Fans demand B&Q mark the world’s 1st DIY football team
CAMPAIGNERS are demanding that bosses at B&Q mark one of its stores as the birthplace of modern-day football.
Football historians say the vast majority of B&Q’S customers will be totally unaware of the South Yorkshire store’s unique place in sporting history.
Back in 1857 the patch of meadow beside Sheffield’s River Sheaf – where the giant DIY store now stands – hosted the first game played by Sheffield FC, the world’s oldest association football club.
It was founded by two keen local sportsmen, Nathaniel Creswick, a Sheffield solicitor, and his friend William Prest, a wine merchant, who were both keen cricketers. The pair formed the football club so they and their well-to-do cricketing friends, including doctors and lawyers, could keep fit over the winter before they started batting and bowling again.
With no other club to play against, their Saturday afternoon football games would see a team of married men play those who were all single, or the match might be those with professional occupations against the rest.
“It’s fair to say that without Nathaniel Creswick and William Prest we wouldn’t have the Champions League, the Premier League, not to mention all the world-famous clubs we have now,” said football historian and author Martin Westby. “But no one who goes shopping at B&Q in Sheffield has any idea about the importance of where they are standing.
“Nobody realises it’s the home of the game. It all started with Sheffield FC.”
It was the Sheffield side’s rules, including the introduction of corners, a crossbar linking the goalposts and free kicks for fouls that proved most popular, spreading across the North and Midlands despite the newly formed Football Association based in London publishing its own, different set of rules in 1863.
A campaign group, Sheffield Home Of Football, wants B&Q to promote the city’s pivotal role in creating the modern-day game.
“The B&Q on top of the old Sheffield FC pitch is right beside the main London to Sheffield railway line and trains always seem to pause right next to it,” said Mr Westby, one of the trustees of the group.
“We want B&Q to get a giant banner painted on the side of their building to let all those train travellers know how important that site is.”
The club’s current ground is called The Home Of Football Stadium, in nearby Dronfield, Derbyshire.
No one from B&Q was available for comment yesterday.