Historic Football Prints - Sunderland Albion

Sunderland Albion, 1889

In 1888 there was an acrimonious split in the management committee of Sunderland Association Football Club (hereafter ‘SAFC’). The split was so acrimonious that it resulted in the man who had created SAFC – the Scotsman James Allan - resigning his post as Treasurer and founding a rival club in the town, ‘Sunderland Albion’.

There then followed an often ill-tempered and nasty rivalry between SAFC and Albion lasting almost until the latter’s demise in 1892.

That much is easy to recount, but to gain a clear understanding of why these events occurred is much more difficult. In fact it is impossible, even now, to know definitively what led Allan and his associates in the Sunderland club and committee to take the radical step of splitting the club, or why, after the split, there was such unremitting hostility between the two clubs, at least for as long (about three of the four years) as Allan remained closely associated with Sunderland Albion.

The ignorance is due to what appears to be a systematic cover up by the North East newspapers of the day.

On Saturday Nov 26 1887, at its Newcastle Road home ground, Sunderland AFC defeated Middlesbrough FC 4-2 in a 4th qualifying round FA Cup replay.

However, shortly afterwards Middlesbrough protested their defeat to the FA on the ground that Sunderland had played ‘unregistered’ professional players in its team and had employed a ‘professional trainer’ for the tie.

The FA Council then appointed a Commission of Inquiry to examine Middlesbrough’s allegations and this met at Darlington on the evening of Tuesday 27th December 1887. SAFC were subsequently disqualified from the tournament, which appear to have tipped James Allan over the edge. One of the reasons for Allan’s angst appears to have been what he considered to be a campaign of mis trust at SAFC with the Scots players at the club, Allan himself was a Scot, from Ayrshire.

Nevertheless, what followed in the brief 4 years that Albion were in business was untold acrimony between the clubs, with the upshot that SAFC even refused to play Albion as they didnt want to give them any gate money. 

The 2 games that the clubs did play ended in violence and some unpleasant exchanges in the local newspapers. 

The reason why Sunderland Albion failed is essentially simple – it was never able to match SAFC either in support or finances. 

Albion folded in 1892 but the postscript to a fascinating story is that in 2020 Sunderland Albion reformed. We await developments.