1880 or 1894 the facts: over the last 24 hours I've seen lots of comments about the formation date of Manchester City and so, to ensure everyone's aware, I thought I'd add my comments here. If you attended my badge talks or have read my books you'll know this anyway, but if not here goes....
Manchester City was established in 1894, April to be more precise, and was described as a new football club for Manchester at its birth. Josh Parlby, a prime mover, eloquently talked of the new club at the May 1894 League AGM where he stressed that MCFC was not Ardwick in disguise. In fact Ardwick played on after MCFC was founded and so the two organisations were in existence at the same time. Ultimately, Ardwick gave up and most - but not all - connected with Ardwick joined MCFC.
So Manchester City was a new team, formed in 1894. This however does not mean that everything that came before 1894 is irrelevant, far from it, but it does mean that Manchester City's formation is 1894.
Some people say 1880 should be the club's formation, but we have no idea whether 1880 was actually the year the football club came into existence. We know they played games in 1880, but it's possible they played games before1880 that weren't reported. By comparison MUFC claim 1878 as formation, but there's no evidence of Newton Heath playing football before 1880, so what were they doing before 1880? And how does this compare to St Mark's? We know there were regular cricket games at St Marks in the 1870s and before, should that be included? There were even cricket matches in the 1860s, so what should we do?
City fans have often said that MUFC's formation should be 1902 and that's true, because Newton Heath was the club before 1902, so City should ensure their date is accurate. 1894 is exactly right - it's the year MCFC was formed. City use authentic dates, others have no evidence for theirs!
For more on 1894 read the Look Inside stuff from 1894 on Amazon for my book Manchester a The City Years (that section's free!)
