Bradford City
Formed 1903
Elected to Division Two 1903
Kit History
1903 early season a j
1903-1905 a
1906-1907 a
1907-1908 a
1908-1909 a
1909-1910 a
1910-1912 a
1912-1913 k
1913-1915 a
1919-1920 a
1920-1921 a
1921-1923 a
1923-1924 a
1924-1928 a
1928-1929 a
1929-1931 a
1933-1934 a
1934-1935 a
1935-1937 a
1945-1946 a
1946-1948
1948-1949 a
1950-1951 a c
1951-1952 a
1952-1953 a
1953-1957 a
1957-1959 a
1959-1960 f
1960-1962 a k
1963-1964 a
1965-1966 a
1966-1968 a
1968-1969 a
1969-1972 a
1972-1973 a g
1973-1974 a
1974-1975 a
1975-1976 a g
1976-1977 a
1976-1977 alt a g
1977-1978 a g
1978-1979 a g
1979-1981 a
1981-1982 a
1982-1983 a i
1983-1984 a d e
1984-1985 a
1985-1987 a
1987-1988 a
1988-1990 a i
1990-1991 a
1991-1993 a
1993-1994 a
1994-1995 a i
1995-1996 a
1996-1997 a i
1996-1997 i
1997-1999 a
1999-2001 a
2001-2003 a
2003-2004 a
July-Sept 2004 a
Oct 2004-2006 a
2006-2007 a b
2007-2008 b h
2008-2009 b
2009-2010 b
Background
In 1895, a dispute over broken time payments led to rugby clubs from Lancashire and Yorkshire breaking away from the Rugby Football Union to form the Northern Rugby Union (which evolved new rules that would become Rugby League). At the time Bradford RFC, which drew its membership from the city's upper and middle classes was the leading side in the city while Manningham RFC, whose members were mainly from the working class, were a second-string team.
By the turn of the century, Manningham had fallen on hard times, recording a loss of £660 in the 1902-03 season. Across the Pennines, the professional Lancashire clubs playing the association game were thriving and following an Extraordinary General Meeting on 26 March 1903, it was decided to form a professional association team, to be called Bradford City, and play rugby and soccer on alternate weekends.
A delegation travelled to London on 25th May to apply for admission to the League, despite the fact that Bradford City had no players and had never played a game. The infant club was accepted with open arms and the delegation returned to Bradford in triumph. At the Belle Vue public house they celebrated what was described as ‘the greatest football scoop ever known’. City had joined the League without having played a single match. At the AGM five days later the decision to adopt football was ratified and the idea of playng rugby on alternate weekends was quietly dropped. Over the following years, several more struggling professional rugby teams in Yorkshire followed Manningham's example and switched codes.
For the first few months of their inaugural season, City wore the claret and amber hooped jerseys of the rugby team before their new vertically striped shirts were delivered. It is incidentally believed that the claret and amber colours, unique in the League, were those of the Prince of Wales Own (West Yorkshire) Regiment.
By the end of 1906, Bradford City were attracting an average of over 11,000 spectators while Bradford RFC's gates had fallen to 4-5,000, A proposal was put forward in April 1907 to merge the two clubs and play at the rugby club's far bigger Park Avenue stadium. With City on the brink of the First Division, there were clear advantages to a merged club playing in a larger stadium, not least of which was that they would no longer compete for paying spectators. Initially the proposal was rejected by Bradford's overwhelmingly middle-class membership who furthermore resolved to leave the Northern RU and rejoin the RFU. Bradford's chairman, Arthur Briggs, refused to accept the result and steamrollered the merger proposal through. It was then the turn of Bradford City's members to vote: there was fury at what many saw as an attempt by the wealthier rugby to co-opt everything that City had worked so hard to achieve and the proposal was thrown out by 1,031 votes to 487.
City won the Division Two championship in 1908 and gained promotion to Division One. In 1909 the team adopted the crest of the borough of Bradford, which featured on their shirts until 1923 (making its last appearance in the 1933-34 season). In 1911 City finished fifth in Division One, their highest ever placing
and won the FA Cup, beating the then powerful Newcastle United 1-0 in
a replay. The distinctive, yoked shirts of the period became forever associated
with this side and were to be revived on several occasions.
There was to be no further glory, however, and the Bantams went into long term decline, dropping into Division Two in 1922 and then into Division Three (North) in 1927. Although the club returned to Division Two only two years later, it would be a temporary recovery and in 1937 The Bantams found themselves back in Division Three (North) where they would remain for 23 years before being relegated to Division Four in 1961.
In 1982, City were promoted back into Division Three but the following summer, the club faced bankruptcy. A pre-season photograph shows the players wearing an all-white kit but when the 1983-84 season started, the team turned out in a claret and amber kit designed by Patrick for Motherwell FC. The following season the white kit (favoured by manager Trevor Cherry, a former Leeds player) was adopted, which featured a circular badge.
On 11 May 1985 fans were celebrating promotion
back to Division Two when tragedy struck. The wooden Main Stand was engulfed
in flames and fifty-six fans died in the inferno. The horror concentrated
the minds of football authorities on safety and throughout the League;
old structures were hastily closed and demolished. The town rallied to
support the club who
enjoyed five seasons in Division Two before being
relegated once again.
In 1987 a new crest was introduced, featuring the club's initials on a shield surmounted by a boar's head, a motif taken from the city's coat of arms. This was used until 1991 when a new badge was introduced that featured a bantam cock (City are sometimes known as "The Bantams").
In the late Nineties, City climbed up from Nationwide Division Two (the old third Division) all the way to the Premier Division where they spent two unforgettable seasons 1999-2001. In 2004 the Bantams marked their centenary and briefly wore a replica of their original claret and amber strip but the deal with the manufacturer, Diadora, collapsed and a more modern kit was adopted.
In recent years, the club has made a point of including black in their strips in memory of those who died in 1985.
With acknowledgements to Richard Sanders' "Beastly Fury" (Bantam Press 2009 ISBN 978 059305 9708), from which much of the detail of the failed merger between Bradford City and Bradford RFC is derived.
Sources
- (a) Bantams Past : An excellent historical site with an exceptional collection of early team photographs managed by John Ashton.
- (b) Bradford City Official Site
- (c) Geoff Charles Collection at the National Library of Wales
- (d) John Dewhurst
- (e) Glyn Watkins
- (f) Ralph Pomeroy
- (g) Alick Milne
- (h) Football Shirt Culture
- (i) Paul Town
- (j) British Film Institute Archive (Youtube)
- (k) Keith Ellis
Photograph courtesy of Bantams Past. Crests are the property of Bradford City FC.