When it all kicked off

Meet the founder. These are the first photographs of Charles Samuel Craven ever to appear in The Northern Echo even though he is the man who created Darlington FC – the mighty Quakers – and the man who founded the Northern League – the second oldest league in the world which was known as the Craven League.

THE reason the great man was photo-less is that in 1890 he upped sticks and left Darlington. He moved to Leeds to start the development of Headingley as the great cricket ground, and then to Ghana, in Africa, to start the development of the country’s waterworks.

The photographs have emerged now because the Northern League is celebrating its 125th anniversary, and its officials, led by Mike Amos of this parish, have scoured the world to find them. They found the back of the net in Hong Kong, where Mr Craven’s grandson, Bob Rogers, now lives and Bob is flying in to take part in next weekend’s commemorative events.

His grandfather, Charles Craven, was born in Staveley, near Chesterfield, in 1863 – the year the Football Association was formed in London.

Aged 16 in 1879, he moved to Darlington to become an apprentice engineer – it is suggested he was related to the dominant Pease family. That was the year the Football Association of Durham and Northumberland was formed, and Charles was far more interested in the round ball game than he was in railways.

He attached himself to Haughton-le-Skerne, which may have been the first team in Darlington. In 1881, the North-East FA ran its first cup competition. Haughton beat Bishop Middleham 7-0 in the first round, Ferryhill 2-1 in the second, got a bye in the semifinal and lost 1-0 in the final against Newcastle Rangers.

“The fight was so well and fairly contested that failure brought no disgrace,” concluded the report in The Northern Echo.

Charles Samuel Craven revealed at last – the founder of the Northern League

Young Charles didn’t play in that match, but he may well have featured in goal in Haughton’s next cup match in late 1881, which was a 4-2 defeat to Darlington Grammar School.

The victorious school drew Tyne in the second round, but decided Tyneside was too far to travel and so withdrew.

In the cup’s third season, 1882-83, only one Darlington team entered: Hurworth.

They were drawn against Derwent Rovers – from Consett way? – but were expelled for failing to arrange the fixture in time.

Such was the growing popularity of football that in May 1883, the Durham and Northumberland FA broke into its constituent parts, and Durham prepared to start its own challenge cup.

BUT, as the previous two seasons had shown, there was “no club, urban or rural, sufficiently powerful to worthily represent Darlington” in the competition, so a crisis meeting was called for July 20, 1883, in Darlington Grammar School in the Leadyard (now beneath the new education offices).

The meeting was chaired by Philip Wood, headteacher, and was attended by more than 30 people, many of them representing small clubs – Charles was there as the honorary secretary of Haughton.

The meeting unanimously agreed to form a town club, and Charles, 20, of Garden Street, was elected as secretary.

As everyone who has ever been involved with a sporting club knows, it is the secretary that does all the hard work.

Charles Craven was the eldest of eight siblings. He is the tall one at the back, with his parents. Today’s front cover also shows him with his brothers and sisters, but without his parents. The pictures appear to have been taken after he moved to Darlington at 16

And so it was with Darlington FC, which played its first couple of matches in North Lodge Park before moving to Feethams. There was, though, compensation for Charles: he was able to stick himself in goal.

The new club most worthily represented the town: they reached the final of the first Durham Challenge Cup and played Sunderland. It was, said the Echo, a “most unpleasant match” due to the uncontrollable crowd which exerted huge influence on the referee. Darlo lost 4-3, and protested on the grounds of “intimidation”.

(Until 1891 when he entered the field of play, the referee adjudicated from the touchline and so would have been vulnerable to Sunderland’s underhand tactics.) The Durham FA ordered a replay. This time Colonel Sir Francis Arthur Marindin, president of the national FA and the most highly-regarded referee of his day, officiated.

And this time, despite Charles in goal, the Skernesiders lost 2-0.

However, the following season – 1884-85 – the tables were turned and Darlington beat Sunderland in the final.

This was probably the highlight of Charles’ playing career.

In October 1887, he was in goal when Darlo lost 4-1 to Auckland Church Institute in the Bishop’s Park, Bishop Auckland – there were large trees inside the field of play.

“The defeat is directly traceable to the terrible weakness displayed by the goal custodian,”

reported the Echo. Mr Craven’s performance was “one of the most sickening exhibitions in goal ever seen on a football field”.

The Northern Echo’s report of thev foundation of Darlington FC in 1883, with Charles Craven elected as the secretary and ordered to get the club off the ground

Said the Echo: “The display is difficult to conceive and from accounts to hand it is marvellous that people could look upon it and live.

“Charles Samuel Craven may know football. He may even, with the help of italics and bad jokes, write football notes, but with all his 20 years experience, he isn’t a good goalkeeper.”

In the next match, Arthur Wharton, the first black professional footballer, appeared between the sticks for Darlington.

PERHAPS it was the abuse from his local newspaper that caused Charles to draw his playing career to its conclusion and turn to administration. He invited 19 of the region’s top clubs to a meeting to be held on March 25, 1889 in Brown’s Hotel in Durham City (later the Three Tuns and now being converted into student accommodation) to discuss the possibility of forming a northern league.

Only seven showed up (Middlesbrough, Morpeth Harriers, Newcastle East End, Newcastle West End, Stockton, Sunderland, Sunderland Albion, plus Charles representing Darlington), but he was encouraged enough to pursue the idea.

He set the kick-off date for September 7 and ended up with ten teams: the two Newcastles plus Middlesbrough, South Bank, Auckland Town, Birtley, Elswick Rangers and Stockton along with Darlington and Darlington St Augustine’s.

There was unholy rivalry between Craven’s Darlington and St Augustine’s, a Catholic church team which played its matches at Chesnut Street (where Sherwood’s garage is today). With a wooden grandstand holding several thousand spectators, Chesnut Street was regarded as the best ground in the region.

However, Craven hadn’t originally invited the Saints to join his league because he considered them to be “too small fry”.

Just before the season began, the small fry became controversially bigger. They boosted their squad by recruiting several “Scottish professors”

The Three Tuns in Durham where the first Northern League meeting was held on March 25, 1889 – 125 years ago

– or professionals – who enabled them to win the inaugural title on goal difference from Newcastle West End.

Just before the end of that first Northern League season, Charles accepted the post of secretary to the Leeds Cricket and Rugby Club, and decided to leave Darlington after 17 years.

In April 1890, he was presented with an illuminated scroll, which praised his “long and able service”, and a “purse of gold”. Not only was his league firmly established, but the Darlington club he had helped form was on a sound footing: its takings at matches had risen from one shilling in 1883 to £120 in 1889.

CHARLES was also the FA council member for the North-East, and a qualified football league referee – a task described as “arduous”

– so it is clear that he had had a profound, and longlasting, impact on the region’s sporting community.

As well as his purse of gold, he left with his new bride, Mary, whom he’d met at the local choral society. They set up home in the pavilion at Headingley cricket ground, and he began working his magic on making it the home of Yorkshire cricket.

Perhaps because of Mary’s death in 1910, Charles made an unlikely career move: he joined the Colonial Office and went to Ghana – or the Gold Coast as it was then known – to engineer the water supply.

He retired to the Isle of Wight in 1916, married Ella Goody in 1917 and their daughter was born seven days after peace was declared in November 1918.

Charles wished to call her Armisticia in celebration, but her birth certificate showed that she was registered as Margaret.

Charles Craven’s weathered headstone in Felbridge churchyard, Surrey. He died in 1940

Her three children – Bob in Hong Kong, Liz in Berkshire and Anne in Somerset – have all been tracked down by the indefatigable searchers from the Northern League which now, after 125 years, finally has the full picture of its revered founder.