But there is a problem, albeit for them not us. Sheffield, club and city, played to it own rules. It was not Association football. The Sheffield Football Association did not merge into the London equivalent until 1877, admittedly with rules added from the former that were so superior that they persist to this day. But it was done from a position of weakness. For all the start it had had in development, when the two codes first crossed in 1873-4 in the FA Cup Sheffield F.C. did not get beyond the Third Round, effectively the Quarter Finals, was walked-over in the First Round the following season and was defeated in the next, 1875-6, again in Round Three, but this time after two walk-overs in its favour. And this was whilst, when their vanquishers and eventual Cup-winners, The Wanderers, later faced, in the November of the year, their Scottish equivalent, Queen's Park, the result was for the English team a 0-6 defeat at home. Nor was it a lone example of increasing Scots Association superiority not just over English teams but Sheffield ones specifically. A month earlier again Queen's Park had defeated Notts County and in December would do the same to Cambridge University, with the previous April Clydesdale having already rolled over Sheffield Wednesday and Alexandra Athletic Sheffield Albion. It is clear the potential was for Sheffield, with twenty years in the game, to learn from Scotland with five and not the contrary. The questions are, on both sides, why.