When City Fell Foul of Edwardian Financial Fair Play (Pt 5)
Five: Front Page News
In April 1903 Football League founder, William McGregor, offered his assessment of City’s prospects following their promotion back to the top flight.
In the past the management of City has been greatly at fault, but now the club is excellently officered, and with a capable man of business like Mr Edward Hulton, jnr, as chairman, and an experienced football specialist like Mr Tom Maley as secretary, the club has gone ahead and is bound to go ahead. My prediction is that the time is not far distant when Manchester will rank as the most opulent club in the League.
This wasn’t the first time the club had been run by a man with a vision and funds to back it (see this story). But it was the first time City had a vast family fortune behind them.
The publishing empire Hulton now ran had been founded by his father, Ned Hulton. He had worked as a compositor for The Manchester Guardian before founding Britain’s first daily sports paper, the Sporting Chronicle, in 1871.
Its main focus was horse race betting (Ned Hulton himself provided tips under the pseudonym ‘Kettledrum’). And thanks to the decision of several local newspapers (including The Manchester Guardian) to restrict racing coverage in order to appease anti-gambling organisations, business boomed.
In 1873 he moved his offices to Withy Grove, and two years later launched Athletic News, which covered other sports. In 1885 he launched the Sunday Chronicle, which became the first successful provincial Sunday newspaper in England.
By the time he handed control to his son, steam presses and “hot metal” Linotype were revolutionising the industry. Print runs of up to a million copies a day (roughly 20 times the limit of the old technology) were now possible, allowing publishers to slash cover prices.
In 1897 the 28-year-old Edward Hulton launched the half-penny Manchester Evening Chronicle. Two years later it claimed to be the best-selling evening paper in the UK. In 1900 he launched the Daily Dispatch. Offering a mix of news, gossip and sport, and also priced at half a penny, it was soon selling around 500,000 copies a day.
The era of mass-circulation newspapers was underway—and it was City now making the headlines. In March 1904 second-placed City played League leaders Sheffield Wednesday in the FA Cup semi-final at Goodison. A crowd of nearly 50,000 watched City brush them aside in a 3-0 win. According to Empire News,
‘From start to finish there was only one team in it, and that one City.’
The Daily Mirror, forgetting that there was now another club in Manchester using the city’s name, added:
‘Manchester can truthfully claim that they have set up a page of football history which will not be easily obliterated.’
On the day of the Cup final the Mirror created its own piece of football history, when City (along with opponents Bolton) became the first football team to be pictured on the front page of a national newspaper.
On the Monday after their 1-0 Cup final win, City’s exploits earned them another front page appearance.
City played their last League game of the season that day, away to Everton. Before the game they were only a point behind leaders Sheffield Wednedsay, who would play their final match the following Saturday. Although an exhausted City lost 1-0, the foundations for future successes were now almost complete.
Thanks to the coverage in these new daily papers, football attendances were soaring. The previous season a record 49,000 crowd had watched the Manchester derby at Bank Street, despite both clubs being in the Second Divison. For the return fixture at Hyde Road the gates had to be closed 45 minutes before kick-off.
United had spent heavily to improve their ground that season. But City’s cramped enclosure left little room to expand its 30,000 capacity. According to Hulton’s Athletic News, ‘City had the players but not the ground and United had the ground and not the players.’
In November 1903 Hulton had guaranteed to provide the funds for a new ground at Belle Vue, promising it would be the best stadium in the land. In return he wanted control of the club. The move was blocked by shareholders with ties to the brewing industry, who feared a loss of income for their Ardwick public houses.
But at a meeting of shareholders on 2 June it was announced that ‘progress was being made on plans for a new ground’, the need for which was now ‘unanimously agreed’ by the joint committee of directors and shareholders. A training ground had also been acquired at Mabfield Fields (now know as Platt Fields), complete with two full-size pitches and a pavilion—another football first.
John Allison’s Hyde Road clinic had already given City a unique advantage in matters of fitness and sports injury, while Hulton’s newspapers provided the club with the largest information-gathering network in sport. With the addition of the best training facilities, and the prospect of the best stadium, Maley’s young side looked set to dominate the game for years to come.
But this is City, remember.
At the Annual General Meeting on 17 June it was announced that Hulton had stepped down as chairman. His reasons were unclear, but were most likely linked to the death of his father, aged 66, in March.
Four days before the AGM, Hulton had been granted sole control of his family’s publishing empire in his father’s will. He also received a sizeable share of his £558,436 estate (roughly £429million in today’s money).
Now without its powerful protector, the FA finally had an opportunity to throw the book at City.
In April the club had signed 20-year-old Irvine Thornley from Second Division Glossop. They had paid a reported club record fee of £800 for the prolific goalscorer, dubbed the ‘terror of goalkeepers’. Glossop’s 25-year-old defender Frank Norgrove had also joined City that month, though there were conflicting reports on the size of the fee.
That June, the FA announced it had appointed a commission to investigate the deals. And as City’s directors would soon discover, football’s governing body was prepared to use illegal methods to enforce their rules on fair play.
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