WHEN your team’s nickname is simply ‘The Club’, you’ve got to have a bit of history to back it up. And history is one thing that Sheffield FC have more of than anyone else, as they are the world’s oldest club, established today in 1857.

A hundred and fifty years ago today Nathaniel Creswick and William Prest founded the club and a set of rules by which they played, known as the ‘Sheffield Rules’. Back in the mid-19th century there was no established set of laws in the game, the two Old Harrovians decided that they’d be none of that offside nonsense, pushing players was fine and if you caught the ball you’d get a free kick. Perhaps Liverpool and Everton were playing these rules last Saturday in the Merseyside Derby.

Early Sheffield FC games pitted members of the team against one another, in contests such as ‘Married v Singles’ before rivals Halam were formed in 1860. In what is the world’s oldest ever derby, the two sides still do battle to this day.



Their 150 years of history have seen a few trophies head over to the Bright Finance stadium (known to fans as the Stadium of Bright) as they’ve won a host of local cups and titles, with their biggest ever success was an FA Amateur Cup win in 1904. A Wembley appearance in the 1977 FA Vase Final has been as good as it’s got in the modern era, where they lost in a replay to Billericay Town.

Today Sheffield FC dwell in the Northern Premier League Division One South, and have recently been recognised by FIFA as being officially the oldest club in the world and given the FIFA Order of Merit, joining Real Madrid as the only recipients of the award. They can also boast of having the likes of Michael Vaughan, Sven-Goran Eriksson and Sepp Blatter as members.

See footage of their birthday match against local big-boys Sheffield United from a couple of weeks ago here and join us again tomorrow for a ginger man introducing a very bad idea to the world.

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