There was a strong connection between Brincliffe School and the High School but not, as you might expect, between the boys and the girls. Instead, the connection was a sporting one, and consisted of a number of football matches, all of them played between 1877-1880, when the physical building on Balmoral Road accommodated “Porter & Jones, boys’ school (Tudor House)”.
The High School had played their first match against another school seven years previously. News of the game appeared in the new school magazine, “The Forester”, which introduced a section entitled “Our Chronicle”, which was designed to allow reports about “the sports… of the School.”
Thus, on November 19th 1870, having travelled to Mansfield, the Nottingham High School First XI played a Mansfield Grammar School XV at football, beating them 3-0. Around 110 years later I took the First XI to Mansfield, not in a steam train, but by minibus, and we played them on a darkish Wednesday afternoon. We lost, although by then they had changed their name to Brunt’s School, now changed again to Brunt’s Academy. The Orange Arrow shows the High School, Mansfield is in the middle of the top edge of the map, and then see if you can find Eastwood, the birthplace of DH Lawrence, ex-pupil at the High School (1898-1901).
History always likes to puzzle us with the fogs of confusion that it loves to create, though. Just as we were digesting the fact that the High School played its first ever football match on November 19th 1870, when the First XI beat a Mansfield Grammar School XV by 3-0, I found that there is a some evidence that organised football was played by the High School even before this.
In just one edition of “The Forester”, there is an allusion to a football game between the High School and a Tudor House School XV on February 27th 1878. Charles Edwin Attenborough, the son of a hosier from Bilbie Street, was unlucky enough to break his leg and dislocate his ankle. It was reported at the time that, with the exception of one broken collar bone in, probably, the 1872-1873 season, this was the the first injury of any consequence “since the new school opened in 1868”.
This intriguing phrase might conceivably be taken to imply that football matches had taken place in that short interim period of just over two years between April 1868 and December 1870, when “The Forester’s” first reports appeared. This is so long after the event, though, that we may never know the exact truth.
Seven years after their first ever game against any other other school, the First XI played Mr Porter and Mr Jones’ “Tudor House” on October 31st 1877, probably on a pitch on the nearby Forest Recreation Ground. The First XI won 15-0 and “The Forester” recorded that Tudor House did not once get the ball into the High School half, at any point in the game…..
“Goals were obtained as fast as the ball was kicked off.”
Fifteen had been scored “when time was called”.
Four months later, on February 27th 1878, again probably on a pitch on the nearby Forest Recreation Ground, the First XI beat a Tudor House XV by 3-2 (as already mentioned above). During this game, thirteen year old Charles Edwin Attenborough was unlucky enough to break his leg and dislocate his ankle. Despite our modern perceptions of the roughness of Victorian football, “The Forester” reported that, with the exception of one broken collar bone four seasons previously, this was the first injury of any consequence “since the new school opened” in April 1868.
And here it is, a photograph thought to have been taken on April 16th 1868, the school’s first day. The first lesson to be learnt was that more toilets would be needed if queuing was to be avoided:
A week or so after the glorious triumph over 15 boys in the Tudor House XV, on March 6th 1878, on the Forest, the First XI again played a Tudor House XV. and beat this slightly more numerous team by 2-0. These two games were the last two fixtures of the season 1877-1878.
During the following season, Tudor House scored their first ever victory over the High School. On a day misprinted in “The Forester” as October 60th 1878, on the Forest, the reporter said that “This was a very even game, but the fact that Bramwell and four other first team members were absent probably tipped the balance in favour of Tudor House.” They won by 1-0. We don’t know what colours the High School played in. In both these photographs, the colours are black and white. They come from 1897 and 1910, approximately:
A year later, on March 12th 1879, at an unknown venue, but probably the Forest , the First XI played out a skilfully planned 0-0 draw with Tudor House. This fixture took place in an extremely high wind, which encouraged the Tudor House players merely to kick the ball out of play as far as possible at every opportunity. “The Forester” lamented….
“….Unfortunately there is no rule which provides for occurrences of this kind, but we should have thought there would have been a better spirit prevailing to prevent such unsatisfactory proceedings.”
When I was in charge of the First XI, around 2000, I employed this tactic and it was extremely effective. Even better is to kick the ball into the road, the busier the road the better. Boys are not allowed to pursue a ball in such circumstances and it has to be the teacher/referee who has to go and fetch it. Invariably, he always takes ages.
Seven months later, on October 15th 1879, and back on the Forest, the two teams met again, and this time the wind had dropped and the game finished 6-1 to the High School. Only five of the regular First Team were in what “The Forester” called the “motley crew” who won this game. Now, Mötley Crüe are an American heavy metal band formed in Los Angeles in 1981. Please don’t confuse them with the Victorian footballers. It’s easily done:
Being sensible, and playing Tudor House with a weakened team which lacked many of the regular First XI players didn’t last long, though. The very last fixture ever against Tudor House came on February 11th 1880. Again at an unknown venue, the High School triumphed. The score was recorded as
Nottingham High School “at least 12” Tudor House 0
“The Forester” wrote that
“the difficulty in this game was “not to get goals”, so weak were the opposition. Goal followed goal in quick succession, so that it was rather hard to keep a correct account. It was certainly not less than 12 goals, and may have been more.”
I once coached the Second Team in such a match. It finished 13-0 (referee). 14-0 (me) or 15-0 (several of the players). We lost, of course.
We once lost to another school team who had a nine-year old girl in goal. Their member of staff asked me if it was OK for her to play and I agreed, not knowing that she was Spider Woman in her spare time. We lost 3-2.
STOP PRESS
Elsewhere I have spoken about how, in the attic, I stumbled upon the box containing all of my slides from the 1970s and early 1980s.
The photograph below I took around 1976. It was taken from the corridor which ran down towards the then E13, and you can see the roof of the Old Gymnasium and the Assembly Hall, sometimes called the Player Hall. Directly behind that are the two buildings of Brincliffe. To help you identify them, they both have gables picked out in bright white……..
John Knifton 
Photograph of April 16 1868.What a magnificent building,how was this funded?Privately?
I think it was by selling the old school, but most of all by putting together lots of legacies and gifts by a long list of various wealthy people.
Don’t forget too, that the pupils all paid around £8 a year to attend, which doesn’t sound much, but was a good deal more than the average annual wage. Presumably, they could have borrowed the money for the school, and some of the fees could have been used to pay it back.
The rugby scores are fun
Yes, I suppose that many of those high scores must sound like rugby scores today, but they were all football matches of the time.
The highest High School football score I ever heard of was 23-0 which was achieved twice, both times against Leicester Wyggeston School, in 1900 and 1904, both times as home games in Mapperley.
Sports for a school are great for moral as well as fitness. To this day when I hear the Massapequa, I recall Thanksgiving Day (American) football games played against our rivals.
Absolutely! Inter-school sport teaches the participants to respect their opponent and encourages them to play fairly and not to cheat.
For a rich school like the High School, it also gives them a chance to appreciate how the other half live, and to realise that they may not all be white and wealthy.
You wouldn’t get away with time wasting like that these days. As I understand it and according to the rule book there is no actual maximum stoppage time in a soccer match. In England the record for the longest stoppage time was made during a Carabao Cup match between Burton Albion and Bournemouth in 2019 when a total of 28 minutes were added.
Funnily enough, on TV recently, they were saying that most adult football games were only around 50 minutes with the ball actually in play. I find that a little hard to believe but apparently the referees in the Women’s World Cup have been told to incorporate plenty of stoppage time.
When our school got its first VHS cine-camera, I was the teacher in charge of it, so I got the job of filming the First XV rugby games for coaching purposes. We had two batteries, both of 28 minutes, and, because a rugby game lasts 80 minutes, I always used to stop filming when the ball was dead.
I was amazed to find that on that basis the second battery ws never required. This was a regular occurrence!
Interesting statistics.
What an interesting post John. Huge scores like that are unheard of today. I had a similar experience playing for my primary school team when we simply walked the ball into the back of the net so weak and demoralised were the opposition. The poor goalie who, I felt very sorry for, simply burst into tears each time we got anywhere near him. I all but begged the ref to put an end to it. Not my happiest memory of school football I’m afraid to say.
The only positive is that such defeats make a teams’ eventual victory all the sweeter. Our Second XI hadn’t won a game in two and a half seasons, and I got the job to take over, with the brief that my only task was to win a game.
Sure enough, we won our third game 6-3, and to hear the lads talk in the dressing room afterwards, you’d have thought we’d beaten Manchester City 9-0 !
Ahh. That first win is always the sweetest!
So glad I didn’t have to join that queue. Never underestimate nine-year-old “Spider Women” goal keepers 🙂
I would never dare underestimate any woman, from nine to ninety!
We had the men’s world cup last season, and now it’s the women’s competition. It makes a footballing comparison between the two sexes an easy thing to do, and I must say that so far, the women are more polite to the referees, have a better attitude towards their opponents, do not time-waste, and do not commit as many fouls. Overall, it’s a huge advertisement for the women’s game.
🙂