Bradford city used to be a rugby league club..

Yes Manningham. I’m sure that’s also how C&A originated. I’m sure it’s in one of my books.

 

Just think,a year earlier Manningham RFC was playing here when this was taken.



Bradford city must be one of the very few clubs that had the very first home game recorded from this period.

 

I thought this was common knowledge to all City fans?

 

Maybe we should try and convince Bradford Met that we still are?

They might then be as supportive as they are with the Odsal egg chasers.

 

Not something I'd heard tbh! Interesting one.

 

A cunning plan Baldrick

 

Unfortunately, the council can't even afford a bloody turnip!

 

Not quite. Football pre exists the game of Rugby by many many years, with the first known team being Sheffield FC from 1857. It actually dates back to the mass village games of hundreds of years ago, and the game of Rugby, ie being able to run with the ball in hand, is said to have started during a game of football when someone at Rugby Public School picked up the ball and ran with it during an association football match (legend says it was Tom Brown of "Tom Brown's Schooldays" fame, but I think that is just legend.

The first Rugby team are thought to be Blackheath and the first rules of Rugby date from 1845, some 50 years before the split.

The split you are talking about is the split in the Rugby codes, which was all "Union" before the Rugby Football League was formed (at the George Hotel in Huddersfield) in 1895 when the Northern Union broke away to form a professional game and "League" as we know it was born.

Football, as in the game we know and love, has absolutely nothing to do with that.

 

There is a very good book about the conversion of both City and Park Avenue from Rugby to Football called "A Game That Would Pay". Quite a hefty read but for anyone interested it's worth getting hold of a copy.

 

Manningham Rugby you mean Rod? If so yes I believe you are right. My grandad long since gone was a Bradford Pal in WW1 and often mentioned the barracks, probably because he spent a bit of his youth in the Belle Vue? Bit like me…What comes around goes around….lol!

 

Your grandad was a hero. The Bradford Pals story is truly heartbreaking. The breadth and scope of the tragedy, the uniqueness of the situation, it completely astounds me that one group, one city should have to have gone through that experience. I've often thought that it marks the fall of Bradford in very real terms as well as symbolically.

 

I still have his war records and discharge papers somewhere. Oddly he never ever talked about the war itself.