Frederick Baron Mulford was a British expatriate who contributed to the development of
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 ...
in Nigeria.
Life
Mulford came to
Nigeria c.1906 as an agent of Lagos Stores, and between 1906 and 1908, he played football with European expatriates and Nigerians on the fields of
Lagos Race Course. His work then carried him across the country and when he returned to
Lagos in 1914, football had begun to develop at the high school level. King's College played some matches with European teams that at times had
Bertie Denyer
Albert Edward Curly Denyer (9 April 1893 – 1969) was an English professional footballer who made over 320 appearances in the Football League for Swindon Town as a forward.
Personal life
Denyer's brother Frank and son Bertie were also footb ...
as a player. Mulford also began to coordinate more matches among Europeans and also between Africans and Europeans. The matches between King's College and selected European teams gradually became popular in Lagos and by 1918, King's College and the expatriate led Lagos Merchants which had Mulford as a player were the major teams in Lagos. During a series of charity matches to raise money for the British Red Cross, Mulford donated the competition's
trophy
A trophy is a tangible, durable reminder of a specific achievement, and serves as a recognition or evidence of merit. Trophies are often awarded for sporting events, from youth sports to professional level athletics. In many sports medals (or, in ...
. The event later became an annual competition called the Lagos War Memorial Cup, in 1949 when Mulford died it was named after him until it became Oba Cup in the 1960s.
In the 1920s, he was a player and patron of the Lagos Diamond Football Club, among members of the club was
Azikiwe
Nnamdi Benjamin Azikiwe, (16 November 1904 – 11 May 1996), usually referred to as "Zik", was a Nigerian statesman and political leader who served as the first President of Nigeria from 1963 to 1966. Considered a driving force behind the n ...
. The club joined the Lagos League in 1930 and Mulford served as vice-president of the Lagos and District Amateur Football Association.
He was at various times the games master and football coach of
King's College King's College or The King's College refers to two higher education institutions in the United Kingdom:
*King's College, Cambridge, a constituent of the University of Cambridge
*King's College London, a constituent of the University of London
It ca ...
,
Igbobi College
Igbobi College is a college established by the Methodist and Anglican Churches in 1932, in the Yaba suburb of Lagos, Lagos State, South-western Nigeria. It is still on its original site and most of the original buildings are intact. It is one ...
and
St. Gregory's.
Notes
Sources
*{{cite thesis , last=Boer , first=Wiebe Karl , date=2003 , title=Nation building exercise: Sporting culture and the rise of football in colonial Nigeria , publisher=Yale University
British expatriates in Nigeria