Wanderers | Retro Football Shirts

Retro WANDERERS 1872 FA UP WINNERS Football shirt

Retro WANDERERS 1872 FA UP WINNERS Football shirt

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The Wanderers Football Club were an amateur football club based in Battersea, Wandsworth, London, and were one of the leading clubs in English football in the 1860s and 1870s. They are most notable for having won the first ever FA Cup final, in 1872, and the competition another four times during the rest of the 1870s. Initially formed as Forest Football Club (not to be confused with Nottingham Forest) in 1859 and based in Leytonstone, London, they were a founder member of The Football Association in 1863. They adopted the title of Wanderers a year later, after "wandering" across London to Battersea Park. The team consisted mostly of ex-public schoolboys, and was captained by Charles Alcock, who was also chairman of the FA from 1870 to 1895 and the original proponent of the FA Cup. Other members included A. G. Guillemard, the "father" of the Rugby Football Union. They are chiefly noted for winning the first-ever FA Cup final, held at the Kennington Oval, London, on March 16, 1872. They beat the Royal Engineers 1-0, the winning goal scored by Morton Betts, under the pseudonym A.H. Chequer. In all they won the cup five times in its first seven seasons, between 1872 and 1878, and even as of 2007 the club remains equal eighth in the list of all-time winners of the FA Cup. Though The Wanderers never had a permanent home ground (as their name suggests), they are known to have played at Lillie Bridge and Battersea Park. The club was eventually disbanded in 1883, by which time individual schools had set up their own clubs (such as Old Etonians and Old Carthusians).