Great friendly win but who were Belfast United?
Can't find any mention of them so were they a representative side, a team of soldiers based in Woolwich, a local side of Irish immigrants?
@NornIrishAddick or anyone out there have more info.
If I can't find it here will have to ask the museum : - )
Comments
The 1923 side might not be linked but worth asking I guess.
Sorry, I'm only in Belfast for work, I live about 70 miles away.
Any more info appreciated.
http://playupliverpool.com/1918/01/15/an-irish-idea-of-juniors/
and this
http://playupliverpool.com/1923/06/16/noted-irish-winger-transferred-to-liverpool/
May have been an historic link to Liverpool rather like Margate had to Arsenal in the thirties.
A more general link which has more plus the two already shown.
http://playupliverpool.com/tag/belfast-united/
and this
http://www.glenniewebdesign.com/IFCP/home.online.no/_smogols/ifcp/clubs/defunctbelfastunited/clubbelfastunited.html
So there they were a club side.
Wonder why we were playing them.
The lifer who wrote "The Charlton Men", I believe is the same person who wrote on Belfast football history for the Football Pink. If you know his username, he may be able to assist.
Taylor also mentions the case of Man Utd's George Anderson who was apparently induced to play for Belfast United with promise of accommodation and a job. (Anderson was later sentenced to 8 months for match fixing scandal whilst playing for MU).
Finally Belfast United applied to join the Football League in August 1922 but (perhaps not surprisingly) turned down. Could explain why 6 months later they were visiting England and playing us.
Would imagine a 10 - 0 thrashing by a third Div south side didn't help their cause.
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A few nuggets of info on Belfast United.
They appeared in 1915, playing in the Belfast and District League (that had replaced the Irish League for the duration of the war). I think there might have been a connection to Belfast Celtic but I can't be certain.
They seem quite ambitious at the start and must have a) been professional and b) had a few quid behind them as early signings included players from teams like Liverpool, Leicester Fosse and Sunderland. They played a friendly at Manchester United in December 1915, drawing 2-2, and had tried to arrange a match at Derby County on the same trip which didn't seem to happen, but clearly they had big ambitions. There is a smattering of friendly matches against English teams in their first decade or so of existence, not to mention players going to and arriving from English clubs.
From what I can tell they went into the Irish Intermediate League after the war, the second tier of Northern Irish football below the Irish League. They applied for admission to the Irish League on at least a couple of occasions, in 1923 and 1925, but were turned down.
They seem to vanish into the mists of history in the mid-thirties; there don't seem to be any references to matches after 1936.
Pic attached from October 1923 - presumably some of these lads would have played against Charlton.
Best
Charlie
Arlene Foster, can you hear me? Arlene Foster, your boys took one hell of a beating 93 years ago.
However I was very interested in @cherryorchard 's information this morning, so I looked up Elisha Scott. Guess what? No mention of Belfast United. According to Joyce, his clubs were Belfast Boys Brigade, Linfield, Broadway United, Liverpool, Belfast Celtic. I wonder whether Belfast United was an alternative name to one of those other clubs.
Good job Len has the Internet and has heard of Google :-(
Phew! Probably enough material here for a PhD ' The role of football in Ireland during World War One, The Easter Rising, Partition and the Irish Civil War' Discuss!!!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beating-Them-Their-Own-Game/dp/1905483104
Apparently the Belfast winger ran him ragged!!
Including Charlton 10 - 0 Belfast Utd 0
More information in Paul's upcoming book on the Addicks before we joined the Football League.
Note the public meeting in Woolwich to support the club's application to join the league as well as the early away travel organised by Co-op
The Valley? No, just Adjoining Charlton Lane and Charlton Lane
And all the buses go to the Village, only trams on what we assume is the Woolwich Road
G F Bass listed here as a linesman was, I believe, a Charlton player
A chance to buy some shares in the club as well as to buy some fish from Arthur Bryant. In other programmes and histories the names of the original Addick is spelt "Bryan" so we assume that this is typo from the then Comms team, who would have got a lot of stick on Charlton Life a the time for the mistake.
Our first team are midtable in the Southern League. Boscombe went on to be Bournemouth and Boscombe and are now AFC Bournemouth but we were mainly playing reserve sides as most southern sides had already jumped ship for the football league. Charlton followed suit that summer
Our reserve side are doing well in the Kent League. Note the military teams (RMLI, RN Depot and Depot RE) and the factory teams (Ordnance and Vickers) along with the more familiar Kent town clubs. Charlton pipped Maidstone for the title by two points.
My father told me takes of waiting outside Gradidge's for autographs of famous cricketer who came to collect their handmade bats and getting caned at school afterwards for turning up late for school because he'd been waiting
To his lasting horror, his mother gave away his bat with all the signatures, and his other toys, while he was away in the army during the war as, as she said "The kids had nothing to play with".