Words: Rory Bryce // @_BryceCube
On the face of it, football and Heritage don’t have much in common with each other. In fact, it probably isn’t too outlandish to say that they seem pretty opposed.
Where Heritage concerns itself with preservation, restoration and a continuation of the old, football, especially in the modern day, is very much an exercise in continuous change and development. New stadiums being built, old ones being demolished, player transfers and squad rebuilds every 2 years, badge updates - they’re all signs of a sport constantly changing and evolving.
You’d be forgiven for thinking football and heritage are constantly at odds with each other, or at the very least, entirely unrelated.
The truth, though, is that football and heritage are a match made in heaven.
Great Yarmouth Town FC’s Victorian-era wooden grandstand.
Photo Credit: Alamy ACT0DC
Heritage is tough to describe because it has so many different meanings, interpretations and applications. It’s a really wide and complex field with several layers and depths, not to mention the number of other concepts which are tied to it.
Simply put though, heritage can be described as the aspects of the past that impact the present. Whether that’s in the form of physical heritage like castles, buildings, standing stones and archaeology, or intangible elements like songs, rituals, oral traditions and folk tales, if something from the past connects you to the present, it can be considered heritage.
Heritage is our roots, both in an individual, personal capacity and in a wider societal sense, and most if not all aspects of heritage are connected and inform each other on a grander scale. Your family history could be tied to the same place you live in, stretching back generations. Ever wondered why you come from a long line of people supporting their local team? There’s your answer. On the other hand, your family may have migrated and brought with them the love of the club they left behind, leaving you and your family to support them from afar.
Every club has its story, and every fan has their identity. In a really watered down way, these are what tie football and heritage together.
Great Yarmouth Town FC’s story often revolves around their 131-year old Victorian-era grandstand, thought to be the oldest of it’s kind in the world still in use, and one of the last surviving examples in the country. It’s Grade II Listed, acknowledged by Historic England as a historic asset and a unique part of Great Yarmouth’s history. It even got a new lick of paint last year.
Imagine you’re sitting on that grandstand. Imagine 100 years ago, when your great-grandparent, tired from the weekly toil of working in Great Yarmouth’s herring industry made the same journey to the same ground, sat in the same seat in the same grandstand and watched the same football team play for 90-minutes.
That’s heritage, and one of the many ways it relates to football.
Football supporters in the 1920’s.
Photo Credit: The Football History Boys (X: @TFHBs)
Of course, it doesn’t even need to be as complex as that - football heritage can be anything from an old stadium to an old scarf. It doesn’t need to be a grand network of connected generations, or an intimately personal connection to an item. It can be as simple as the remains of stadium terracing or a ticket from the match in the 50s.
The truth, though, is that football and heritage go hand in hand, and it’s kind of all-encompassing. Football clubs and their pasts are an excellent way of researching the history of towns, places and people, and this is where social, political and economic contexts often come into the mix. Many football clubs were founded as works or factory teams, such as Arsenal, West Ham or Manchester United, while others were created to serve society’s elite, such as Sporting Clube de Portugal. In the cases of Celtic, CD Palestino or Dalkurd FF, forced migration and oppression caused diaspora communities to found clubs in other parts of the world, where as economic migration led to the founding of clubs across the world, such as the plethora of South American clubs with Italian heritage.
The nature of a club’s founding ultimately informs their history, heritage, club culture and supporter identity, but it would be untrue to say that this is always prominent or present. Football clubs change through out history, and supporters’ groups often mirror this fluidity. The examples I am using are for examples’ sake only - the usual adage applies here: not everyone can be tarred with the same brush!
That said, the history of football clubs and how they were founded draws class, religion and political sentiment into the game, and this can ultimately become part of a football clubs’ heritage too. Athletic Club in Bilbao, the darling football club of the Basque Country, are the best example of this, and their unique Basque-only signing policy is now entrenched deep within their club fabric and identity. Other clubs from the Basque Country, Athletic included, actively and knowingly give their supporters a sense of pride, belonging and representation after suffering continuous oppression and exile at the hands of the Spanish state, not least during Franco’s fascist regime.
Inaxio Kortabarria and José Ángel Iribar carry the Ikurriña, the banned flag of the Basque Country, onto the field during the Basque Derby, December 5, 1976.
So, there can be social, economic and political angles to football heritage too. As much as these are part of the history of a club and carried forward in their culture, they are often driven forward and expressed more passionately by fan groups, supporters collectives and ultras. This is one of the primary reasons we have ultras who are viewed as being on the left or right politically - they are the vehicle for expressing the heritage of their clubs, and they share that heritage with each other, taking ownership of it and often expressing it in extreme or passionate displays. Fan groups cannot be left out or ignored when we discuss heritage and football.
We all know the feeling of going to a football match. Whether it was our first one or most recent, it never really leaves you. We walk the same streets, visit the same pubs and burger vans to go to the same patch of grass and sing the same songs with the same people for 90 minutes to support the same team and watch the game of football. Every week. Sometimes twice. This is an underrated phenomenon and we shouldn’t undersell ourselves or our matchday routines when we talk about football and heritage. There’s a ritualistic element to it inherently tied to tradition. The likelihood is that you walk those streets and visit those pubs because your parents and grandparents did. it’s ingrained into who we are as football fans. Our stadiums are our second homes, the only place where we can escape for a few hours every week and join other supporters in common cause.
Stadiums are our place.
As well as being the home of our clubs, stadiums are also anchor points. This is an important concept in heritage which revolves around origin points for certain events (in this case, the housing of our football clubs in a particular area), and essentially views the stadium as the epicentre of our clubs culture. Would the communities surrounding our home grounds be the same without them? Are clubs able to competently set down roots and build a community without a home ground embedded in a certain area? Have clubs who have left their traditional, historic or spiritual homes viewed as being the same by certain groups of fans? It’s an open question, really - I would say no. You need an anchor point.
This is before we even think about stadiums which have been left behind, demolished, or had remnants left for people still to see. These are important in their own right and offer glimpses into the past. Modern day place and street names are often named after common greens, grounds, parks or stadiums which have been demolished or built on, while places like Cathkin Park offer a unique experience for football fans looking to scratch that history itch. The former home of Third Lanark, one of Scotland’s most famous lost football clubs, is accessible and combines a mixture of physical, built and intangible heritage for people to immerse themselves in. This is a particularly strong heritage asset and has to be preserved.
Cathkin Park, Crosshill, Glasgow. Former home of Third Lanark A.C.
So, as we can see, football and heritage are a match made in heaven. We haven’t even touched on things like aesthetic, character, phenomenology, the sights, sounds and feelings associated with football, memorabilia, collecting, nostalgia, memorial, museums, heritage initiatives or myth creating. Those are stories for another time.
My aim is for you to find those stories here, on our website, and I hope that the themes I’ve mentioned above resonate with you. You’ll find them in every story, interview and narrative you find on here. Heritage is a fascinating and powerful tool and it’s something we shouldn’t take for granted. It enriches our lives and enhances our relationship with our football clubs and communities. I’m of the belief that it can be found everywhere you look in football. But that’s just me. It’s my obsession. Other people will think differently, and that’s okay too. But it undoubtedly connects more than a few dots, explains a lot of topics and makes everything a million times more interesting.
Above all of that, though, is football. The beautiful game. Without it, the heritage and stories we share with each other as supporters wouldn’t exist. Above all of the themes and concepts mentioned above, above and beyond politics, class and religion, above history and heritage, there is football. I dread to think where we’d be without it.
This project was created to highlight the presence of heritage within football out with the tacky ‘heritage collection’ clothing ranges from clubs looking to make a quick few quid. It encompasses history, heritage, identity, culture and community primarily, but inherently relates to everything mentioned above and more. We want to bring you the best of football’s unknown histories, from former grounds to long-lost clubs, new trailblazers to vanished pioneers, fan accounts, niche stories, vibrant identities and everything in between.
This is Football Heritage.
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