Professionalism in association football

[10] Though professionalism was not permitted, Olympic arranged jobs for their players, and supplemented their income with additional payments, a common occurrence among Lancashire clubs.

[11] In 1880, a dispute began between the FA and Bolton Wanderers (founded in 1874), who had unofficially offered professional terms to Scottish players.

[12] The differences between the amateur idealists from southern England and the increasingly professionalised teams from northern industrial towns came to a head in 1884.

The protest gathered momentum to the point where more than 30 clubs, predominantly from the north, announced that they would set up a rival British Football Association if the FA did not permit professionalism.

[17] In the inaugural season of the Football League (1888–89), champions Preston North End fielded ten Scottish professionals.

[20] The wealthy mine owner Samuel Tyzack funded the professional advancement of the club, often pretending to be a priest while scouting for players in Scotland, as Sunderland's recruitment policy enraged many Scottish fans who supported the amateur ethos.

[24][25] The Scottish Football League launched on an amateur basis in 1890 but the nation's most famous club and founders of both the passing and international game, Queen's Park, initially refused to participate as they predicted that professionalism would follow.

This suspicion proved correct, with bans issued to clubs for making payments or playing against others who had, and clear indicators that the likes of newly-formed Celtic's accumulation of some of the best talent in the country involved unofficial financial incentives.

Football clubs were no exception, and they were mostly linked to trade unions or government offices, with players being written down as workers of those particular industries.