John ‘Jack’ Hunter, who was born in the Crookes area of the city in 1851, is being hailed as the ‘Father of the People’s Game’ by the charity Sheffield Home of Football Other than the first ever association club match between Hallam and Sheffield, the 1883 FA Cup final between Blackburn Olympic and the Old Etonians, in which Hunter played, is the most important game in association football history, says Steve Wood, historian and trustee of SHOF. The 2-1 win for Blackburn Olympic marked the first time a northern working-class team had won the FA Cup and the end of the elite upper-class domination of the game, and it was Hunter who took the ‘Sheffield Rules’ to Blackburn to achieve it.
This led to the growth of working-class clubs, the crowds grew and interest soared, and professionalism had arrived. The world was never the same because after 1883, only non-elite clubs won the FA Cup. This was the birthing moment of the ‘people’s game,’ and it was born out of Sheffield’s first footballing sub-culture in 1857-1875, in which Hunter was already a top-class footballer, playing for over twenty local clubs.
