The birth of football in Edinburgh: from the world’s first football club to the founding of Hearts and Hibs.

If you think football in Edinburgh started with Hearts and Hibs, think again. Football has been played in Edinburgh since medieval times, but things really started to happen when the city became home to the world’s first football club in 1824. Andy Mitchell will tell the story of the Foot-Ball Club and its members and reveal how the kicking game had to struggle for survival in the face of rugby dominance in the mid-century before events turned full circle. The story ends with a new beginning, the belated arrival of association football and the formation of the two great rivals in the 1870s.

Speaker

Andy Mitchell

Andy Mitchell is a Scottish sports historian who runs a dedicated sports history website and has written several books including a Who’s Who of Scotland footballers and the story of the first international match. He was brought up in Edinburgh and when he went to his first football match in 1970 – an Edinburgh derby, no less – he was immediately hooked on the game despite attending a rugby-playing school. He was fortunate enough to have spent most of his career in the media working in football, as Head of Communications at the Scottish Football Association and as a freelance media officer for UEFA. Now retired, he lives in Portobello and is researching sports history as vigorously as ever.