Football is suspended now with nothing but replays on the box, but this week Netflix has published their latest six-part series called an English Game which kicks off with the quarter-finals of the 1879 FA Cup.
This is the beautiful game as it was in 1879, a sport dominated by the posh upper-class Old Etonians playing the working class from the mill workers.
The English Game (Netflix) is produced by Julian Fellowes who made Downton Abbey. He is the first to admit that he is no expert on football. His son once took him to watch Manchester United play “either East Ham or West Ham” he says couldn’t remember which.
When the drama begins, football appears to have more in common with rugby. Then along comes Fergus Suter, a Scot paid by a mill owner in Darwen, Lancashire, to join his team and “knock these posh bastards off their perch”. The working-class characters talk like that, just as the Old Etonians bluster: “This is a game for amateurs and gentlemen.”
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