Since then, the club established themselves as a major force in local and regional football before moving up to national level, winning the FA Cup in 1976 and being founder members of the Premier League in 1992.

[10] The team comprised workers, many of whom had been recruited from northern England, at the Oswald & Mordaunt (later Vosper Thorneycroft) shipyard and played their early games on Southampton Common.

[11] In November 1880, a 19-year-old clerk, Stanley Gibbs, was killed (with a broken spine) as a result of a collapsed scrummage in a rugby match played on Porters Mead (now Queens Park) between Trojans and Romsey Rangers.

The ban was reported in the national press, with the Athletic News declaring that Mr. Cooksey was "maternally disposed" who bore the "senile temerity of bumbledom" upon his face.

[11] The Deanery club folded in 1883, when the Town Council converted Porters Mead into a public park, with the last report being of a match in November 1883.

[17] The parish of St. Mary's had encompassed most of the eastern part of the town of Southampton, including across the River Itchen (what is now Woolston) and northwards to South Stoneham.

[19] The parish contained some of the poorest parts of the town, with in excess of 8,000 parishioners, with the associated problems of violence, drunkenness and prostitution.

The members of the YMA were (according to the St. Mary's Parish Journal of March 1886) "believers in muscular Christianity (who) think that the advantage of strong developed limbs, a supple frame, and a quick eye, cannot be overestimated".

[17] By 1886, the YMA had separate football, cricket, athletics and gymnasium sections as well as its own choral society and an entertainments committee, who organised a series of lectures on a diverse range of subjects.

[17] In early November 1885,a the members of St. Mary's Young Men's Association held a meeting at Grove Street schoolrooms to discuss the formation of a football club.

[10][18] Following the meeting, a match was arranged against Freemantle to be played on the "backfield" of the County Ground in Northlands Road, where the Hampshire Bowling Club was later established.

[21] In the club's 125th season (2010–11), the players wore a stylised version of the original strip, with the "sash" diagonally from right to left.

The third kit being the closest representation to the original sash design worn, the shirt also celebrates the clubs 135th year of its formation back in 1885.

[22] The following report appeared in both the Hampshire Independent and Southampton Times newspapers in the week after the match:c The football club which has just been formed in connection with St. Mary's Young Men's Association, played their first match on Saturday last according to "Association Rules", when they showed that they have among their members the materials with which to form a fairly strong club by practice.

Members of the original side were consulted who came up with this line-up:[5] The reliability of this list of players has been called into question; A. G. Fry is later recorded as playing for Southampton Harriers in two matches against St. Mary's.