The city of Sheffield has and is mounting an extremely competent campaign for UNESCO heritage status as The Home of Football. And home of a football it is, but not the Association game. Whilst Steel City was instrumental in, even pivotal to the genesis of the game we play and should have been at the forefront of its on-field advancement, it never happened, its erstwhile place taken, and with considerable aplomb, not by Southern England, as historically claimed but by Scotland and then the Scottish Game, now essentially the World Game.

So the question is why did it, or rather why didn't it happen, the answer, one carefully avoided, even somewhat obscured by the Sheffielders themselves, that when it mattered, having had a unified face, they descended to arguing amongst themselves for the best part of a decade and half and with an explanation as follows.     

In 1876 the Sheffield Football Association announced "following the example of London (note London not English) and Scottish Associations" the inauguration of its Challenge Cup. The Birmingham Association did much the same thing at the same time. Its competition, the Birmingham Senior Cup, still played for annually to this day, would have in that first season all sixteen of its members taking part. In Sheffield there would be twenty-five of twenty-six, Endcliffe seemingly the exception. The games would be to local rules and in each case not the eleven per side of London and Scotland but twelve and on the same day, 10th March 1877 The Wednesday would win Sheffield's first version, the final refereed by its association President, John Charles Shaw, and serendipitously Wednesbury Old Athletic Brum's.  

All seemed well but in Yorkshire it would not stay so for long. In-fighting would erupt. By the following season there were two associations and three cups, the existing Sheffield FA Challenge Cup (ShFACC) now joined by the rival Sheffield New Football Association Challenge Cup (ShNFACC) competed for fifteen other clubs and a Non-Association Cup competed for by six more, so forty-seven teams in all. Moreover, whilst the last of the three seems to have existed for just the year, the half-dozen clubs involved joining the New Association taking it to twenty-one members, the ShNFACC continued to played for until 1882 and the ShFACC until that same year when it morphed into the Hallamshire Challenge Cup to 1887 and then from 1888 to 1900 to The Sheffield and Hallamshire Senior Cup.        

And behind all these iterations and changes is a tale essentially of almost collapse and, if not then full, at least significant recovery. And it starts in 1872. That year the England team in the first ever international included as a forward just one Sheffield man, John Charles Clegg, aka simply Charles Clegg, soon to be a qualified solicitor, like two of the three football pioneers in the city. However, it was to be his only cap and not a happy experience. As he would be later quoted, having hardly had a pass or therefore a kick,

 "Some members of the England eleven were awful snobs and not much troubled about a 'man fra' Sheffield."

Yet the following year in the same fixture, more or less filling his shoes but in retrospect perhaps an exercise in (further) window-dressing, would be his younger brother, William, also a future solicitor, winning the first of his two caps. The second would be in 1879 against Wales and a year before at the age of twenty-seven he retired through injury. Charles had retired at much the same age in 1878. But both would remain in the game. Charles would initially become a noted referee, William President of Sheffield Wednesday and a Vice-President of the Sheffield Football Association, where all was clearly not well. The three Cups of 1877-8 and the continuing duo of Cups and two associations demonstrated that. And there might have been personality-clashes and even political rivalries. After a first few years from foundation in 1867 of apparent calmness at the Sheffield Football Association under pioneer William Chambers, Shaw of Hallam F.C. had taken on the Presidency in 1869, Chambers reverting to solely Secretary of Sheffield F.C. Then as we understand it in probably 1873 Shaw was joined by William Pierce Dix as Secretary and then in 1876 Secretary/Treasurer. Dix was an accountant. Both were politically Conservative with a big C. and appear to have been social-climbers. Shaw was a man, who had inserted a Charles into his name when originally it was not there. Dix later personally hyphenated his surnames. And given those possible stand-points and attitudes it can be seen how the pair might well have thought they could get on well with the London FA hierarchy from 1877 of Marindin, Alcock and Kinnaird but might have appealed considerably less to those from across the whole social spectrum playing the game at their hometown clubs.

The result was breakdown and it is unlikely to have been coincidence that first in 1878 the non-association clubs joined the Sheffield New Football Association and not their Sheffield Football Association and the two rivals Cups, if not yet the associations, merged in 1882 but only as Shaw stepped down, eventually to leave the city for Birmingham for good. And at this point it appears Dix may have held the fort for another year before he too by 1885 was replaced, in time left the city also for Birmingham but did in the end return. After-all he had in 1878 married the Cleggs' sister. And his direct replacement was the politically Liberal Charles Clegg.

It may have been that it was just expediency with Shaw and Dix seen personally as the problem. It may even have been something of a political coup. But whatever the truth with Clegg in place by 1887 resolution was to be achieved. The two associations were re-merged as the Sheffield and Hallamshire FA, the cup from 1888 to 1900 was renamed The Sheffield and Hallamshire Senior Cup and tranquillity was restored such that Sheffield United was founded in 1889 with Charles Clegg as its first President. Furthermore, The Wednesday, after the waste of the best part of two decades when Sheffield had more or less disappeared from the British footballing map, reached the 1890 FA Cup Final, although the game was lost, returned to win the 1896 Final with United doing the same in 1899, tasting defeat in 1900 but achieving victory once more in 1902. And, as for the Cleggs William would go on to be Lord Mayor, be knighted in 1903 and be called the "uncrowned king of Sheffield" and Charles would follow with a knighthood in 1927, having been Chairman of the Football Association, the London Football Association, from 1890 and its President from the death of Arthur Kinnaird in 1923.