England v Ireland at Manchester (1905)

Manchester
1905-10-14
Silent
2m

An Edwardian contest between teams representing the English and Irish Football Leagues, with plenty of goal-line action.

Some 13,000 people saw this prestigious 1905 match at Manchester City's Hyde Road. Thanks to Mitchell & Kenyon, it stands as probably the oldest filmed record of a football international (though despite the billing, strictly this was an inter-league match with teams representing each league). England's team won 4-0, on a gloomy October day that challenged M&K's camera as well as Ireland's defence!

Much of the action was filmed from behind the English goal, guarded by Derby County's Harry Maskrey, but there are also good views of the players as they line on to the pitch. The film was commissioned from Mitchell & Kenyon by the American Bioscope company, and shown at the nearby Empire in Manchester's Ardwick Green.

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.