One event that anyone interested in football always remembers is their first football match. I was a late-starter, being 13 before I went along to watch the famous Spurs double team of 1961 play Sheffield United.
The match passed by in a blur but my abiding memory was being jostled in a huge crowd – mainly flat-capped men all smoking their Woodbines or Park Drives. There were the old wooden rattles and the odd handbell – all creating an atmosphere that got me hooked for life. Once I arrived in Liverpool, I did the unforgiveable and switched allegiance (not a bad thing since the last major honour won by a Sheffield club was back in 1935 I believe).
What I like about the photograph is that it captures the spirit of a typical Saturday afternoon match day. I can never understand why so few photographers film that aspect of the sport rather than what is happening on the pitch. Football is such an important part of our culture and needs a better photographic record. I have started taking match day scenes (in the expectation of a last season at Anfield – so a few more seasons to go) and have noticed one or two others are thinking along the same lines.
With the start of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver this weekend, it is worth remembering Liverpool’s pivotal role in the Olympic movement. The two main protagonists were Charles Melly (an ancestor of George Melly), a wealthy philanthropist, and John Hulley. Charles Melly attended Rugby school at the same time as Thomas Hughes, author of Tom Brown’s Schooldays. Like Hughes, Hulley was a firm believer in sporting competition and in the idea of Muscular Christianity. John Hulley was born in Liverpool in 1832, attending Liverpool Collegiate and later training under Louis Huguenin, a famous French gymnast living in Liverpool.
Melly and Hulley joined forces to form Liverpool Athletic Club in 1861 and, in 1862, held the first Grand Olympic Festival on the Parade Ground at Mount Vernon. Over 10000 turned up to watch a programme including running, walking, high jump, boxing, wrestling, fencing and gymnastics – a list of events that were very similar to those at the first Modern Olympics held in Athens in 1896.
Further Olympic Festivals were held, with increasing popularity and Melly and Hulley raised the funds to open Liverpool Gymnasium on Myrtle Street (photographed above c.1870). Following its opening on November 6th 1865, the first meeting of the National Olympics Association was held there, with Hulley on the committee. The NOA defined Olympism long before the foundation of the International Olympic Committee – and its ideas were to have a profound influence on a young Pierre de Coubertin.
Hulley was buried at Smithdown Road cemetery. As a result of the work of a group of enthusiasts (including Ray Physick – author of Played in Liverpool), Hulley’s damaged gravestone bearing the motto mens sana in corpore sano (a healthy mind in a healthy body) was repaired and rededicated in June 2009. Thanks to their efforts, the huge, global impact of both Hulley and Melly can be more fully recognised.
For a more detailed account of both Melly and Hully, there are a number of helpful sites including:
www.johnhulley-olympics.co.uk or www.johnhulleymemorialfund.co.uk
