ABSTRACT
The first match played by the famous Wanderers football team took place in September 1864. Their opponents were a team of army officers from Aldershot. The game lasted two and a half hours and the Wanderers won by a single goal to nil. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the officers’ team of the Royal Engineers at Chatham was one of the pioneers in the development of the passing game in Association Football. They paraded their skills during a Christmas visit to Nottingham and Sheffield in 1873 and won the FA (Football Association) Cup in 1875. Sport was one of the few ways in which soldiers and sailors might mix more or less freely with their civilian neighbours. Commanding Officers (COs) increasingly encouraged it. The COs of the Guards Depot at Caterham, Surrey organised an athletics meeting, not only for the benefit of the troops in the camp but also for the ‘edification’ of the residents in the neighbourhood. It was held on Easter Monday and by 1890 was attracting 5,000 spectators with some of the events open to civilians.
