[1] Comprising mainly former pupils of the leading English public schools, the club was among the most dominant of the early years of organised football[a] and won the FA Cup, the sport's first formal competition, five times between 1872 and 1878.
[13][14] It was the first of three consecutive cup final wins for the team; Hubert Heron, Alfred Stratford, William Lindsay, and Jarvis Kenrick played in all four matches, including the drawn game in 1876.
Kenyon-Slaney became a Member of Parliament,[19] Kinnaird, in addition to his lengthy career in football administration, was a director of Barclays Bank and Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland,[9] and Albert Meysey-Thompson was a barrister and held the post of Queen's Counsel.
^ Developing out of earlier related ball games with varying, often informal, rules, the sport of association football was officially codified for the first time in 1863.
[53] c. ^ Kinnaird's figure of two goals includes one in the 1878 final which is credited to him in modern sources but for which contemporary newspaper reports do not definitively identify the scorer.