The football club that time forgot
If you are thinking here about Nottingham Forest, Darwen or Newton Heath then you would be wrong. Yes, each of those clubs was turned down for the inaugural season of the Football League, but there were two other prominent sides at the time that were rejected... and it all stemmed from the fact that the organisers didn't want to risk a fixtures clog up, even though the accepted clubs totalled just twelve. This post is about one of those other two clubs; I will hopefully write about the other unfortunately rejected club in due course.
And so it was, back in the 1880s that, the Football League was first created. The 12 initial clubs to be included were Accrington, Aston Villa, Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers, Burnley, Derby County, Everton, Notts County, Preston North End, Stoke, West Bromwich Albion and Wolverhampton Wanderers. All clubs from the Midlands and the North of England. There were no teams from the South of the country included. But two additional clubs, apart from the better-known Nottingham Forest and Sheffield Wednesday, to be left out were Halliwell Rovers and Birmingham St George's. This post is about the former, with a future post about Birmingham St George's coming later.
Halliwell Rovers FC was a football club that was founded in late 1886 near Bolton, Lancs. Records seem to suggest that the club lost narrowly 1-0 to Everton in a friendly fixture in November of that year. It could be that it was Halliwell Rovers' first ever game. We could say that their biggest claim to fame was when they applied to join the newly-created Football League in 1888.
Like other clubs of the era, including Nottingham Forest, Sheffield Wednesday and the equally little-known nowadays club called Birmingham St George's, Halliwell Rovers were denied their anticipated destiny when a limit of just 12 clubs was imposed on the organised League by the founders. As you will find out in a future posting, though, Birmingham St George's Football Club was anything but unknown back in 1888.
Continuing to play in non-organised local football for several seasons, following their rejection to the Football League, Halliwell Rovers signed up to the newly-formed Lancashire League in 1895. They finished as runners-up in their inaugural season in that competition, earning 39 points from 30 games, behind champions Nelson FC who themselves were accepted into the Football League in 1921 and are still in existence. Subsequent seasons saw Halliwell Rovers finish third in 1896-97 and fourth in 1897-98. Halliwell Rovers resigned from the Lancashire League at the end of the 1898-99 season after they could only finish in 10th spot.
The club managed to reach the first qualifying round in most of the seasons that they competed in the F A Cup but reached the second qualifying round in the 1898-99 season, only to pull out of a replay, thus forfeiting their chance to reach subsequent rounds. In 1899 the decision was made to disband the club. This can be considered one of the many 'if only' stories in association football that we hear of from time to time. If only they were a bigger club, would they have been admitted to the new Football League over one of the more established clubs of the time who did get in? If only they had succeeded in joining that early version of the Football League, would the club still be in existence today? If only they had done well in that 1888-89 Football League set-up, could they be playing in Europe by now? And the list of 'if only' questions goes on but, we will never know the answers.
Yet there is a strange twist to this story. Halliwell Rovers played mostly localised football in Lancashire and were always deemed to be overshadowed by their nearest neighbours and rivals, Halliwell FC. It has been claimed that, because of the rivalry, Halliwell Rovers' intended advancement in the game was somewhat frustrated by their neighbours. Personally speaking, I can't see how this is a feasible claim, considering that Halliwell Rovers tried to enter the new Football League set-up. As far as my research goes, I cannot find any reference to Halliwell FC trying to muscle in on Halliwell Rovers' Football League status attempt by trying to get voted in themselves, so maybe the officials of Halliwell Rovers were looking around for a scapegoat to blame for the club's closure and that condemnation fell on their local rivals.
Casting away most doubt on the reasons that Halliwell Rovers decided to fold, it was known at the time that Halliwell Rovers were involved in a potential move to a new stadium that would host football and cycling, with a cycle track around the outside of the pitch. However, that move apparently fell through and, together with such things as too many Football League clubs competing in the surrounding areas of Lancashire, the pressures to move to professionalism with a high expectancy of wage payments but not enough spectator support through the turnstiles to justify such were probably the real reasons why Halliwell Rovers eventually collapsed.
And the reason I believe my hunch to be so? Halliwell FC disbanded in 1887... and Halliwell Rovers FC took over the tenancy of the Bennetts ground from their then-disbanded rivals when that happened. That's a year after Halliwell Rovers were formed and one year before Halliwell Rovers applied to join the Football League, so it would have been impossible for one club to have such a 'hold' on the other club for any prolonged period of time as claimed.
Trevor Mulligan