‘Fancy! A lot of working chaps beating a lot of gentlemen!’
1879, the third round of the FA Cup. A football team from the humble Lancashire cotton town of Darwen take on Remnants – a Berkshire club of the moneyed and well-connected – and beat them. It is football’s first ever giantkilling.
Their reward is a quarter-final with the mighty Old Etonians. It pitches rulers against ruled, rich against poor, champions against underdogs, old tactics against new, the inventors of the game against the upstarts. It is an encounter that is seen as symbolic. And, hidden at the heart of the encounter, lies the bitterest controversy.
Underdogs is a fascinating story that covers the very birth of football and its development towards the game we recognise today. Storyteller, football connoisseur and historian, Keith Dewhurst, shows how 130 years ago, at its beginning, football was already reflecting the modern game closely – money talks, cheating abounds, and victory is secured whatever the cost.
‘Fascinating… The beginning of professionalism, a change in the style of playing, the end of southern amateur Oxbridge chaps dominating football… Keith has done an excellent research job in recreating the times and tensions’ Spectator
