The Manchester Times of 29 September 1906 printed this drawing of the Manchester Amateur League championship trophy that was presented to the Division 1 winners. The paper confirmed it was about 21 inches high, of very heavy metal, richly embossed, and stands on an ebony plinth, on which small silver shields bearing the names of each year's winners are mounted. At this point, the winners had been Longsight Loco, Broughton and Unsworth.

 

Introduction

• The league was formed at the start of June 1903 at a meeting at Mosley Hotel in Manchester, with 11 teams initially announced as joining the new league.
• The only one to drop out before the season even started was Wilmslow, who went on to play local friendlies instead for the 1903-04 season, though they later joined a couple of years later, only to fold mid-season..
• At a Lancashire FA meeting in Manchester on Tuesday 28 July 1903, the league officially applied for Lancs FA affiliation.
• Barr Hill and Coston Park were late entrants to make it 12 starters. Longsight Loco also joined as a late replacement for Barr Hill, who left before the season started
• The league's reported name varied slightly between "Manchester Amateur & District League" and "Manchester & District Amateur League". Within a few seasons it was generally known as the "Manchester Amateur League".
• The first 2 seasons had a single division played, before the 1905-06 season saw a 2nd Division launched, quickly followed by the A Division for Reserve sides
• After the first season where 12 teams were set to start, the divisions have been 14 teams as standard most of the time, though some seasons had resignations, often very late on, and records were always expunged, sometimes disrupting the title race
• At the end of the 2nd season, in summer 1905, all of the Bolton-based sides quit the league to create their own Bolton Amateur League. Bolton Wickliffe, Mawdsley and Smithills had all been unhappy with the partizan way that the league handled matters in favour of the Manchester-based sides. The last straw seemed to have been the awarding of points to Mosley and Manchester South End in games involving Smithills. Firstly Smithills had failed to raise a team to Manchester South End in March. This game was then re-scheduled for the last day of the season. Meanwhile Mosley had failed to raise a team to send to Smithills at the start of April, and so there was no space left to rescheduled this for later in the season, so the league blamed Smithills and awarded the points to Mosley, despite Mosley being the team to have the original match cancelled. So Smithills failed to raise a team for the re-scheduled Manchester South End match, advising it was being cancelled, and the points were awarded to Manchester South End. The league's reputation as being biased to Manchester-based sides seemed to stay with it for a long time as no further Bolton-based sides joined the league for at least 50 years
• An interesting article appeared in the Bury Times on Wed 20 November 1907 about the price of admission. The article said: "Some of the other clubs in the league having raised the price of admission, Unsworth have decided to do the same and charge the same price as last season, viz. 3d for first team matches and 2d for reserve matches" - note that their reserves were in the Heaton Park & District League at the time. In 2023 prices, 3d is close to £5, which is not that cheap considering this is amateur football. It implies they reduced it from 3d, maybe as other clubs were cheaper, and so then decided to raise it back up again along with the other clubs

 

 

Sources

• The British Newspaper Archive is a goldmine for this sort of thing, but newspapers were prone to mistakes. Having to cross-reference multiple papers was sometimes necessary to confirm who exactly was in what division.  For example, one paper insisted Gorton Park and Manchester Amateurs were playing one day - the actual teams turned out to Coston Park and Monton Amateurs.
• The Huddersfield University archives at Heritage Quay were the perhaps surprising source for a number of early league tables, and in particular the Tom Webb Sports Scrapbook collection. 
• The archives.football web site is a great resource, and I am also building information about the Manchester Amateur League into that site too.
• Other sites good for cross-referencing, to ensure everything is as accurate as possible (especially when considering if a club is a 1st team or reserves etc) is the Non League Matters site, and in particular their histories of the Manchester League and the Lancashire Combination, and also the Football Club History Database - which surely must be everyone's most used web site if you are interested in club histories.
• Thanks also to the Manchester League secretary Scott White for sharing his researched info, which will come into play as I get to the 1950s and later

 

Latest Updates

 

August 2024 - The latest information on the site is up to 1910.  However I am in the process of double-checking 1906-1910 so only up to 1906 can be considered accurate for now.