Sunderland Albion 1889

Sunderland Albion

The story of Sunderland Albion begins not simply with the formation of another football club, but with a dispute over the direction in which football in Sunderland was heading.

By 1888 Sunderland Association Football Club had changed considerably from the modest organisation established by schoolteachers eight years earlier. Football itself was changing. Professionalism had been legalised by the Football Association in 1885, Scottish players were increasingly being recruited by ambitious English clubs, and money was becoming an unavoidable part of the game. Sunderland were determined to compete at a higher level, but not everybody associated with the club was comfortable with the path being taken.

Among those who became disillusioned was James Allan, one of the most important figures in Sunderland's earliest history. Allan had been instrumental in the establishment of the original teachers' club in 1880, but by 1888 his relationship with Sunderland had deteriorated sufficiently for him to become involved in the creation of a rival organisation.

Sunderland Albion Football Club was formed in 1888.

It was an extraordinary development. Sunderland was still some distance from becoming the nationally famous footballing centre it would be during the following decade, yet the town suddenly possessed two ambitious clubs, each seeking prominent opposition, talented players and the support of the rapidly growing football public.

Albion were certainly no insignificant local side. From the outset their ambitions extended beyond ordinary district football. They wanted to compete against established clubs and to make their presence felt in the wider game. Their emergence therefore presented Sunderland AFC with something they had never previously encountered: a serious rival operating within their own town.

The relationship between the clubs was initially anything but friendly.

Competition existed not merely on the football field but behind the scenes. Players, fixtures, grounds, finances and public support all mattered. In an era before football had settled into the structures familiar today, the survival and advancement of a club could depend upon attracting the right opponents and securing sufficient gate receipts. Two ambitious organisations attempting to do that in the same town inevitably came into conflict.

For a time, therefore, it was far from certain that Sunderland AFC would emerge as the town's sole major football club.

Albion developed rapidly and became strong enough to compete well beyond Wearside. When the Football Alliance was established in 1889 as an important national competition outside the Football League, Sunderland Albion became part of it. The Alliance contained a number of substantial clubs and represented a genuine alternative route towards national prominence.

This placed Albion firmly within the developing structure of English football.

Their progress coincided, however, with an even more dramatic rise by their neighbours.

Sunderland AFC were elected to the Football League in 1890, replacing Stoke, and immediately demonstrated that they belonged among the country's leading clubs. The side assembled on Wearside became one of the outstanding teams of the Victorian game. The combination football played by Sunderland's celebrated Scottish contingent brought national admiration and eventually produced the team remembered as the "Team of All Talents."

The consequences for Albion were enormous.

What had begun as a genuine contest for footballing supremacy in Sunderland was increasingly becoming unequal. Sunderland now possessed membership of the Football League and were attracting national attention, while success on the field strengthened their position still further.

The decisive season was 1891–92.

Sunderland swept to their first Football League Championship, establishing themselves as the leading club in England. Albion, meanwhile, remained outside the League at precisely the moment when the organisation was preparing for its greatest expansion since its creation.

In 1892 the Football League absorbed much of the Football Alliance and created a new Second Division. For clubs outside the existing League this represented an enormous opportunity. Membership offered regular national competition, greater prestige and the financial benefits that accompanied fixtures against recognised professional clubs.

For Sunderland Albion, admission could have transformed their future.

It did not happen.

Albion failed to obtain the League position they needed, while Sunderland AFC entered the 1892–93 season as champions of England. The contrast could hardly have been greater. One Sunderland club had reached the summit of English football; the other was left outside the rapidly consolidating League structure.

Albion's position became increasingly difficult to sustain.

Their eventual disappearance can make their story appear inevitable when viewed from more than a century later, but it was anything but inevitable when the club was created. Albion had possessed genuine ambition, attracted significant opposition and competed within an important national competition. For several years Sunderland really did contain two clubs attempting to establish themselves within the upper reaches of the English game.

There is also a particularly interesting final dimension to the story.

The bitterness which surrounded Albion's emergence did not last forever. By the early 1890s relations between the two clubs had evidently improved considerably. Sunderland AFC's directors invited Albion officials to accompany them to an away cup fixture, and contemporary reports describe the two parties mixing on extremely friendly terms.

Somewhere along the way, the hostility had softened.

That is an important part of Sunderland Albion's history because it prevents their story from becoming a simplistic tale of two organisations which hated one another until one finally disappeared. Their relationship changed. The arguments and rivalries of the late 1880s gradually gave way to something more cordial, even while the clubs remained competitors.

Sunderland Albion ultimately disappeared from senior football, while Sunderland AFC went on to become one of the dominant clubs of the Victorian era. Sunderland followed their 1891–92 Championship by winning the title again in 1892–93 and 1894–95, ensuring that the town would thereafter be associated overwhelmingly with the red-and-white club.

Albion nevertheless deserve considerably more than a footnote in Sunderland's football history.

They were born during one of the most turbulent periods in the development of the professional game. They challenged an emerging footballing giant within its own town, competed nationally and came tantalisingly close to entering the Football League at the moment when its structure was being transformed.

Their existence also provides a reminder that history rarely develops as neatly as it subsequently appears.

Today it seems almost impossible to imagine Sunderland represented by anything other than Sunderland AFC. In the late 1880s and early 1890s, however, the future had yet to be decided.

For those few remarkable years there were two ambitious football clubs in Sunderland, each attempting to find its place in the rapidly changing world of Victorian football.

One would become one of the greatest clubs of the age.

The other was Sunderland Albion.

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