A History of Aston Villa Football Club

Aston Villa Football Club was formed in March 1874 by members of the Villa Cross Wesleyan Chapel in Aston, Birmingham. Members of the Aston Villa cricket team were looking for a way to stay fit during the winter months and decided to adopt the new sport of football. The 'Four Founding Fathers' were Jack Hughes, Frederick Matthews, Walter Price and William Scattergood. Little did they know that the team they formed would go on to become the most famous and admired football club in the world by the end of Queen Victoria's reign.

Aston Villa's first match was against the local Aston Brook St Mary's Rugby team and as a condition of the match, the Villa side had to agree to play the first half under rugby rules and the second half under football rules! Amazingly Villa managed to hold St Mary's to a pointless draw up to half time and in the second half won the historic affair by one goal, scored by Jack Hughes.

Villa won their first honour, the Birmingham Challenge Cup in 1880, under the captaincy of Scotsman George Ramsay. The club won its first FA Cup in 1887, by which time football had become professional. However, the Scottish draper and director of Aston Villa, William McGregor had become frustrated with one-sided friendly matches and low attendances for all games but FA Cup ties. He saw that in order to keep interest in the game alive the top teams needed to play each other in a league much like American baseball teams did.

So he wrote to the 12 leading clubs in England proposing the formation of a league. The reason the Football League was never called the English League is because McGregor intended Scottish and Welsh teams to join eventually. Naturally, Aston Villa were one of the dozen teams that competed in the inaugural Football League in 1888 finishing runners-up.

It didn't take long for Villa to lift their first League Championship trophy, and this was achieved in 1893/94. This would signal the start of Aston Villa's 'Golden Age' and by the start of the First World War the club had won the League Championship six times and the FA Cup five times, including in 1896/97, a League and Cup Double, a feat which would not be repeated for more than 60 years.