Burnley Football (1903)

Turf Moor
1903
Silent
1m

A large and lively crowd watches an Edwardian Second Division football match at Burnley's Turf Moor ground.

This film of a Burnley home game against unknown opposition (possibly Doncaster Rovers?), captures some unusually close shots of play and a lively crowd. At one point, a clearly intoxicated spectator is led away while, at the end, an attack on goal by Burnley (in dark tops) produces an alarming surge in the stand. The incongruous shot of a little girl has probably crept in from a different film.

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.