THE ENGLISH GAME
THERE’S a great bit near the start of The English Game, Netflix’s new football drama, where captain Fergus insists his side must update their tactics.
“Two full-backs, three halfbacks,” he suggests to the boss, “and we keep five up top.”
As you can imagine, the boss is not convinced. His reply? “We always play six up front.”
The year is 1879, the side is Darwen FC, a team of Lancashire mill workers, and the football played is, well, a bit different from the football we know now.
Created by Downton Abbey’s Julian Fellowes, The English
Game takes us back nearly a century and a half to tell the story of how the modern professional game began to take shape. And, as you’ll see, it’s come a long way.
The ball back then weigh up to double today’s does.
A side like Darwen would take the field in cut-off trousers and boots they’d worn all day.
The goals had no nets, often could what no crossbar. The grass was overgrown. “There weren’t any markings either, not even a centre spot,” explains historical consultant Andy Mitchell. “And there was no referee on the pitch, just a couple of umpires who’d flag if there was a foul.”
Not that many fouls were given back then because roughness was part and parcel of the game, at least as played by the southern upper classes who dominated it.
The seemingly unstoppable Old Etonians, led by their talisman Arthur Kinnaird (Edward Holcroft), knew no other way.
“It was like rugby but without the handling,” says Andy. But big changes were coming, as the series reveals. A version of football with actual passing had evolved up north. And Darwen had controversially signed two Scots from Partick who excelled at it, Fergus Suter and James Love (Kevin Guthrie and James Harkness). They’d soon have the toffs deeply rattled.
“When you’re faced with these large, well-fed southern gentlemen, you can’t go through them,” explains Andy. “But if you pass the ball, you can use your skill to overcome that.”
These two different styles of football summed up the Victorian class divide, a theme throughout the show. The fact
■ that Suter and Love were being paid to play was seen by the posh guys as particularly vulgar.
But Kinnaird’s attitude, at least, would change. He’d come to play a key role in football’s evolution. Also pivotal was James Walsh (Craig Parkinson), Darwen’s mill owner.
“It’s an extraordinary story,” says executive producer Rory Aitken. “And yet even people deeply involved in football don’t know it – the history of their own sport.”
●The English Game, a sixpart drama, is on Netflix from today.
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