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First Football Stories: Northampton Town's place in football history |
On the 7th February 1970 George Best scored six goals as Manchester United visited Northampton Town’s County Ground, in the East Midlands, in the Fifth Round of that year’s FA Cup. United won 8.2 and you might think that this was just another cup giant-killing that never was; what could the Fourth Division team have really expected with players of George Best’s genius (even after returning from a month's suspension, during which some 'experts' claimed the team played better without him!) in the opposition, not to mention Bobby Charlton and Brian Kidd (who scored the other two goals that day)?
And yet, just four seasons earlier, Northampton Town had been playing Manchester United in the league; in the First Division. This is a story of a spectacular rise and equally dramatic fall: in six of the nine seasons prior to that infamous cup tie, Northampton had either been promoted or relegated.
When you consider the football teams climbing the English league pyramid to the top tier in recent times you might think of Bournemouth, Brighton, Swansea Town, Watford and, of course, Wimbledon, who also won the FA Cup in 1988, beating the mighty Liverpool at Wembley. Few people would come up with Northampton Town, who were the first club to progress from the fourth tier to the first after four nationwide leagues were introduced in 1959.
Growing out of an Anglo-Saxon village called Hamm tun – meaning the ‘village situated next to a well-watered meadow’ – it later became known as North Hamm tun, almost certainly to distinguish it from Southampton, before becoming widely known and accepted as Northampton.
At the time of the Domesday Book in 1086, Northampton’s population stood at around 1,500, though that would be decimated during the years of the Black Death in the Fourteenth Century. However, medieval Northampton’s fortunes grew on the back of the wool trade before shoemaking became its principal industry by the 1600s. In 1642 a group of Northampton's shoemakers was commissioned by the British Army to supply its boots. The town has a population of around 215,000 today.
The town’s football team – known as ‘The Cobblers’ after its local tradesmen – was formed by a group of schoolteachers and a local solicitor on 6th March 1897 – the same year in which Queen Victoria celebrated her Diamond Jubilee. They began life in the local Northants League before progressing through the Midland League and on into the Southern League. The latter was where many teams in the southern half of England resided after football’s rapid development in the North and Midlands towards the end of the Victorian era.
Northampton would become Southern League Champions in 1908-09 and thus played in the second Charity Shield match, which took place in 1909. In those days it was contested between the winners of the Football League and Southern League Championships. Played at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge Ground, The Cobblers lost 2.0 to Newcastle United.
Northampton’s own home ground was the County Ground – though the football club’s address was officially Abington Avenue - until they moved to the Sixfields Stadium in 1994 after finishing bottom of the league (they only remained in the league on that occasion because the ground at Kidderminster Harriers – who had won that year’s Football Conference – did not meet the standard required for promotion to the Football League). Shared with Northamptonshire County Cricket Club, it had to be left open on one side to accommodate the cricket club’s pitch requirements.
The football club’s Southern League success was largely attributable to their first full-time player manager, the innovative and ambitious Herbert Chapman. A tactical genius, he soon introduced a counter-attacking style that brought huge home wins such as an 11.1 drubbing of Southend United and equally impressive 10.0 defeat of Croydon Common.
Before Chapman headed off to Leeds City, on his way to football immortality with the 1930s Arsenal team via Huddersfield Town, Northampton signed another iconic football name. Walter Tull arrived from Tottenham Hotspur. Son of a Barbadian carpenter whose own father had been a slave on Bardados, Tull was the first outfield black player to play in the Football League. He was also the first Northampton Town player to enlist in the British Army, in December 1914. Having fought in and survived the Battle of the Somme he built a reputation for bravery and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in May 1917 – the first black infantry officer in a British Army regiment - before being killed in action on 25th March 1918 during the German Spring Offensive at the Battle of Bapaume. His body was never found.
In 1921, when league football was restored after World War One, a new division was created by the Football League, absorbing many teams from the Southern League (something Herbert Chapman had striven for without success), which Northampton Town joined: the Third Division. This lasted for just one season before two divisions were formed out of it – Third Division (North) and Third Division (South) – which were run on regional lines.
It was incredibly difficult to get promoted from either variant into the Second Division as only one promotion space was available each season to the 24 teams fighting for it. The Cobblers were one of only six clubs to be ever-present in the Third Division (South) until its demise in 1958 when a new, national, Fourth Division was created. In 1958 Northampton had finished 13th and so, as one of the 12 bottom teams in the Third Division (South) went into this Fourth Division as opposed to the new Third Division.
In their last season in the Third Division (South) and just under fifty years on from their Southern League triumph, Northampton – nineteenth in the league at that time – met the mighty Arsenal team in the Third Round of that season’s FA Cup. Arsenal were managed by ‘Gentleman’ Jack Crayston who had played in the Gunners team first developed by Herbert Chapman. On this occasion it truly was a giant-killing with Northampton winning 3.1. And this was very much just the beginning!
Playing in midfield for the Arsenal team on that fateful day in January 1958 was a former Northampton player – Dave Bowen. Bowen had initially been an understudy to the great Joe Mercer and would become the first Arsenal player to play in a World Cup when captaining Wales in the Finals in Sweden that summer, before returning to Northampton as player manager the following year. His great talent was spotting quality players who he persuaded to play for the club, despite very limited budgets. These included Bowen’s former teammate at Arsenal – striker Cliff Holton – and former Everton inside forward Alec Ashworth. Such signings would prove to be the foundation for the club’s greatest, sustained period of success.
In 1960-61, while local rivals and champions Peterborough United were scoring 134 goals in their 46 matches – a record for the English fourth tier – the newly installed floodlights were shining down on Northampton Town as they too were promoted, in third place. Two seasons later they themselves were champions – of the Third Division – by four points from Swindon Town. After just one season in Division Two – in which Don Revie’s young Leeds United team were champions – Northampton were promoted again, this time just a point behind Newcastle United, who had beaten them in that Charity Shield match way back in Edwardian times.
1965-66 would prove to be Northampton Town’s only season in the top tier. After early home draws with Arsenal and Manchester United the club had to wait until 23rd October – their fourteenth league match – for their first victory in the First Division: a 2.1 win against West Ham United. The division proved to be a step too far, too soon. In conceding 92 goals in their 42 matches, Northampton had to endure six goal concessions at Leeds, Manchester United, Stoke and Blackburn Rovers - who would finish bottom, 13 points adrift of The Cobblers. Indeed, Northampton might have avoided the drop altogether had they got something from their penultimate home game against fellow strugglers Fulham. A record crowd of 24,523 packed into the County Ground, but most would be disappointed as Fulham won 4.2 and stayed up by just two points from Northampton.
Northampton fell straight through the Second Division and, after a season in the Third Division at a time when the town was awarded New Town status, and began to expand rapidly, it was more of the same for the football club as they were relegated yet again in 1968-69. After being outsiders for promotion for much of the season, they were finally back in the Fourth Division.
It is hard to pin down precisely went wrong but extensive injuries to key players who had conjured up such an amazing run of success undoubtedly contributed to it, as well as the financial constraints of a football club not used to competing against the huge football clubs among the nation’s elite. Confidence was replaced by anxiety and an almost inevitable expectation of failure. As today, the margins between success and failure in football can often be fine, and a spiral of decline can be hard to arrest, let alone reverse.
Joe Mercer – by then the manager of Manchester City – did say, after Northampton’s relegation from Division One:
“The miracle of 1966 was not England winning the World Cup, but Northampton reaching Division One"
If it wasn’t a football miracle, perhaps it was a football parable with an underlying message of ‘be careful what you wish for.’ However, what football club would not have craved those heady days in the sun - to escape the lower leagues, as if on wings – sadly to be reminded of the fate of Icarus but inescapably remembered for it?
Much of the research for this article was done for our book – First Football Histories: The Arsenal FC story
And yet, just four seasons earlier, Northampton Town had been playing Manchester United in the league; in the First Division. This is a story of a spectacular rise and equally dramatic fall: in six of the nine seasons prior to that infamous cup tie, Northampton had either been promoted or relegated.
When you consider the football teams climbing the English league pyramid to the top tier in recent times you might think of Bournemouth, Brighton, Swansea Town, Watford and, of course, Wimbledon, who also won the FA Cup in 1988, beating the mighty Liverpool at Wembley. Few people would come up with Northampton Town, who were the first club to progress from the fourth tier to the first after four nationwide leagues were introduced in 1959.
Growing out of an Anglo-Saxon village called Hamm tun – meaning the ‘village situated next to a well-watered meadow’ – it later became known as North Hamm tun, almost certainly to distinguish it from Southampton, before becoming widely known and accepted as Northampton.
At the time of the Domesday Book in 1086, Northampton’s population stood at around 1,500, though that would be decimated during the years of the Black Death in the Fourteenth Century. However, medieval Northampton’s fortunes grew on the back of the wool trade before shoemaking became its principal industry by the 1600s. In 1642 a group of Northampton's shoemakers was commissioned by the British Army to supply its boots. The town has a population of around 215,000 today.
The town’s football team – known as ‘The Cobblers’ after its local tradesmen – was formed by a group of schoolteachers and a local solicitor on 6th March 1897 – the same year in which Queen Victoria celebrated her Diamond Jubilee. They began life in the local Northants League before progressing through the Midland League and on into the Southern League. The latter was where many teams in the southern half of England resided after football’s rapid development in the North and Midlands towards the end of the Victorian era.
Northampton would become Southern League Champions in 1908-09 and thus played in the second Charity Shield match, which took place in 1909. In those days it was contested between the winners of the Football League and Southern League Championships. Played at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge Ground, The Cobblers lost 2.0 to Newcastle United.
Northampton’s own home ground was the County Ground – though the football club’s address was officially Abington Avenue - until they moved to the Sixfields Stadium in 1994 after finishing bottom of the league (they only remained in the league on that occasion because the ground at Kidderminster Harriers – who had won that year’s Football Conference – did not meet the standard required for promotion to the Football League). Shared with Northamptonshire County Cricket Club, it had to be left open on one side to accommodate the cricket club’s pitch requirements.
The football club’s Southern League success was largely attributable to their first full-time player manager, the innovative and ambitious Herbert Chapman. A tactical genius, he soon introduced a counter-attacking style that brought huge home wins such as an 11.1 drubbing of Southend United and equally impressive 10.0 defeat of Croydon Common.
Before Chapman headed off to Leeds City, on his way to football immortality with the 1930s Arsenal team via Huddersfield Town, Northampton signed another iconic football name. Walter Tull arrived from Tottenham Hotspur. Son of a Barbadian carpenter whose own father had been a slave on Bardados, Tull was the first outfield black player to play in the Football League. He was also the first Northampton Town player to enlist in the British Army, in December 1914. Having fought in and survived the Battle of the Somme he built a reputation for bravery and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in May 1917 – the first black infantry officer in a British Army regiment - before being killed in action on 25th March 1918 during the German Spring Offensive at the Battle of Bapaume. His body was never found.
In 1921, when league football was restored after World War One, a new division was created by the Football League, absorbing many teams from the Southern League (something Herbert Chapman had striven for without success), which Northampton Town joined: the Third Division. This lasted for just one season before two divisions were formed out of it – Third Division (North) and Third Division (South) – which were run on regional lines.
It was incredibly difficult to get promoted from either variant into the Second Division as only one promotion space was available each season to the 24 teams fighting for it. The Cobblers were one of only six clubs to be ever-present in the Third Division (South) until its demise in 1958 when a new, national, Fourth Division was created. In 1958 Northampton had finished 13th and so, as one of the 12 bottom teams in the Third Division (South) went into this Fourth Division as opposed to the new Third Division.
In their last season in the Third Division (South) and just under fifty years on from their Southern League triumph, Northampton – nineteenth in the league at that time – met the mighty Arsenal team in the Third Round of that season’s FA Cup. Arsenal were managed by ‘Gentleman’ Jack Crayston who had played in the Gunners team first developed by Herbert Chapman. On this occasion it truly was a giant-killing with Northampton winning 3.1. And this was very much just the beginning!
Playing in midfield for the Arsenal team on that fateful day in January 1958 was a former Northampton player – Dave Bowen. Bowen had initially been an understudy to the great Joe Mercer and would become the first Arsenal player to play in a World Cup when captaining Wales in the Finals in Sweden that summer, before returning to Northampton as player manager the following year. His great talent was spotting quality players who he persuaded to play for the club, despite very limited budgets. These included Bowen’s former teammate at Arsenal – striker Cliff Holton – and former Everton inside forward Alec Ashworth. Such signings would prove to be the foundation for the club’s greatest, sustained period of success.
In 1960-61, while local rivals and champions Peterborough United were scoring 134 goals in their 46 matches – a record for the English fourth tier – the newly installed floodlights were shining down on Northampton Town as they too were promoted, in third place. Two seasons later they themselves were champions – of the Third Division – by four points from Swindon Town. After just one season in Division Two – in which Don Revie’s young Leeds United team were champions – Northampton were promoted again, this time just a point behind Newcastle United, who had beaten them in that Charity Shield match way back in Edwardian times.
1965-66 would prove to be Northampton Town’s only season in the top tier. After early home draws with Arsenal and Manchester United the club had to wait until 23rd October – their fourteenth league match – for their first victory in the First Division: a 2.1 win against West Ham United. The division proved to be a step too far, too soon. In conceding 92 goals in their 42 matches, Northampton had to endure six goal concessions at Leeds, Manchester United, Stoke and Blackburn Rovers - who would finish bottom, 13 points adrift of The Cobblers. Indeed, Northampton might have avoided the drop altogether had they got something from their penultimate home game against fellow strugglers Fulham. A record crowd of 24,523 packed into the County Ground, but most would be disappointed as Fulham won 4.2 and stayed up by just two points from Northampton.
Northampton fell straight through the Second Division and, after a season in the Third Division at a time when the town was awarded New Town status, and began to expand rapidly, it was more of the same for the football club as they were relegated yet again in 1968-69. After being outsiders for promotion for much of the season, they were finally back in the Fourth Division.
It is hard to pin down precisely went wrong but extensive injuries to key players who had conjured up such an amazing run of success undoubtedly contributed to it, as well as the financial constraints of a football club not used to competing against the huge football clubs among the nation’s elite. Confidence was replaced by anxiety and an almost inevitable expectation of failure. As today, the margins between success and failure in football can often be fine, and a spiral of decline can be hard to arrest, let alone reverse.
Joe Mercer – by then the manager of Manchester City – did say, after Northampton’s relegation from Division One:
“The miracle of 1966 was not England winning the World Cup, but Northampton reaching Division One"
If it wasn’t a football miracle, perhaps it was a football parable with an underlying message of ‘be careful what you wish for.’ However, what football club would not have craved those heady days in the sun - to escape the lower leagues, as if on wings – sadly to be reminded of the fate of Icarus but inescapably remembered for it?
Much of the research for this article was done for our book – First Football Histories: The Arsenal FC story
