COLLECTORS’

DUNDEE SCORES LINKS WITH THE BEAUTIFUL GAME

You might have heard that the World Cup kicks off in Qatar in a week or so – the first of the 22 World Cups to have been staged in the Arab world. Luckily for me, the Irish auction house Fonsie Mealy kindly featured an early ‘football’ item in their recent sale in County Kilkenny. Described as a ‘relic from the early stages of English football’, the ball owed its origins to Winchester College in 1870. It is inscribed in gilt ‘Winchester College, Tutors Houses, Football Six, 1870’, with several players’ names below.

Mind you, it was an admittedly tenuous link to early organised football, given that Winchester College is normally associated with a code of football known as Winkies, which is more like rugby.

Still, it allows me to mention that while Scotland never quite made it to Qatar, Dundee is proud of her links to the early game – having what is considered the earliest depiction of the passing game in an oil painting.

The Village Ba’ Game, painted in 1818 by Alexander Carse, is much loved by fitba fans as it is one of the earliest representations of a football match in the world.

And, if I might blow our own trumpet, as early as July 1866 The Courier described Army troops playing football in camp outside Inverkip… “Near the beach, in front of the tents, a game at football is going on, and over the sward come the merry voices of young ladies who are moving about, slyly peeping underneath the canvas.”

Plus ca change!

The ball at Fonsie Mealy’s more than doubled pre-sale hopes to take 1,700 euros, around £1,500.

An 1870 football sold at auction.