Thomas Mitchell -
wheeler-dealer
Thomas Mitchell, Thomas Brown Mitchell, wasn't a player. Nor was he a manager. He was a club secretary; that is indeed what he declared himself to be on his 1901 census return; one of the very first, an organiser, a fixer and a pioneer. He became the man, who to a large extent forged one of the earliest, leading clubs, Blackburn Rovers, and with an intent that went beyond the rules, at least as they stood then with regard to player payment. He had a notable part in the creation of the Football League. He is even said to have suggested the name. And very importantly he was a Scot.
Mitchell was born in Kirkmahoe just north of Dumfries in 1843. That means he was already almost thirty when football came to Scotland and in any case he was by then long gone. In 1861 as an eighteen year old he was already living in Glasgow, working as a "Commercial Traveller in Hardware". It was this period that probably would in time, if not quite yet, provide him with a unique window, indeed, the key to the new sport. And it was most likely hardware that brought about his next move. He went south, there both to find romance and clearly in business to do very well in a very short time. In 1866 he was married in Blackburn to a girl from the town and by 1871 had moved further south still, to a village just outside Peterborough, was describing himself as a Gentleman, i.e. not working, and was starting a family with new wife, Sarah.
However, although his first three children were born in rural Northamptonshire, the next two were not. They were born back in Blackburn, the family having moved back at the end of the decade, living in a nice part of town and he also back and selling once more. It was by then 1881 and football had not only reached Scotland a decade earlier but also by then was embedding itself in industrial Lancashire. Blackburn already had two main teams, Olympics and Rovers. In fact the former was the working man's club and the latter more the gentleman's, doctors, lawyers, teachers, manufacturers and mill owners. It had been formed in 1875 by an incomer and a native, two Old Salopians, aged just twenty and eighteen, i.e. two former pupils of the semi-public Shrewsbury School, where football was the sport and which had and would produce a number of Wales's early internationals.
The two Olympics founders were John Lewis and Arthur Constantine. Lewis was a coach-builder; he manufactured carriages; but his life would be football. He had a part in the formation of the Lancashire FA in 1878 and became a vice-President of both the Football Association and the Football League. In addition he was a noted, if at times somewhat controversial football referee, taking the whistle for three F.A. Cup Finals, the Olympics Final of 1908 and, aged sixty-five and not six years before his death, the disastrous one of 1920. Constantine, on the other hand, would become a solicitor and fade into the background. Their team was very an English one, as was Rovers, at least to begin with, but very rapidly it changed, that change seeming to coincide with the return of Thomas Mitchell to the town.
Blackburn Olympic would in 1883 become the first team from the industrial north, indeed from the north at all, to take the FA Cup. In doing so it defeated Old Etonians, a club the contrast with which could hardly have been greater. It was not, however, the first from the north to reach the final. That had been Blackburn Rovers, the previous year in losing to the same Etonians. And for the next three years and again in 1890 and 1891 it would once more be the The Rovers that would win England's foremost trophy. However, from the beginning Rovers would do so with Scots in the team. In 1882 there had been four. In 1884 there were again four, in 1885 three and in 1886 four once more. In 1890 there were three and three more in 1891. The question is how and why, the answer probably Thomas Mitchell, wheeler-dealer.
The Scots players in 1882 were Hugh McIntyre and Fergus Suter in defence, Thomas Strachan and Jimmy Douglas in the forwards and each deserves closer examination because, although not the first professional footballers, they were James "Reddie" Lang to Sheffield and Archie Hunter to Aston Villa, they were the first recruitment not as individuals but a group. Hugh McIntyre is perhaps the one of most immediate interest. Born in 1857 he was from Barony in Glasgow, precisely where Thomas Mitchell had lived and still had family. In 1879 at half-back he had been in the Rangers team to lose in a defaulted replay to Vale of Leven in the Scottish Cup Final. In March 1880 he won his only cap, against Wales, in the same eleven as
Eadie Fraser. He married in Scotland that same year yet in 1881 he was in Blackburn, said to be running the Castle Inn in the town, and with his new wife lodging with the Hollands, Mrs Holland, coincidently or not, being from Shropshire. Thomas Strachan too was from Glasgow, from the Gorbals and after at least five years' association with Blackburn; he would play in the 1886 final also; he would return home. Fergus Suter was also Glasgow-born in 1857, had also lived in Barony and played for Rangers and then Partick, as would his brother, Jervis, later the club's Match Secretary. Indeed it was with Partick in 1878 that he had travelled south to play a friendly against Darwen, from which he and fellow-teammate, James Love, did not return. Suter then played two seasons at Darwen before being persuaded to transfer and it caused problems. When in November 1880 the two teams met Darwen announced it would only play men who were "Darwen born and bread", then there was fight on the pitch involving Suter, the crowd joined in and the match was abandoned. Nevertheless Suter settled in at his new club. In 1881 he was boarding in Blackburn, a stone-mason, with the Mellor family, the then licensees of the Castle Inn, the same Castle Inn that Hugh McIntyre was managing. Then in 1883 he married a Blackburn-girl and never went home. He played for Blackburn until 1889, retiring at the age of thirty-two, went back to Darwen to run a pub there and died in 1916 in Blackpool. And finally also boarding with the Mellors and Suter was a James Douglas, said to be a pattern-maker. He was, of course, nothing of the sort, but Jimmy Douglas, the fourth of Blackburn's Scottish core and the only one not from "Glesga". He was born in Renfrew, played for local teams, won a Scotland cap in March 1880 also against Wales alongside Hugh McIntyre before being drawn south. And he too would stay at least for a while. In December 1881 he married a local girl, Jane Ellison. The witnesses were Fergus Suter and Mary Mellor and it was something of a hurried affair. Jane was three months pregnant. She gave birth in June 1882.
And there was in the years immediately after Thomas Mitchell's return to Blackburn to be just one more Scottish addition, John Inglis. He too was Glasgow-born in 1859 and had, the reverse of Suter, played for Partick, where he had been a founder member and first team captain, and then for a season at Rangers, before heading south, with two caps in 1883 as one of Scotland's centre-forward pairing against England and Wales, both wins. It was his presence in the Blackburn team in the FA Cup in 1884 that raised an objection from Notts County about professionalism, at which point he seems to have bet a hasty retreat back to Glasgow and his work as a mechanic. It was enough to convince an FA investigation that football was not his source of income. It was also, of course, pure pretence. As soon as professionalism was legitimised in 1885 he was south again, not to Blackburn but just down the road first to Great Lever by Bolton and to Preston, where he would remain for the rest of his life, dying there in 1920. However, his second sortie south was never with the same impact. At Preston he had both Nick Ross and
John Goodall to contend with, which says something about their qualities. In spite of never playing for Scotland themselves or even seemingly getting near it, they could keep out of a team, they were better players than a man, who had featured in a 2-3 away win against the Auld Enemy.
In the meantimeThomas Mitchell had in 1887 officially become Secretary of Rovers. Jack Hunter, previously Blackburn Olympics' captain and centre-half also came in as trainer. It had been after something of a dip in form. Following FA Cups wins in the previous three years on 4th December 1886 in a Second Round replay they were defeated 0-2 by Renton from the Leven Vale. For the Scots club it was a portend of things to come as what would become the great Renton team of 1888 began to mature. but in Blackburn it clearly had signalled change. Rebuilding was required and by 1890 when the Rovers were back in FA Cup Final, an almost unmatched 6-1 victory over Sheffield Wednesday, only two of the earlier teams remained, Joe Lofthouse and Jimmy Forrest, and, although therethree Scots still lined up, they were all new. And for his new Scottish recruits Mitchell had this time by-passed Glasgow and gone straight to the new, if passing, innovative hub of the Scottish game, Leven Vale. Harry Campbell on the right-wing came from Renton itself. Bonhill-born John Forbes from Leven Vale was at full-back and, with Jimmy Forrest moving to left-half, Geordie Dewar from Dumbarton at the fulcrum of centre-half.
Mitchell's Rovers would repeat the FA Cup win in 1891 with Forbes and Dewar still in the team, Harry Campbell injured but with the addition at right-back besides Forbes of Tom Brandon from Kilbirnie in Ayr via Renfrew in the form of St. Mirren and Coombe Hall from Leith via St. Bernards. Meanwhile in the newly formed Football League, of which Mitchell had been with fellow Scot, William McGregor, one of the major movers, Rovers had finished fourth, third and sixth respectively and Mitchell himself, with two more children born in Blackburn, was "living of own means", i.e. freelancing. However, in 1892 Mitchell's team would slip to ninth, struggling to win games both home and away. In a season of thirty games it had ten draw. Then, although it recovered its home form, in 1893 it couldn't win away, leaving it firmly stuck in mid-table and when the home form once more went in 1896-7 it was seriously in trouble. It avoided relegation by a place and two points, by which point Mitchell had jumped around New Year and after which Hunter would be pushed.
Why Blackburn Rovers' form turned poor so quickly and completely is something of a mystery. Perhaps it was to do with the supply of new Scottish talent drying up as, firstly, the shamateur Scottish League was formed in 1890, becoming openly professional in 1893, when, secondly, a second division was also formed. To earn a living legitimately the players, both top-flight and now a level down, no longer had to travel south. Indeed, the input of Mitchell and Hunter might have been covering up the cracks rather than causing them. Blackburn would be relegated the following year, as Hunter would move on to New Brighton and take them into the Lancashire League and Thomas Mitchell had moved to Arsenal.
At that time Woolwich Arsenal Football Club was frankly something of a shambles. It had been formed by a number of workers at the Royal Ordanance factory in Woolwich in London, the Scot David Danskin prominent amongst them, and had attracted a number of other Scots players. It had then decided to go professional in 1891 and managed in 1893 to be elected to the second Division of the Football League, at which point most of the original players, including all the Scots, left to form their own, amateur club. That is with one notable exception, Fred Beardsley. On finishing playing in 1891 at the age of thirty-five and as the club became professional he was elected vice -president. He would also act as its scout and would remain associated until 1910, by when, although having been promoted, it was virtually on its knees, so weak financially it was forced to sell its best players, had staggered into the arms of Henry Norris and in 1913 moved north of the river.
And finance had been the perennial problem with Arsenal. In 1894, unable to afford a manager but with poor performances on the pitch, it appointed its first trainer, Sam Hollis. He oversaw a squad of around twenty-three, with a first team core of twelve and then fifteen, half Scots. But he produced no improvement on the field. In fact, in spite of someone, presumably Beardsley, recruiting nineteen new players and the squad increasing to an enormous thirty-two results worsened. In 1897 the club had gone from seventh to tenth place in the division and instead of being knocked out of the FA Cup in the first round as usual didn't even make it that far, at which point it seems the decision to find a first manager was taken.
Now, whether Thomas Mitchell was tapped up and made himself available or was already so, is not known. Suffice to to say that on 19th March 1897 before the end of the season Arsenal announced he was on his way in and by 30th March Sam Hollis was on his out, clearly believing he was doing it already or had it in him, to manage newly-formed Bristol City and taking three first -team players with him and a fourth going shortly after, all of them Scots. And, whatever, the sequence it is also clear that on arrival Mitchell did not much like what he found. He trimmed the squad to twenty-two, nineteen out plus the four, who had gone to Bristol City, thirteen in, all from Scotland or Lancashire plus from the North-East a new goalkeeper. And there was improvement. In 1897-8 the club made it to the first round of the FA Cup once more and would finish fifth in the league.
Yet, there were also clearly tensions; tensions which seemed to have carried over and proved enough by 10th March 1898, before the end of even a first full season, for Mitchell's departure. Moreover, the same tensions were to persist. When the club then turned to another high profile Secretary, William Elcoat, of Stockton, appointing him on 30th March, 1898 and him starting work 11th April, he would last a month less than even than Mitchell citing, as no doubt the Blackburn man would have, "difficulties with the club's board of directors". And there would be more. Arsenal undeterred went back into the Secretarial market. It recruited Harry Bradshaw of Burnley, who at least was given time. Bringing in a Scottish style of play with short passing and fluid positional movement, in 1904 he, with eighteen of twenty players, including the Scot-Australian,
Jimmy Jackson, his signings, would take the club into the First Division and then also walk, giving as his reason Arsenal's finances, not going far and, as if he needed, again proving his worth. He took over at Fulham in the Southern League, which he then twice won in succession, hired
R.C. Hamilton and
Jimmy Hogan, took the club, chairman, one Henry Norris, into the Football League, to the semi-final of the FA Cup in 1908 and in 1909 stepped down to spend the next dozen years until retirement as Secretary of that same Southern League. Meanwhile, Thomas Brown Mitchell had also been taking it easier. In 1901 he is recorded, aged just fifty eight, as a "Retired Secretary (Football Club)" at home with Sarah at 52, Lynwood Rd. in Blackburn, a terraced house that is still there. And he would die at the age of seventy-seven still in Blackburn in 1921.