In History revisionism has a bad name, as if the crusty Victorians were right and anyone with new ideas were wrong. However, luckily football history never really started until the 1920s so we do not have to put up with the same stigma as the new wave of 19th Century social historians did.
I was recently reading a thirty year odd old book about East Stirlingshire, which claimed that the first mention of the club in the press was of a friendly against Dunipace on the 19th of November 1881 [and I will gloss over the fact that the author had missed a report of Armadale v East Stirlingshire in the midweek Falkirk Herald dated 3rd November], but this entire mistruth comes from the fact that the author had clearly only used the Falkirk Herald as a source.
Every football match takes two teams, and so it was that there was an earlier report of an East Stirlingshire match which exists not reported in the Falkirk Herald. Nearly a month before any mention of East Stirlingshire in the Falkirk Herald the West Lothian Courier of the 15th October 1881 carried this:
I am not saying this is the earliest mention of ESFC in the press, I am simply saying that this is the earliest I have found, and I welcome anybody who revises it to an even earlier date.
I was recently reading a thirty year odd old book about East Stirlingshire, which claimed that the first mention of the club in the press was of a friendly against Dunipace on the 19th of November 1881 [and I will gloss over the fact that the author had missed a report of Armadale v East Stirlingshire in the midweek Falkirk Herald dated 3rd November], but this entire mistruth comes from the fact that the author had clearly only used the Falkirk Herald as a source.
Every football match takes two teams, and so it was that there was an earlier report of an East Stirlingshire match which exists not reported in the Falkirk Herald. Nearly a month before any mention of East Stirlingshire in the Falkirk Herald the West Lothian Courier of the 15th October 1881 carried this:
Armadale v East Stirlingshire
Played at Falkirk, and after a very pleasant and well contested game, resulted in favour of Armadale by two goals to nothing.
I am not saying this is the earliest mention of ESFC in the press, I am simply saying that this is the earliest I have found, and I welcome anybody who revises it to an even earlier date.