PLAY UP You Washers. Come on, knack the dirty Scabs! I have always fancied myself as an Ironopolis diehard. Had Teesside been torn apart on historic fault lines of loyalty come derby day - there would have been hell on in the lower divisions throughout the seventies and eighties - then I am convinced I would have stood with the team that echoed our proud industrial heritage against the suburban glory hunters that backed Boro.
Equally there is no doubt that a town of Boro’s size with two teams would leave the dreams of both fatally flawed, a derby to rank down there with Bristol, Nottingham or Stoke, played only rarely and usually in lower leagues... or in the worse case scenario, a case like Bradford where PA went under after a century of struggle.
The calamitous split that almost killed off Teesside’s football dreams at birth has been put under the microscope by some fascinating new research. Red Book holder and Fly Me To The Moon regular columnist Chris Bartley has examined the formative years of the game in the area in his MA History dissertation “The Evolution of Football In Cleveland In The Second Half of the Nineteenth Century”.
The painstaking research for the degree from the University of Teesside looked at the birth of the game as a winter time killer for the town’s cricket playing rich and powerful, the Corinthian ideals that underpinned the rise of Middlesbrough as a powerhouse of the amateur game and the social and economic dynamics that fostered a rival current that pushed for professionalism and eventually led to the ill-fated premature venture that was Ironopolis.
It shows a town under-going an industrial revolution and a population explosion with the rapidly expanding working classes seizing on football as a diversion and putting them at odds with the founding fathers of the game in the area.
It is a brilliant and worthwhile read that adds flesh to the bones of what little we know and the Nops’ swift demise - the tripe supper myth mainly - and while obviously structured as an academic work it still has plenty of colour: there are tales of shady Ironopolis press gangs making secret cross-border raids to kidnap Scottish professionals and allegations of a “honey trap” baited with a sultry Boro babe to lure an England international from Stoke to Teesside with the promise of easy love and a well paid part-time job as a linen weaver.
The paper - which you can read here and which I discuss in the Gazette here - is a worthy contribution to the social history of the town as much as a though provoking illustration of the game’s pioneers.
It also adds weight to the recent rehabilitation of mighty Ironopolis. The embers of the deep-seated historic hatreds may have long ago died out and the righteous anger and passion sparked by an acrimonious split that brought friends to fisticuffs during “friendlies” in Albert Park have long been forgotten but after being airbrushed out of the Boro picture for a century in a Stalinist rewriting of history, Middlesbrough’s first professional team are gradually being restored to their rightful place in our history.
Ironopolis Engineering financed an insert into the programme two seasons ago to promote their name via historic flashbacks and the Noppy The Pit Pony cartoon character. A film company of the same name launched a gritty Northern drama recently. And last year an old club ledger from the Nops only season in the league went on display at the Riverside as part of an exhibition about the club’s Victorian roots.
By accepting the artefact as part of their own history Boro have made a symbolic gesture and acknowledged the town’s wider footballing past. Ironopolis folded after a single season in the Football League but although the story of the impatient Nops ended quickly and amid chaos it is an important part of the sporting heritage of the town and a vital building block in Boro’s own progress towards success.
Because it was the visionary move by ambitious Ironopolis to leave the amateur ranks and join the infant Football League that convinced the athletic elders of the town that Middlesbrough was indeed ready to embrace the new creed of paid players and prompted the Boro to organise and prepare for professionalism themselves.
But the single Nops season in the league was born of acrimony and ended in bitterness. Ironopolis officials had persuaded their deadly Boro rivals to merge as one powerful club and put in a joint application to the Football League in 1892 as strugglers Darwen and Accrington were forced to reapply Hartlepools-style for re-election.
When that move failed Boro split away again - and earned the nickname ‘the Scabs’ - while Nops - ‘the Washers’ - successfully applied again the following year to join a newly formed second division.
Both clubs in Middlesbrough were already successful and vying for the support of a fast growing fan base. Ironopolis were formed in 1889 and soon became a regional power. They won the Northern League - then including Newcastle, Sunderland and Boro - three years in a row and got to the last eight of the FA Cup in 1892-93 before losing to big boys Preston North End.
They took up residence at the Paradise Ground, now Ayresome Green just off St Barnabas Road in Linthorpe with one corner of the ground just nudging into what was later to become Ayresome Park. Boro at the time played an Alan Kernaghan clearance away at the Old Archery Ground in Albert Park and were soon to move to the Linthorpe Road Ground, behind what is now Kwik Save and between Princes Road and Clifton Street.
The Nops had a respectable debut season. Their first match was a 2-0 defeat at home to fellow new boys Liverpool in front of a healthy crowd of almost 7,000 and they went on to beat Birmingham, Manchester City, Walsall and Port Vale.Their full record and more information can be found on Nigel Gibb's obsessively compiled Nops website .
But off the field the money soon ran out with expensive away trips to Northwich and Crewe while crowds for the visits of Lincoln and Burton dipped as title chasing Boro drew big gates for Northern League derby games with South Bank and Stockton. Sadly, but almost inevitably, Nops folded leaving the field clear for Boro to flourish.
The newly rediscovered Ironopolis registry adds flesh to a fascinating story lost in time and outlines some of the key men who originally brought the game to Middlesbrough. In among the collection of saddlers, ships carpenters and smiths on the list of Nops founders and funders are a pickle maker, a tripe merchant, baker John Forbes after whom the buildings in Linthorpe Road are named, and also, intriguingly, one Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Gibson-Poole. He was later to be the Boro chairman banned from football in 1905 for an erratic approach to book-keeping.
The registry also reveals the finances needed to sustain the newly professional club. Or not. Ironopolis entered the newly formed second division of the Football League in September 1893 along with Liverpool and Newcastle and although they finished safely in mid-table they reluctantly resigned because of the crippling costs and folded soon after.
There were bitter recriminations with Nops diehards accusing the faint-heart Boro splitters of undermining their project from the outset. Firstly, they said the Scabs had reneged on the agreement that professional football would be a joint enterprise. And secondly, that their continued growth - Boro, then wearing white, won the Northern League and reached the FA Amateur Cup semi-final in that fateful season - had split the potential crowd that could finance a thriving team of paid players in the town.
For years afterwards bitterness lingered and arguments raged with the former Nops camp insisting Teesside had lost a chance to match the likes of Newcastle who had merged their rival East End and West End clubs early on to form a successful United. Boro finally joined the Football League in 1899 - ironically with a host of ex-Nops players and officials on board.
The death of Ironopolis was a great pity - not least because it is the most evocative name ever to grace a fixture list. A proud Victorian, self-consciously industrial label with a hint of Fritz Lang. A name that suggests a town that does what it says on the tin. A name that Boro fans should revive and use, in a post-modern ironic way naturally, in response to Smoggy smears.
But the death of the Nops was also sad because it has deprived the town the chance to savour the eager anticipation and heightened passion of a real derby clash. No vain looking 30 or more miles North or South for a contrived rivalry with people talking in alien accents but real workplace banter. And there is nothing more certain than the fact that had they survived I would be a diehard Nops man. You Scabs may be lording it now with your fancy all-seater stadium, your posh new Premiership football and your glory hunting middle class fans but just wait till we draw you in the Cup and get you down the Paradise Ground...
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