paying to watch a match. Observation surely did not provide the benefits one would gain from actual participation? The partisan nature of the crowd was distasteful. Where was the sportsmanship when supporters were so clearly behind one team?

So, with the outbreak of the Great War, the screeching (as Chelsea’s Chronicle put it) for the abandonment of professional matches was largely coming from one upper-class corner. This underlying element had not gone unnoticed at Chelsea. ‘It must not be forgotten’, claimed the Chronicle: that some of the noisiest screaming for the instant abandonment of football – it is more especially professional football, mark you, that is aimed at – are those who have always been bitter opponents of the paid player and all connected with him. With him any stick is good enough to beat a dog with, and they are simply using the war as a new stick with which to beat the same old dog.

A crowd shot from Stamford Bridge in December, 1914, showing watching soldiers

There were, of course, two sides to the debate. Those involved with the game were being criticised for their lack of endeavour, but it would have been ludicrous to claim that it was only professional footballers and the spectators who watched them play that were staying away from recruitment offices. In fact, the reality was far from it.

Within a day in his new role at the head of the War Office, Lord Kitchener had made steps to get approval for up to half a million men and his famous call to arms was first published, initially asking for 100,000 men to expand the regular army. He was under no illusions about a short war. Envisaging years of fighting and millions of combatants, Kitchener was hell-bent on forging a new force to join the one already across the Channel: a New Army.

In the first week of war some 8,000 men enlisted, a huge jump on peace-time figures, when the army could expect 30,000 a year. The machinery by which men were accepted into the army had immediately begun to expand. Throughout August recruitment figures jumped to in the region of 50,000 a week. Kitchener quickly had his desired 100,000 men, but it was not until reports reached home, three weeks after the commencement of hostilities, of the less than satisfactory outcome of the Battle of Mons on 23 August that the nation was propelled into hysterical levels of enlistment. Before the British Expeditionary Force turned to begin fleeing from the German onslaught, while a significant and steady stream of men approached the colours, Britain was far from a nation where every man felt compelled to go and enlist.

In the week following Mons, recruiting figures boomed, 10,000 men enlisting in a single day for the first time. In total contrast to Frederick Charrington’s evangelical claims that football was a nuisance to be done away with, despite the beginning of the season and crowds arriving to support their team of choice, in the week following his being unceremoniously dumped outside Craven Cottage the army recorded its highest recruiting figures for the entire war. Almost 175,000 men volunteered to join the army in a seven-day period, trebling figures from the week before.

On 3 September more than 33,000 men were recruited in a single day, the highest daily return for the war, and that week The Times reported that men were waiting up to eight hours to enlist at some locations in London. In the time it took the BEF to get from Mons to the Marne, then back up to the Aisne in mid-September, nearly half a million men answered Kitchener’s call to arms – despite the continuance of professional football.

The FA itself had not simply ignored the outbreak of war. Its Vice President acknowledged the calls for the professional game to stop and did not agree with the sentiment. ‘Having regard to the great anxieties which all must feel during the continuance of war,’ he remarked, ‘I think total suspension would be mischievous rather than good.’ The FA appeared conscious of its public image, though, as well as of a necessity to do the right thing. Frederick Wall, the Secretary and the same FA official who had witnessed Charrington’s antics at Craven Cottage, had an acrimonious exchange with the Dean of Lincoln. He had made accusations of impropriety in connection with football betting and ludicrously recommended ‘that you at once cancel all players’ contracts, that those who are willing [this numbered many apparently] may go immediately to the front’. Ignoring the fact that this was a call for the immediate unemployment of some 7,000 men, he also recommended ‘that you only admit men over 40 to your matches if you do not discontinue them altogether’. Wall just about managed to remain polite when he pointed out ‘agreements between clubs and players are binding at common law’ and that the FA had already expressed a desire that clubs should release men for military service if they so wished. He also requested a list of the many players that the Dean knew were being prevented from joining up. His opponent declined to provide one and cut off their correspondence.

The FA’s Secretary opened a public dialogue with the War Office in the second week of September and told the military authorities ‘that the Football Association is prepared to request all its members to stop the playing of matches if the War Office is of the opinion that such a course would assist them in their duties’. To the letter, the War Office replied:

I am commended by the Army Council to inform you that they are very grateful to your association for its assistance in obtaining recruits for the army ... The question whether the playing of matches should be entirely stopped is more a matter for the discretion of the Association, but the Council could quite realise the difficulties involved in taking such an extreme step.

All that the Army Council asked of the FA was that football clubs did not interfere with the recruiting process so as to hinder it; that they ‘take all steps in their power to press the need for the country for recruits upon spectators who are eligible for enlistment’. They could too, if at all possible, set aside some money for the charitable relief of those affected by the war. The FA had been politically smart. To all intents and purposes the decision was not in their hands. The War Office would have to state they wanted play to stop and it appears that neither organisation yet wanted responsibility for making that landmark decision. So equilibrium reigned. ‘As the War Office are satisfied,’ [Wall] noted, ‘the Football Association are of the opinion that its members should continue to play matches where by doing so they can assist and not hinder the authorities in recruiting’.

Frederick Wall

As requested, the FA did encourage enlistment, and intervened as much as possible in respect of players’ contract issues; but at this stage the FA made no desperate appeals for men to enlist for a simple reason. For now there was no shortage of men; in fact there were too many coming forward for the army to deal with. In the first week of September the recruiting boom reached its zenith and the War Office no longer had control of the situation. No administrative framework existed to process recruitment in such volume, or at such speed. It had taken less than a week to raise a second 100,000; in fact of the 500,000 Kitchener had laid the groundwork for on his appointment, 439,000 had been attested, not including those who had joined territorial units locally. In fact, when Frederick Wall offered on the FA’s behalf to facilitate recruiting stations at matches, he was told there was no manpower available and that clubs should direct men to their nearest recruiting office. For those not waiting in eight-hour queues but already enlisted and languishing in depots, there were massive shortages of food, accommodation, uniforms, rifles and bedding, to say the very least. While of course logic would propel the authorities to take anybody who offered their services at this point while enthusiasm was high, ‘on the other hand, it must be said that most of the early problems faced by the New Armies were the direct result of the failure to impose some sort of ceiling on enlistments until the War Office was in a position to cope with the influx of volunteers’.

On 12 September Chelsea played Newcastle at home and it was noted in the programmes that Kitchener already had his half-million men, ‘provided the army medical examiners and recruiting officers have been able to keep up their end’. For now what was the point in more men rushing to enlist? ‘If still more men are required the country has only to ask for them and they will be forthcoming – and from no section of the community more readily than the much maligned footballer or ‘‘follower’’.’

It was forcefully pointed out too, that it was not the War Office or the Admiralty lambasting professional football for failing to do its duty. ‘First let us be told – by those who know – not merely that it is necessary, but that the authorities are ready, and able to do their part of drilling, clothing, arming and instructing an unlimited number of men.’Indeed if everyone joined the army at once there would be several million for the authorities to deal with. ‘It remains for the War Office to sound the call, not the cranks,’ proclaimed the Chronicle:

Far be it from us to minimise the gravity of the situation, or to deter one single man from flocking to the colours ... [But] so long as the best class of recruits are coming forward faster than they can be enlisted, there is no need for hysteria or the slinging of verbal mud at players or spectators. When the War Office tells us that it is time to stop, there will not be a moment’s hesitation in complying.

A recruitment office opened on Horse Guards Parade to accommodate thousands wishing to volunteer at the beginning of the war.

It is important to remember that it was unequivocally a choice as to whether one wanted to go to war at this point and it was a choice that in no way did British men universally make in 1914. For all of the men that rushed to enlist, there were several more that would not volunteer to fight in the Great War. Who were The Times or the ‘white feather brigade’ to attempt to compel a man to put his life at risk if he did not want to? There were a number of reasons why not every footballer enlisted in the late summer of 1914. ‘It must be remembered that they are bound by agreement to their clubs,’ remarked one newspaper trying to argue the case for the professional footballer at the beginning of September. Certainly at least one player remarked on his club’s reluctance to let him go. Charles Buchan, a Sunderland legend, who would spend a good deal of time playing for Chelsea during the war, claimed that when he expressed his desire to go and join the army he was categorically reminded that he was under contract.

For those men with families, the debate as to whether married men should enlist would not take hold until 1915 and they would not be compelled to serve until the middle of 1916. At the beginning of the war there was arguably no stigma attached to a man who chose not to leave his wife and children to fight. It has, too, been put forward that the direct correlation between the number of war widows relative to deaths in the war indicates that married men were on the whole ‘much more reluctant’ to go to war. This argument was true of a number of Chelsea fans, never mind players who, even if they did not object to being shot at for starters, were unwilling at this stage to leave their families.

Chelsea opened the floor for some of these men to defend themselves. The reasons cited were largely economic. One said that he was not enlisting because he was solely responsible for his widowed mother and his own wife and children. He had, however, no intention of staying out if the necessity arose. Another Chelsea fan made a similar claim, that his family was simply too large for him to entertain the thought of leaving them. Another had tried, but was unable to enlist ‘because my patriotic employer has refused any facilities, [and] will not reserve my post or make my widowed mother any allowance’. The fact that money was a mitigating factor when men were considering whether or not enlist was not lost on the press. The Times pointed out on 11 September that when the call for a public school’s battalion yielded 2,000-odd men within days, ‘they are all of the well-to-do class, and are paying their own expenses.’ It was a generalised assumption to make, but an interesting point nonetheless.

The future of the clubs themselves was threatened with potentially dire economic circumstances if they were immediately ordered to halt their business. The chairman of Millwall Football Club had meticulously compiled details of the potential cost of abandoning the football season. He calculated a loss of some £500,000, more than half of which was wages for players and trainers. That was to say nothing of others employed by the clubs. Chelsea were particularly mindful of the old gatemen, most of them ‘too old’ for their trade, who kept their heads above water by taking tickets on matchdays. These employees, others at the various grounds and the cash paid for a police presence at matches, amounted to another £12,500 of lost revenue. Some £17,000, the chairman claimed, would be lost in printing and advertising. Rents, rates and taxes came to £35,000 and he pointed out that a large chunk, some £115,000, was already accounted for in outgoings before a fan had come through a gate – money owed to banks in the form of loans and overdrafts.

‘The increase of distress which would result from a complete cessation of professional football is ignored by these ‘‘dog-beaters’’,’ proclaimed the Chronicle. ‘It is not only the so called ‘‘pampered’’ professionals and their dependants who would suffer.’ And where would these men and women turn to in the face of their distress? Why a relief fund of course, to which Chelsea and other league clubs were religiously dispatching regular cheques; which would of course stop if there was no more money coming in.

At Chelsea, the club had calculated that a minimum turnover of £700 per game was required to keep it afloat and although the initial impact of the anti-football campaign eased and attendances went back up, it was not to last. As winter approached crowd figures were low. A direct comparison before Christmas noted that by the same point in 1913, 228,000 fans had passed through the gates. So far in 1914 the figure was just 75,000.

While the ‘screeching’ of the anti-football contingent had appeared to die down in conjunction with the overwhelming response to Kitchener’s appeal for men, the campaign began in earnest again as recruitment figures tailed off. In the House of Commons debate raged about football. Should they impose a special taxation on all gate money at professional matches? As Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George thought not. One Member of Parliament said at least 50% should be claimed, likening people ‘so satiated with luxury and laziness’ to those that had paid others to entertain them in a Roman arena. Should the government take away the concessions given to fans travelling on trains to matches now that they had taken them over? It was pointed out by the President of the Board of Trade that the railways had been commandeered to an extent to facilitate the easy movement of troops and supplies, but that interfering with this was beyond their control.

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At some point, I’ll tell you all about how football was eventually stopped after the 1914/15 season. There’s a whole load more hypocrisy and nonsense from Charrington to come, as well as a showdown between football and racing. In the meantime, if football is your thing and the idea of a football themed battlefield tour appeals, you can join me on the Western Front in June. Details below:

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As ever, if you’d like details on sources, let me know. All of the general army recruitment figures and stats came from Peter Simkins’s excellent book about Kitchener’s armies.