THE game was still in its infancy around the turn of the century but football fever was already growing in the country, although it didn't have much impact in Malvern, as this extract from the Malvern Gazette of August 31, 1900, demonstrates.

"Football mania never seems to develop here to the same extent as it does in the North and Midlands, where from September to May it forms a never-ending source of conversation.

"It has a language and a literature of its own, which, although possibly more intelligible than that of golf, is almost equally wearying to the non-enthusiast.

"Not to know the names and playing position of the members of the leading local clubs is to confess your own ignorance and unimportance, and even the smallest of boys fluently discuss the rival merits and demerits of crack players and League teams with a confidence which comes of long and careful study.

"The mere smattering of football knowledge and football law which the average Malvernian contents himself with picking up from the evening papers would only arouse a smile of amused contempt from the denizen of the Potteries, Hallamshire or the cotton districts, while more people pay to see a famous match at Stoke, Derby or Nottingham than would go free to all the matches in the Malverns in a couple of seasons."

The newspaper went on to bemoan the fact that Malvern couldn't raise a decent Saturday side, and indeed the Worcester and District League had been abandoned at the end of the previous season.

The strongest side in Malvern was the Early Closing Club, but at the time football very much played second fiddle to hockey as the number one winter sport.