Promotion to the top tier followed as they won the 1907–08 Second Division title and then they went on to win the 1911 FA Cup final, which remains the club's only major honour.

They entered Europe and reached the semi-finals of the UEFA Intertoto Cup in 2000–01 but ended the campaign with relegation from the Premier League.

The club's home ground is the 24,840-capacity Valley Parade, which was the site of the Bradford City stadium fire on 11 May 1985, which took the lives of 56 supporters.

Four days later, at the 23rd annual meeting of Manningham FC, the committee decided to change codes from rugby league to association football.

Bradford City Association Football Club were formed without having played a game, taking over Manningham's colours of claret and amber, and their Valley Parade ground.

[13][14] Back in the Second Division, attendances dropped and City struggled for form,[15] with five consecutive finishes in the bottom half of the table.

[13] Two seasons later, O'Rourke, who had initially retired in 1921 following the death of his son, returned and guided City to promotion with a record haul of 128 goals.

[17] City won their third piece of silverware two seasons later, when they lifted the Third Division North Challenge Cup, but they were unable to defend the trophy because competitive football was suspended for the Second World War.

[22] With 34 goals from David Layne, City nearly earned promotion the following season 1961–62, but did also suffer a record 9–1 defeat to Colchester United.

There followed three difficult seasons during which time manager Grenville Hair died following a heart attack in training, City returned to the Third Division after getting promoted in 1968–69.

[25] City failed to win promotion for three successive seasons, until the board appointed former England centre back Roy McFarland as manager in May 1981.

[26] Cherry, with former teammate Terry Yorath as his assistant manager, failed to win for two months, but eventually the pair guided City to safety from relegation.

However, City's triumph was overshadowed when the main stand at Valley Parade caught fire during the final game of the season, killing 56 people.

In January 1994, Geoffrey Richmond came from Scarborough to take over as chairman,[33] and promised to guide City to the Premier League within five years.

[33] Lawrence left after little more than a year to join Luton Town but his successor, Chris Kamara, took City to the play-offs and their first game at Wembley Stadium.

[36][37] The following season, Jewell continued to defy the critics, who labelled his team Dad's Army, by avoiding relegation again on the last day with a 1–0 victory over Liverpool, with a goal from David Wetherall.

His assistant Chris Hutchings was promoted to the manager's position,[39] and despite a series of new expensive signings,[40][41] he was sacked by November 2000, with City second from bottom of the league.

[50][51] McCall eventually left Bradford City on 8 February 2010 following a board meeting after a run of poor results.

[56] On 24 January 2015, Bradford City caused an upset by beating Premiership leaders Chelsea 4–2 away in the FA Cup.

Having originally worn black shirts with white shorts, the club's first game in claret and amber was against Hull on 20 September 1884, at Carlisle Road.

[69] The club's away shirt has traditionally been white and to a lesser extent also blue, but there has been a profusion of other colours and designs particularly in more recent years.

[citation needed] The "Bantams" nickname is thought to have become popular during the First World War, when the club's stadium Valley Parade was used as a recruiting station for the West Yorkshire Regiment which was raising Pals Battalions, with some of them called "Bantams Battalions" due to the short height of many of the recruits being, between 5ft (1.5m) tall and no more than 5ft 3in (1.6m).

[73] When Bradford City were formed in 1903, they took over the ground at Valley Parade, which was also at this time the headquarters of The 2nd West Riding Brigade Royal Field Artillery (Territorial Force), playing their first home game on 5 September 1903 against Gainsborough Trinity, drawing a crowd of 11,000.

[7][74] Five years later, the club won promotion to the First Division, and so commissioned football architect Archibald Leitch to redevelop the ground.

Club officials first closed part of the stand in 1952, as a result of the Burnden Park disaster six years earlier.

[82] The club spent £2.6 million building a new main stand and improving the Kop and reopened the new ground on 14 December 1986 for an exhibition match against an England international XI.

In 1996, following City's promotion to Division One, club chairman Geoffrey Richmond announced the construction of a 4,500 seater stand on the Midland Road side.

The club won the Perform Best Fan Marketing campaign category in The Football League Awards for the scheme and earned them an invitation to the Houses of Parliament.

[106] According to a survey conducted in August 2019, Bradford City fans also see Burnley, Barnsley and Oldham Athletic as rivals.

In 2007 former Telegraph & Argus sports journalist David Markham released the book The Legends of Bradford City, initially written to mark the club's centenary in 2003.