Newcastle United v Liverpool (1901)

Newcastle upon Tyne
1901-11-23
Silent
2m

An Edwardian football match at Newcastle's St James' Park ground.

The score finished 1-0 to the Magpies in this First Division football match. Despite having three cameras present on the day, Mitchell & Kenyon's operators missed the goal, and the hand-cranked cameras sometimes struggled to keep up with the action in a hard-fought match. But the shots of grinning supporters, packed on to the terraces in their flat caps and bowlers, more than compensate.

Edwardian Football

The beautiful game, Edwardian style, in some of the earliest ever film of League, international and amateur football

For Blackburn-based filmmakers Mitchell & Kenyon, the attraction of football was at least as much the swelling crowds - who they hoped to lure to paid screenings - as the game itself. With only a few hundred feet of film on hand and far less mobile cameras than today's, their cameramen could only hope to sample the action on the pitch; catching a goal was a rare bonus.

The crowds' passion and energy are almost spectacle enough, but these films also survive as priceless football history - preserving, among other trophies, the earliest known footage of Manchester Utd and probably the first 'international' games captured on film.