The official founding year of the Leicestershire & Rutland Football Association (LRFA) is cited as 1886. However, historical newspaper records strongly suggest the association was not formally established until 1887, revealing a discrepancy between official records and documented history.
Newspaper Evidence
A report in the Leicester Daily Post on September 25, 1887, documents a crucial meeting held on Saturday, September 17, 1887, at the George Hotel, Haymarket, Leicester. The stated purpose of this gathering was “to take into consideration the desirability of forming an association in the county.”
Key details from the meeting confirm the formation occurred that day. Mr. Gardner, Secretary of Leicester Fosse FC, confirmed the idea had been “talked of for several seasons,” but this was the moment of formal action. Following an inquiry sent to 25 local clubs, 15 promised their support and sent representatives (including Leicester Fosse, Loughborough, Sheepshed, and Hinckley Trinity). A proposal that such an association should be formed was carried unanimously, and the title “The Leicestershire Football Association” was formally adopted.
Discrepancy
If the unanimous vote to form the association and the adoption of its name occurred in September 1887, why is the official founding date listed as 1886?
The year 1886 likely marks the start of the organised movement or planning phase. Mr. Gardner stated he had been instructed to write to clubs “some time ago” to gauge support. This preparatory work—the essential groundwork of seeking commitments and club pledges—may have commenced in 1886, leading officials to adopt it as the symbolic founding year, even though the legal establishment was in 1887.
Alternatively the discrepancy could simply stem from an early clerical error that was never corrected. However, once the 1936 Golden Jubilee and the 1986 Centenary were locked into the calendar, the 1886 date became a functional truth for the organization, regardless of the 1887 reality documented in the press.
By the end of 1887, the Leicestershire FA had 17 affiliated teams. Four years later, the extent of playing and watching both rugby and soccer had grown to such an extent that the Leicester Daily Post observed that in “no other town in England, perhaps, has its rapid growth been better attested than that of recent years in Leicester. Why, it seems to me but yesterday that scarcely 500 people could be got together to see a good match “free, gratis and for nothing”. Now what do we find? Why five or six thousand people on each of two football grounds on the same afternoon, freely paying admission money. In an end-of-year survey of the social life of the town, the paper noted that: Only a few years ago [football] was nowhere as compared with cycling. Already, however, the once sensational contests on the cinder track have become a faded memory while Association and rugby Football has the field ...”