The 1875 FA Cup Final was a

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

match between

Royal Engineers The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually called the Royal Engineers (RE), and commonly known as the ''Sappers'', is a corps of the British Army. It provides military engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces and is heade ...

and

Old Etonians Eton College () is a public school in Eton, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1440 by Henry VI under the name ''Kynge's College of Our Ladye of Eton besyde Windesore'',Nevill, p. 3 ff. intended as a sister institution to King's College, ...

on 13 March 1875 at

Kennington Oval The Oval, currently known for sponsorship reasons as the Kia Oval, is an international cricket ground in Kennington, located in the borough of Lambeth, in south London. The Oval has been the home ground of Surrey County Cricket Club since it ...

in London. It was the fourth final of the world's oldest football competition, the Football Association Challenge Cup (known in the modern era as the

FA Cup The Football Association Challenge Cup, more commonly known as the FA Cup, is an annual knockout football competition in men's domestic English football. First played during the 1871–72 season, it is the oldest national football competi ...

). Heading into the final, the Royal Engineers were playing in their third final after losing the

1872 Events January–March * January 12 – Yohannes IV is crowned Emperor of Ethiopia in Axum, the first ruler crowned in that city in over 500 years. * February 2 – The government of the United Kingdom buys a number of forts on ...

and

1874 Events January–March * January 1 – New York City annexes The Bronx. * January 2 – Ignacio María González becomes head of state of the Dominican Republic for the first time. * January 3 – Third Carlist War &ndas ...

finals while the Old Etonians were playing in their first FA Cup final. Prior to the final, the Royal Engineers had played one more match than the Old Etonians with the Etonians getting a bye in the second round due to the odd number of the teams that had entered the tournament. 2,000 people saw the match which ended in a 1–1 draw,

Henry Renny-Tailyour Henry Waugh Renny-Tailyour (9 October 1849 – 15 June 1920) was a British amateur all-round sportsman who appeared for Scotland in some of the earliest international football and rugby union matches, remaining to this day the only player to have ...

scored for the Engineers but

Alexander Bonsor Alexander George Bonsor (7 October 1851 – 17 August 1907) was one of the earliest known footballers. Career Bonsor played in the 1872 FA Cup Final – the first ever final in the FA Cup's history – and finished on the winning side. He playe ...

replied to have the match end in a draw and have the final being replayed for the first time with two goals from Renny-Tailyour sealing the Royal Engineers' first and only FA Cup title.

Route to the final

The Engineers, who lost the final on two of the three previous occasions, kicked off with a resounding 3–0 win over Marlow. They kept the scoring feat up in the next round, beating Cambridge University 5–0. The Quarter Final was a closely fought match against

Clapham Rovers Clapham Rovers was from its foundation in 1869 a leading English sports organisation in the two dominant codes of football, association football and rugby union. It was a prominent club in the late 19th century but is now defunct. The club playe ...

, just prevailing 3–2. The Semi-final produced a repeat fixture of the final of 1874, as the Engineers faced

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

. This time, the Engineers won 1–0. The Old Etonians started off against the Swifts, which proved a very tough match. After two drawn games, the Etonians managed to pull off a 3–0 victory. In the second round they received a bye which led them into the quarter-finals. Following a win against

Maidenhead Maidenhead is a market town in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in the county of Berkshire, England, on the southwestern bank of the River Thames. It had an estimated population of 70,374 and forms part of the border with southern Bu ...

, they played Shropshire Wanderers. An extremely close match was just edged out by a single goal to nil.

Final matches

The first match was notable chiefly because it was played in a "howling gale". The conditions considerably favoured the Etonians team, which had the wind at its backs for all but 10 minutes of the 90, and all 30 minutes of extra time (teams in this period changed ends after every goal- this game was the last to feature this rule).

Cuthbert Ottaway Cuthbert John Ottaway (19 July 1850 – 2 April 1878)''Jackson's Oxford Journal'', 6 April 1878. was an English footballer. He was the first captain of the England football team and led his side in the first official international football ma ...

received an ankle injury after 37 minutes into the final, following a collision with

Richard Ruck Major-General Sir Richard Mathews Ruck (27 May 1851 – 17 March 1935) was a British Army officer who served with the Royal Engineers, spending most of his career in the Submarine Mining Service, before becoming the Director of Fortifications ...

, and was forced to leave the field; in his absence, the Old Boys were regarded as fortunate to have held on for a 1–1 draw. Ottaway failed to recover in time for the replay, held only three days later, and Etonians also lost the services of three other players who had prior commitments. Unable to obtain adequate replacements, the Old Boys arrived at the ground an hour late and lost the delayed replay 0–2.

scored all three goals in both matches for the Engineers. The newspaper ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...

'' published the following chronicle of the match on 14 March 1875:

Final

----

Replay

Notes

*Several modern sources claim that

Stafford Stafford () is a market town and the county town of Staffordshire, in the West Midlands region of England. It lies about north of Wolverhampton, south of Stoke-on-Trent and northwest of Birmingham. The town had a population of 70,145 in t ...

scored the second goal in the replay, but no contemporaneous reports support this, most of which report that the ball crossed the line in a goalmouth scramble. In an amendment to his obituary in the ''Royal Engineers' Journal'' published in February 1922, the biographer credits Renny-Tailyour with both goals in the replay.

References

Bibliography

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Fa Cup Final 1875

1875 Events January–March * January 1 – The Midland Railway of England abolishes the Second Class passenger category, leaving First Class and Third Class. Other British railway companies follow Midland's lead during the rest of the ...

FA 1875 sports events in London March 1875 sports events