Il 21 gennaio 1875, 150 anni fa come oggi, un Club sportivo di Preston chiamato Preston North End, che sarebbe poi diventato il 10 maggio 1880 il Preston North End Football Club, acquisto’ un campo nella zona della città chiamata Deepdale.
"You’d be forgiven for wondering why it is that Deepdale’s been standing since 1875, when Preston North End Football Club only formed in 1880. But what you might not know is PNE weren’t always a football team.
There’s debate over whether the club as we know it today was initially a cricket club named ‘Nelson’, however ‘North End’ appeared to be an active team at that time as well. So, who knows? But what we do know is that cricket was the sport of choice.
The club was unfortunately regularly challenged with the possibility of disbandment as money ran short. Things would change, though, after 3rd August 1967, when a young man by the name of William Sudell – a direct descendant of a Guild Mayor – joined the club. He was a supremely talented all-rounded sportsman, having been known as a great swimmer and rugby forward too. He wasn’t to know it at the time, but Sudell was to prove a hugely influential figure in the forming of a famous football club.
The historic landmark which we’re marking today is 21st January 1875, when the club’s members first took out a lease on a plot of land on Deepdale Farm. It was a big commitment at the time and money still had to be made, and their attempts to do so came through demonstration games in sports such as lacrosse and rounders.
It became apparent that the cricket season was too short so the club opted to try their hand at rugby football, however that was a difficult sport to break into at the time as the Grasshoppers had already been established, so ‘soccer’ was next on the cards.
The first exhibition match under association rules took place on 5th October 1878 against Eagley, with the visitors leaving with a 1-0 victory. Football was a sport growing and the success of other clubs in England had caught the attention of those at Deepdale and in May 1880, a meeting of the members of the North End Cricket and Football Club was held at Deepdale Hotel. It was decided that the club would join the Lancashire Association Football Union and play football under their rules.
There was plenty of competition in the surrounding areas, but PNE took a huge step forward in the summer of 1883 when Sudell went north to Scotland to bring Nick Ross to the club from Heart of Midlothian, and he was soon followed by a group of Scots who would go on to form a team about to make history.
North End were beginning to attract bigger crowds, with 9,000 inside Deepdale to watch PNE beat Walsall Swifts in December 1883, and not long after there were 13,000 there to see a cup tie against Upton Park. That was a clash which caused controversy, as the visitors questioned the eligibility of some PNE players due to a suggestion that they were being paid, against the rules of that day. The club were as a result expelled from the competition and after that, Sudell made the historical move to have professional legalised.
Sudell’s team just kept getting better and better from that moment on, and between 22nd August 1885 and 26th April 1886, PNE went undefeated in 64 matches, with an incredible 59 of those matches being victory.
42 consecutive matches were then won during the 1887/88 campaign and it was therefore a surprise when West Bromwich Albion came out winners in the FA Cup final in March 1888. If you know the history of PNE, though, you’ll know that there was no hangover from the defeat.
The Football League was founded in 1888 and Deepdale hosted its first official league fixture in the September of that year. They dished up a 5-2 thrashing of Burnley, to begin a season which is still yet to be matched by another side in English football. By the time the campaign ended, PNE had been crowned both league and FA Cup champions, all without experiencing defeat."
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