For the first six years, the club had been restricted at first to friendly matches and then in cup tournaments organised by the Hampshire Football Association.

In 1890–91, they had moved up to the Hampshire Senior Cup, which they had also won, with a victory over a team from the Royal Engineers based at Aldershot.

The match at Warmley passed without incident with Ernie Nicholls scoring the club's first goal in the FA Cup as St. Mary's progressed to the second qualifying round.

[3] For the first FA Cup match to be staged in Southampton, the St. Mary's committee "pulled out all the stops" to make sure that the Antelope Ground met the standards expected of a venue for the country's top football tournament, although the local press complained of the poor facilities, not having a covered press box, and there were problems with the pitch markings.

[2] Delamotte opened the scoring from the Saints' first attack before Fleming's aggressive style of play earned him a hat-trick[6] en route to a 7–0 victory.

[4] At the reception after the match, the Reading secretary (Mr. H. Walker) asked for, and received, an advance of £3 on the share of the gate money.

[3] With this he immediately sent a telegram of protest accompanied by the necessary fee of 2 guineas[4] to the Football Association claiming that the Saints had fielded illegally registered players in Fleming and McMillan.

agreed that St. Mary's "had acted in perfect good faith in the matter" they had not complied with the requirements of Rule 5 and were thus expelled from the competition.

innocent of wilful intent, they are punished severely, and added to this, is the feeling that Reading acted in anything but a sportsmanlike manner in this affair".

[8] On 18 April 1892, St. Mary's played their final friendly of the season at the County Ground against an army select side from the Aldershot Division.

For this match, the Saints gave a debut to Charles Miller, a 17-year-old from Brazil who was a schoolboy at Banister Court School.