‘A Corner Kick’ by Thomas M. Hemy (1852-1931) in one of the oldest surviving football paintings. It shows Sunderland AFC hosting Aston Villa of Birmingham at their ground on Newcastle Road, Sunderland, in 1895. Sunderland AFC won the title in the 1894-95 season, despite drawing 4-4 at home against Villa; the Villa won the League title following season, but lost 2-1 away at Sunderland. It was here at Newcastle Road that AFC had entertained Albion for those two grudging and bruising encounters in the 1888-89 season.
Part 1 of 2
IN 1892, Sunderland AFC won the Football League title, but not everyone in the town was pleased. Sunderland Albion marked the occasion by disbanding.
Four years earlier, Sunderland AFC had been disqualified from the FA Cup for fielding ineligible players, and founder James Allan was so ashamed of his club that he established Albion as a rival, taking seven players with him. And the rivalry was fierce. When they were drawn against each other in the FA Cup and the Durham Challenge Cup in the 1888-89 season, AFC withdrew from both competitions, rather than let Albion’s board have much-needed gate receipts and buy their own ground.
Yielding to popular pressure, the clubs rearranged the matches on a friendly basis, at least in name. AFC insisted on donating receipts to charity, to keep them out of Albion’s hands, and their fans pelted the Albion team brake with stones. AFC won both games, courtesy of Scottish imports who could not have played in the official cup matches.
Part Two
The packing sheds at Hartley’s Wear Glassworks at Deptford, Sunderland, in 1889. For information about the company, see The National Archives. Hartley’s were the major sponsors of Sunderland Albion until an industrial dispute forced the business to close in 1892, the very same year that rivals Sunderland AFC won the League title. James Hartley Jr (grandson of the founder) immediately re-founded the glassmaking business in Portobello Lane, Monkwearmouth, and in one form or another Hartley Wood and Co. Ltd survived, barely, until 1997. The city’s glassmaking heritage lives on at the National Glass Centre in Monkwearmouth.
FORTUNE was no kinder to Albion than their rivals had been. In 1889, the club applied to join the newly-minted Football League, but were turned down only for Sunderland AFC to be admitted the following year, and finish seventh. Undeterred, Albion joined the rival Football Alliance, but it proved to be the League’s poor relation, and in 1892 became the League’s Second Division. The two Sunderland clubs, though playing in different League divisions, contested two more friendlies that year, resulting in a humiliating 14-1 aggregate victory for Sunderland AFC.
The sight of John Campbell’s thirty-one goals then propelling Sunderland AFC to the 1891-1892 League title must have been even harder to bear, but worse was to come. Just before the start of the 1892-93 season, Albion’s major sponsors, Wear Glass Works, folded after an eighteen-month strike. Ruefully recognising Sunderland AFC’s runaway dominance, the Albion board saw no alternative but to wind up the club’s affairs.
