... or is it?
https://inews.co.uk/culture/the-english-game-fergus-suter-darwen-fc-true-story-netflix-series-2503459
There may not be any real football to watch in these testing times, but Netflix is doing its best to fill the hole.
On Friday The English Game, the latest show from Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes, started streaming.
It is a recreation of the true story which led to the beginnings of modern professional football in the late 1800s, and how it became the UK's national sport.
The show follows two central characters - both real people who were incredibly important to the birth of professional football.
The first is Arthur Kinnaird, played by Edward Holcroft, who you might know from Kingsman and London Spy.
Kinnaird was a schoolboy at Eton when the school was one of the pioneers of the game of football - back then it was a game for the upper classes. He went on to play for the Old Etonians.
The second is Fergus Suter, played by Fantastic Beasts' Kevin Guthrie. Suter was a Scottish stonemason who played for Darwen, one of the few successful working class teams in existence.
The true story
The English Game starts with an FA Cup quarter-final match between Kinnaird's Old Etonians and Suter's Darwen - a recreation of a real game from 1879.
Eton and its graduates were adamant that football should remain an upper class sport and must be strictly amateur, whereas those like Suter challenged that order.
Suter became one of the most controversial figures in the early game when he moved from Darwen to Blackburn Rovers - a club which still exists today.
Darwen accused Blackburn of paying Suter to play for them, which was illegal. He went on to become the first player to admit to being professional.
Andy Mitchell, a football historian and consultant for the show, told The Telegraph: "He opened the eyes of English clubs - he was a middle-ranking Scottish guy who could vastly improve a team, so they started looking for other footballers who were of a certain talent and available to come down. And before you knew it, there was a flood of them."
National sport
Suter and others like him helped open football up to the working classes by making it a valid career option - the game eventually turned pro in 1885.
This helped turn football into the UK's national sport. As Fellowes explained to The Telegraph: "Workers worked six days a week, all day, they were paid little enough and apart from a few drinks and going home and eating and living mainly by the light of the fire that was about it.
"And suddenly they had this weekly excitement of following the game and following their own favourite team and going to the next town and seeing them play.
"And it put an energy into working class life that wasn't replacing anything - it was a completely new dynamic in lives that were being lived at a fairly low key."
Football is just a game...
posted on 21/3/20
I have watched first 1.5 episodes and am enjoying it.
posted on 21/3/20
sounds good jonny, i'll be looking into it.
posted on 21/3/20
it looks like they're playing a 2 1 7 formation in the picture.
posted on 21/3/20
Cheers Jonny. Just added it to my list.
It might just be football to some in the world,
to me it's massive. Miss it. But understand the
greater situation right now, that has to be
dealt with. Hope you and all Ja are staying safe
through all of this.
posted on 21/3/20
Watched the first 4 episodes and it deals a lot with the social divisions of the time. The landed gentry and the workers with little or no rights. It also touches on other social issues and developments. The football content slowly develops to show the emergence of the game into a profession. Thoroughly enjoyed it so far and stick with it through the early episodes. Has potential to run through to a few more seasons on Netflix.
posted on 21/3/20
comment by Penshawdave (U1894)
posted 9 minutes ago
Watched the first 4 episodes and it deals a lot with the social divisions of the time. The landed gentry and the workers with little or no rights. It also touches on other social issues and developments. The football content slowly develops to show the emergence of the game into a profession. Thoroughly enjoyed it so far and stick with it through the early episodes. Has potential to run through to a few more seasons on Netflix.
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That's a good synopsis Dave. A recurring theme is how important is football to the public.
posted on 22/3/20
As a follow up to my previous comments on The English Game I have now completed the full 6 episodes and would recommend it to all football followers to give a dramatised account of the birth of football to one and all from rich to poor.
The early pioneers may not have realised what they achieved in breaking down the barriers that existed in the game of football at the time.
Those barriers still exist in many different forms of life today. But let us continue to enjoy football as and when it returns, hopefully in the not too distant future.
Take care.
posted on 22/3/20
comment by Penshawdave (U1894)
posted 1 hour, 30 minutes ago
As a follow up to my previous comments on The English Game I have now completed the full 6 episodes and would recommend it to all football followers to give a dramatised account of the birth of football to one and all from rich to poor.
The early pioneers may not have realised what they achieved in breaking down the barriers that existed in the game of football at the time.
Those barriers still exist in many different forms of life today. But let us continue to enjoy football as and when it returns, hopefully in the not too distant future.
Take care.
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I'm confident it will not be lost on some how its somewhat come full circle from being a game for the privileged to now being a game that excludes many of those epitomized by the people from Darwen.