... This sort of dedication could be labelled ‘savage enthusiasm’, which happens to be the title of a new book by Paul Brown on the history of football fans. Brown takes his title from a report in the Pall Mall Gazette of the 1888 FA Cup final between West Bromwich Albion and Preston North End at the Kennington Oval in London.
There were 20,000 there, up from 2,000 in the previous decade, as football’s popularity mushroomed. The report referred to interest in the result far beyond Kennington — ‘in dozens of murky towns in Lancashire, Yorkshire and the Midlands, to say nothing of Scotland’. By 1901 there would be more than 110,000 for the Tottenham v Sheffield United final at Crystal Palace. ...
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