Star Exhibits
5. A pre-league letter from Aston Villa inviting Everton to play.
In the process of building his collection, David France has amassed a large mailbag of various correspondence to and from the Club, which offers an insight into the typical day-to-day operations of a football club over the decades.
Before the creation of the Football League, matches had to be pre-arranged between Clubs, and it was merely invitations to play against another club that determined fixture lists. The oldest letter in the Collection is just this. Dating back to 6 March 1888, the letter is hand-written by the Aston Villa secretary, inviting Everton to visit Birmingham to play them later that month.
Later that year, the inaugural season of the Football League began, with Everton and Aston Villa included in the original dozen pioneering teams. Their first planned League fixture against each other was played at Everton’s home ground of Anfield on 6 October 1888, and Everton won 2 – 0. Invitations to play were then a thing of the past.
The Collection features over 200 letters on the letterheads of 80 or so different football clubs, addressing all types of business issues including the re-arrangement of fixtures, allocation of match tickets and coordination of transfers. David comments: “In the days before paper-shredders, old letters were thrown out, but thankfully not all made it to the tip.”
