Wednesday 24 December 2014

Tunics for Goalposts - The Corinthians in the Great War


Firstly, two confessions.

1: The title of this blog is taken directly from the excellent BBC Five Live podcast that can be found here, about the role of footballers in the Great War. It goes beyond an investigation into whether there was a famous football match during the 1914 Christmas Truce and looks into the role professional footballers played during WW1. An excellent listen.
2. This blog post is mainly to do with my own football team, Corinthian Casuals and will therefore lack the complete objectivity that historians often strive for!

Corinthians FC were formed in 1882 by PA Jackson, then the General Secretary of the FA, primarily as a way of trying to improve the English national team and overcome the Scottish dominance of their rivalry in the preceding 7 years. For the next 7 years the Corinthians (a strictly amateur club upholding the best traditions of amateur sport) provided 52 of the 88 caps awarded to England players in games against Scotland and in 1894 the first of an astonishing list of records was set; the first (and still only) club to provide all 11 players for a full England international match. They would repeat that feat a year later against Wales.

By 1897 the role of the club was changing - they became football missionaries, taking the game outside of Europe for the first time to South Africa and then the Americas. But it was in 1910, when they accepted the invitation of Arthur Cox of the Fluminense club in Brazil to tour that country, that football history changed forever.


Corinthians FC touring team in Brazil, 1910

That tour included a 5-2 victory against Brazil's first ever national team and a 10-1 victory over their hosts Fluminense! News of their feats spread across the country and they were invited to Sao Paulo by ex-Corinthian and expatriate Charles Miller, the man who took the game to Brazil in the shape of a rule book and a passion for the game. Playing Miller's side Sao Paulo Athletic Club (SPAC) the Corinthians won 8-2, thrilling the locals and inspiring 5 railway workers in the crowd. They decided they wanted to form a club and took the name of the visiting superteam - SC Corinthins Paulista were born ... yes, that Corinthians, the former world club champions and one of the top teams of South America. The Corinthians of Socrates and the original Ronaldo.

All very interesting, you may say, but what's the link to Tunics for Goalposts? Well, after a successful 1913 tour, the club were invited back to Brazil in 1914. They boarded a boat and set sail in July 1914 but on 6th August they got word that war had been declared. Four of the players returned home immediately, being in the Reserve Officer Corps. The rest of the party docked in Rio before deciding to return back home to join the war effort. And here the story takes a tragic turn - the Corinthians would go on to lose more men during the fighting than any other club side in England, a total of 70. Five of the famous 11 that beat Brazil would lose their lives, including striker Cuthbert Brisley, considered the greatest forward in Europe at the outbreak of the war, and goalkeeper Thomas Rowlandson, who used to stand aside for penalty kicks in the unique Corinthian way, who died at the Somme. The FA presented the club with a unique memorial roll of honour, dedicated to their sacrifice and which has been restored to go on display the National Football Museum next year.


Corinthians FC disembark in Brazil, 1913

The Corinthians have continued to try and keep this missionary role alive and, after their merger with The Casuals in 1939, have also gone on to become the highest ranked club in the football pyramid that are purely amateur. The reason that this resonates so much now is that in January 2015 the current Corinthian Casuals squad are returning to Brazil to fulfill all the fixtures that the 1914 side were not able to. This will include a game against the current SC Corinthians Paulista in the new 47,000 seater stadium, purpose built for the last World Cup. It's a fitting tribute to the team of 1914 and reminds us, in an age when it is easy to sneer at sportsmen and women and question their role in society, that sport has wonderful traditions and a rich heritage that can cross boundaries and be a way for people to come together. That is the message that the Corinthian Casuals have always stood for - so keep an eye out in the media for the 2015 tour and whilst doing so, remember the team of 1914. In case you doubt the significance of this club, here are some historical facts to support the case.

  • Fielded the first black international footballer, Andrew Watson, who played for Scotland
  • The only football team to beat the Barbarians at rugby
  • Hold the record defeat of Manchester Utd, 11-3 in 1904
  • Inspired the all white kit of Real Madrid
  • Captain Charles Wreford-Brown invented the word 'Soccer' whilst at Oxford University 
  • Twice provided all 11 players for the England national team
I am grateful to Chris Watney for providing information for this post and I wish the current squad the best of luck with their upcoming tour - I know they will do Corinthians all around the world proud.

S Shergold

Thursday 4 December 2014

Counterfactual History - An essential tool for historians or a fool's errand?

Last month the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna hosted a conference for trainee diplomats. One of the key questions posed was, 'If Franz Ferdinand was not assassinated in 1914, would World War I have happened and would the Austro-Hungarian Empire survived?' This is not an uncommon question, especially in light of the anniversary events taking place this year, but it does lead to the question whether counterfactual history, or 'what if' history, is a serious academic exercise or a fun task that sheds little light on the past.

There are many classic 'what if' questions to pose - and they normally revolve around someone dying or surviving. What if Hitler had been killed in the trenches? What if Lee Harvey Oswald (or insert your favourite conspiracy theory suspect as appropriate here) missed JFK? What if Henry VIII's older brother Arthur had not died in adolescence and become King instead? The main argument against the usefulness of these question is perhaps that it puts too much emphasis on individuals shaping history. The 'Great Man' theory of history was at its height in the 19th Century and with so much development in the field since then towards much larger, structural causal explanations it perhaps doesn't deepen our understanding of the past, despite being a provoker of fierce debate.

What appears clear is that these questions can often be very good starting points. By taking a single event, and reversing the outcome, we can gain a much better understanding of that event in isolation and, from that, begin to assess its impact on what came next. The Archduke's murder is a gripping story of intrigue, incompetence, chance and sandwiches (look it up) but it does give us a doorway to into the wider European issues of the time, which ultimately provoked the Great War. If the chauffeur doesn't get lost on the Apple Quay in Sarajevo and drives straight to the hospital as planned, we can take the accepted trigger cause out of the picture and really assess whether the war would have happened when it did and involve who it did. In this sense, the question is valid as it allows us to look more closely at the underlying factors at play.

We should also ensure not to take the fun out of History - even those with no real passion for the subject will probably find themselves eager to let their imagination run riot as they rewrite history in their own name and then try to work out what the consequences of their alternative universe would be. This is valuable in and of itself. However, the main job of the historian is to interpret the past at it actually happened and whilst counterfactual history is enjoyable and can be illuminating, it cannot be used to gloss over the hard graft of working on what actually happened. So, continue to ask yourself 'what if' but don't ever forget the 'what happened'.

For those interested in counterfactual history, try the book, 'Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World 1940-41'. Written by Ian Kershaw, leading historian on Hitler's Third Reich, it looks at ten decisions made during the early stages of World War II and considers alternative histories. Well worth a read. Link to it on Amazon is here.

S Shergold