The match between

Aston Villa Aston Villa Football Club (commonly referred to as simply Villa) is a professional football club based in Aston, Birmingham, England. The club, founded in 1874, compete in the Premier League, the top tier of English football. The team have p ...

and Hibernian was an

exhibition An exhibition, in the most general sense, is an organized presentation and display of a selection of items. In practice, exhibitions usually occur within a cultural or educational setting such as a museum, art gallery, park, library, exhibiti ...

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

match that took place in the city of

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...

in April 1887. It was a return match from a friendly played between the sides in January 1887. The match was advertised in the ''

Birmingham Daily Mail The ''Birmingham Mail'' (branded the ''Black Country Mail'' in the Black Country and ''Birmingham Live'' online) is a tabloid newspaper based in Birmingham, England, but distributed around Birmingham, the Black Country, and Solihull and parts of ...

'' in their 7 April 1887 edition as a "Great International Match". Aston Villa won the match 3–0.

Overview

On 9 April 1887,

Scottish Cup The Scottish Football Association Challenge Cup,Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...

, took on

FA Cup The Football Association Challenge Cup, more commonly known as the FA Cup, is an annual Single-elimination tournament, knockout association football, football competition in domestic Football in England, English football. First played during ...

winners Aston Villa in an exhibition match at the

club's

Perry Barr Perry Barr is a suburban area in north Birmingham, in the county of the West Midlands (county), West Midlands, England. It is also the name of a Government of Birmingham, England#Council constituencies, council constituency, managed by its own ...

ground. The sides had both recently won their respective national cups at a time before national football leagues were considered the best side of each country, with The Sportsman describing them as "''powerful clubs''". Aston Villa won the match 3–0 and were regarded by many as the best footballing side in the United Kingdom in 1887, being described as having the "''right and claim to be the champions of the football world for the year''" by the ''Preston Herald'' in May 1887. The advert Villa placed in the

in their 7 April 1887 edition described the game as a ''great international match''; however, the Scottish newspapers

The Glasgow Herald ''The Herald'' is a Scottish broadsheet newspaper founded in 1783. ''The Herald'' is the longest running national newspaper in the world and is the eighth oldest daily paper in the world. The title was simplified from ''The Glasgow Herald'' in ...

and

The Scotsman ''The Scotsman'' is a Scottish compact (newspaper), compact newspaper and daily news website headquartered in Edinburgh. First established as a radical political paper in 1817, it began daily publication in 1855 and remained a broadsheet until ...

reported on it in similar detail to several other cross-border challenge matches of that weekend, though they did acknowledge the participants' cup-winning statuses. and other newspapers covered other matches on Hibernians' tour of England (which saw them beaten by

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and

Wolverhampton Wanderers Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club ( ), commonly referred to as Wolves, is a professional association football, football club based in Wolverhampton, England. The club competes in the Premier League, the top tier of English football league s ...

) in similar fashion. The

Dundee Evening Telegraph The ''Evening Telegraph'' is a local newspaper in Dundee, Scotland. Known locally as the ''Tele'' (usually pronounced ''Tully or Tilly''), it is the sister paper of '' The Courier'', also published by Dundee firm DC Thomson. It was founded in ...

noted that the match was "''the most important''" of the Scottish clubs' 1887 tour of England as it was between the cup holders and again re-affirmed the matches billing as a "''great international match''" that "''caused immense excitement at Perry Bar ic some 10,000 persons looking on''". Aston Villa v Hibs - April 1887

Subsequent match

Later in 1887, Hibernian won a friendly against 1887 FA Cup semi-finalists

Preston North End Preston North End Football Club, commonly referred to as Preston, North End or PNE, is a professional association football club in Preston, Lancashire, England. They currently play in the EFL Championship, the second level of the English footbal ...

that was billed as ' The Association Football Championship of the World'. However newspaper reports of the day did not bill the Hibs v Preston game as anything other than a friendly and anyway to qualify for a world championship fixture both teams had to be either a league champion or a cup winner; Preston North End at the time were neither so the Hibs claim is invalid.

Participant teams

Match details

References

* * *''Birmingham Daily Mail'', 7 & 9 April 1887 {{DEFAULTSORT:Aston Villa 3-0 Hibernian (1887) 1886–87 in English football 1886–87 in Scottish football World Championship 1887 World Championship 1887 April 1887