Thank God for Everton

With the upcoming move to Bramley-Moore and all the success it will hopefully bring, not only on the pitch but from a business perspective too, I thought now would be a good time to look back on the foundation of our great club, before it became fully professional and moved into their first prosperous built football ground.

In the winter of 1863, a group of public school 'old boys' gathered in London with an ambitious aim: to create a unified set of rules for the game of football. What emerged from this meeting would become the foundation of association football. For a time, it remained a gentleman’s game, largely confined to the elite—until a new force began to stir.

Evangelical reformers, particularly from the upper middle classes, saw in football a chance to uplift the working man. Their motivations were often religious and idealistic, shaped by the growing ethos of Muscular Christianity.

But idealism would soon meet pragmatism. As men from industrial towns and urban slums took to the game, they brought their own values and needs. Rational recreation gave way to commercialism; the love of sport was accompanied by the desire for success and compensation.

By the late 1870s, this cultural shift was unmistakable in the north of England, especially in east Lancashire, where clubs began to import talent from afar—paying men quietly, sometimes under the table, in direct defiance of the amateur code. The Netflix drama The English Game captures this crucial transformation.

Back in Liverpool, the city’s sporting scene had long been dominated by rugby. The game of association football had yet to take root. But football’s presence may have lingered in the local memory far earlier than records suggest.

In the 1830s, the historian Robert Syers recorded an annual game played in Folly Field, Everton. It resembled the traditional, chaotic folk football played across England for centuries. These games—often wild, free-for-alls—were slowly stamped out by the magistracy in the name of public order. Yet their spirit lingered.

A new chapter in Liverpool’s sporting life began with the arrival of young curates from Cambridge University—athletes, missionaries, and reformers rolled into one. Among them was 25-year-old Alfred Keeley, son of a successful Nottingham merchant and recent graduate of St John's College, Cambridge.

In 1877, he took up a post as curate at St. John’s in Bootle, one of the city's dockland parishes. With football in his blood and a cause in his heart, he soon established Bootle Football Club—Everton’s earliest and fiercest rival.

Keeley was not alone. Christopher Carter had captained the Sedbergh School cricket team and rowed for his college. Richard Marsh, the son of a Plaistow clergyman, had attended the City of London School alongside future Prime Minister H.H. Asquith.

Marsh may have seen early matches by C.W. Alcock’s Forest FC, just a few miles from his East London home. These men brought with them not only a passion for sport but a belief in its power to transform lives. Inspired by Muscular Christianity and Christian Socialism, they sought to bring football to Liverpool’s working-class youth.

Among these reformers, none would leave a greater legacy than Reverend Ben Swift Chambers. In 1870, three struggling Methodist New Connexion chapels in Liverpool merged. From their union rose the St Domingo’s Chapel, whose foundation stone was laid on 12 September that year by Joseph Wade. He was joined by Henry Cuff as a trustee. Both men had sons who would play crucial roles in the birth of Everton Football Club.

Alfred Wade, Joseph’s son, became one of Everton’s earliest players and later a director. Will Cuff, Henry’s son, would go on to guide the club through some of its most defining decades.

In 1877, Chambers arrived at St Domingo’s, a 32-year-old minister from Stocksmoor near Huddersfield. A strong believer in Muscular Christianity, he formed a cricket team the following year. Its members—young men aged 13 to 24—included Alfred Wade, Will Cuff, and John Douglas.

To stay fit during winter, they turned to football. The dribbling game, as it was then called, was safer and simpler than rugby, and more suited to the moral aspirations of the clergy. Rugby, with its violence and rough edges, seemed ill-fitted to the task of moral reform. Just across the street from St Domingo’s stood St Saviour’s, where Reverend Edward Moseley also supported a church team—Everton United Church Club.

The seeds of something bigger were being sown. At first, the St Domingo’s footballers played amongst themselves on the southeast corner of Stanley Park. Their early matches were described as "of a most elementary character." But in time, they sought new opponents—St Mary’s, St Peter’s, Everton United Church, and Bootle St John’s. From those modest beginnings, a club was born.

On 20 October 1879, the Liverpool Daily Courier reported the first known match: St Domingo FC defeated Everton United Church Club 1–0. The team’s kit, believed to be blue and white stripes, left no record of scorers or line-ups—football had not yet earned the reverence the press reserved for cricket.

A month later, in the Queen’s Head Hotel on Village Street, a pivotal meeting was held. St Domingo’s had grown beyond its Methodist roots. Talented players, many with no chapel affiliation, had joined the ranks. A new name was needed—one that could speak to the whole community. They chose Everton Football Club.

The Queen’s Head became their first headquarters, and John William Clarke, the well-educated son of the pub’s landlord, was appointed the club’s first secretary. Clarke was a schoolmaster turned engineer—precisely the sort of man who could handle the growing organisational demands.

Everton’s first match under its new name came on 23 December 1879: a 6–0 victory over St Peter’s. The return fixture on 24 January 1880 ended 4–0 to Everton, and the earliest known team line-up was recorded—featuring a 2–2–6 formation.

Another name that must be mentioned from those early days is Tom Evans, a close friend of Clarke’s. Both men had roots on the Derbyshire–Nottinghamshire border and shared an enthusiasm for the game. Evans, a former Chesterfield player, worked as an accountant for the Midland Railway Company and would later share secretarial duties with Clarke.

By 1881, Everton’s progress on the field was matched by its ambition off it. The club secured the services of Jack McGill, a brilliant forward and coach from Glasgow Rangers. Elected captain, McGill inspired his teammates and earned representative honours for both Lancashire and his native Ayrshire. Under his leadership, the 1881–82 season was outstanding: 22 games played, 15 wins, 3 losses, 4 draws; 70 goals scored, just 16 conceded.

But success brought its own challenges. Stanley Park was a public space, and while Everton regularly drew crowds of 800 to 1,500, no admission fees could be charged.

The club’s committee met in March 1882 at the Sandon Hotel to address this problem. They had tried financing the club through membership fees, but expenses were piling up—informal payments to players (still technically amateur), travel to away games, and equipment costs.

Everton needed a home of its own.

At that meeting, a man named Mr Cruitt offered a solution. He owned a field adjoining his home off Priory Road, and he offered its use to the club.

In 1883, Everton moved. It was a modest shift in geography—but a giant leap in identity. Everton was no longer just a church team. It was becoming a football club in the truest sense of the word—rooted in its community, driven by ambition, and destined for greatness.

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