In the decade following the establishment of the Rugby Football Union in 1871, rugby clubs sprung up in villages and towns across England. Once a pastime for the elite, rugby became a release for industrial workers after the mills and factories closed on Saturdays.
Around Manchester, and across the towns of the south Lancashire coalfield, rugby was the predominant code of football by 1880 when a club was established in the small industrial village of Boothstown. The Boothstown club flourished in the early decades of organised rugby, producing a highly competitive team of village coal miners and other industrial workers. Its existence provided a recreational outlet that would have been unimaginable a generation earlier.
This is the story of Boothstown Football Club within the evolving game of rugby football in Lancashire in the 1880s and 1890s. From the perspective of the Boothstown club it is also a history of rugby football in Lancashire in those seminal decades. As moves towards professionalism led to the establishment of the Northern Rugby Union in 1895, the club struggled to keep pace. Along with many others, it folded under financial pressure, and its exploits were lost to collective memory.
More than 125 years after the Boothstown club scored its last try, it is time to uncover its tale, to remember its players once again and to celebrate the exploits of the village XV.
Acknowledgements
This information was researched and provided by Tony Smith. The information and photograph are the copyright of Tony Smith