Today Sheffield football, at least in its top level echelon is in turmoil. Wednesday has been for some time one of the barely walking wounded of the English Football pyramid and both it and United, on writing, prop up the Championship South of the Border. Nor is it the first time that it has found itself in a similar position. One hundred and fifty years ago it was teetering on a similar cliff and once again one of its own making. 

Yet the Yorkshire city has the oldest acknowledged and surviving football club in the World, the oldest derby match that is still played and its contribution of sensible laws to our the modern game, albeit from without, is second-to-none. And It should also be recognised that without the morale support in the 1860s of Sheffield Rules football the London Rules game, the one that still forms the core of what we play today, might not have survived. In 1866 our game was within one vote of turning off life-support and it was the guardians of the Steel City variant, who seem to have been pivotal in the switch not being thrown, who then, with the Youdan Cup, provided the template for the FA Cup, having already introduced the inter-city game and agreeing to play both to its own code and London's.          

And, with coming of Association football to Scotland in 1872, it was already by 1874 that Sheffield accepted to play city-to-city and by 1876 that a Sheffield club did so club-to-club. The first inter-city encounter was in Yorkshire and a 2-2 draw with Glasgow, the initial inter-club ones when Clydesdale met Sheffield Wednesday, winning 2-0 and Alexandra Athletic beat Sheffield Albion 1-0, both in Glasgow. 

But that for Sheffield for the remainder of the decade was to be the limit of success. As each city took turnabout to host, Glasgow won every meeting, thirteen goals scored to three, the 1875 win probably the trigger for Peter Andrews to be "invited" to move South and the one in 1876 prompting a similar one for James "Reddie" Lang. And this was as in 1877 and 1879 Third Lanark first drew with and then beat Andrew's Sheffield Heeley, whilst in 1878 Alexandra Athletic was victorious over Albion once more and away and at home once more Laing's Wednesday lost to Rangers. In all it was ten goals to three.       

Moreover, as the 1870s became the 1880s, in fact until 1888 Sheffield would win just one Glasgow game in nine, in 1884 at home. Its only real successes would be in the four seasons from 1880, when it faced Edinburgh for the first time, lost but then won two of the remaining three encounters so 50%. And at club it would be very similar as far as it went. In 1880-1 and 1881-2 six matches took place. The Scots teams won the first five and lost the last but with an overall goal comparison over the piece of twenty-six to two.       

And then Sheffield club simply stopped engaging for the foreseeable with one exception in 1886 and even then with a proviso. A team from the city did travel north for two game, a 3-1 defeat by St. Johnstone and a 16-1 gubbing by Dumbarton but it was Sheffield Caledonian, of which there is no other mention but must be assumed to be the city's own Scots club. Sheffield's Caledonian Society has existed since 1822. It seems unlikely that in the 1880s a football club would not have emerged from its membership.

But all was not quite lost. In 1882 a first ever Sheffield club had reached the FA Cup semi-final. It was The Wednesday. Then In 1890 the same club went one stage further but only to lose very heavily in the final to Blackburn Rovers. And four seasons later the pattern was repeated. In 1894 Wednesday was to reach the semi-final, this time to be defeated by Bolton Wanderers, and in 1896 the final hurdle, but with success. Wolves were beaten 2-1 but again victory was caveated. The losing team six years earlier had been all English, although hardly Sheffield at all. This time in victory it was with five of the eleven Scots.

And the Wednesday success was soon to be replicated, this time by the city's new and rising team. Sheffield United had only been formed in 1889 with Charles Clegg as its initial president. It entered the FA Cup for the first time the following year only to be beaten in the Second Round 13-0 and by Bolton. And the pattern of early exit would continue to 1897-8 but in 1898-9 it would all change. Wednesday would lose in the First Round. United would trounce Derby in the final and do so with a team that was ten elevenths English, the exception being Irish-born left-back Peter Boyle. But even then there was a twist. Boyle had moved across the water with his family as a child and was raised and had learned the game in Scotland. He had been recruited from Sunderland but via Albion Rovers.