How Jewish clubs helped put Sunday football on the FA map

At that time, half a page of the Sheffield football weekly paper, the Star Green ‘Un, was devoted to local football. The doings of the Jewish team often featured. In 1929 the goalscoring prowess of Benny Rosenberg and his brother, who also played for the cricket team, was highlighted after one 7-1 victory over Moorhead. Soon afterwards Benny was praised for scoring “two of the best” against Tramways. There was even a suggestion the big local professional teams were paying attention: “Has [Chesterfield] Manager ‘Teddy’ Davison a fancy for a Sheffield Jewish player?”, the paper asked. (The player was probably Rosenberg.)

But the Jewish club also got into trouble. In May 1928 a meeting of the Sheffield and Hallamshire FA (SHFA) banned all Jewish Athletic players and officials for non-payment of a £1/10/- (£1.50) fine. They paid up and the ban was lifted. In December, the Athletic’s H Turner was banned for a month for striking an opponent. Weeks later Benny Rosenberg was suspended for two months for “bad language and refusing to leave the field…Rest of team cautioned”. “Jewish Athletic will feel the absence of Benny Rosenberg very keenly,” The Green ‘Un noted: he had scored in every game up to his suspension.

Worse was to come. The SHFA Offences Committee found in 1930 that “Jewish Sports” FC had played football on a Sunday and referred the matter to the full Council. It announced the club’s “Officials, Players and Ground suspended sine die [until further notice]. No affiliated Club allowed to play any matches with them.” Presumably the team played at the ground on the best day for Jews to play football, Sunday. Henceforth Sheffield’s Jews played football outside the auspices of the FA.

We do not know the full story of the SHFA’s falling out with the club. Perhaps Rosenberg and Turner had been wound up by antisemitic abuse; perhaps, like many local players every week, they lost their heads in the excitement of the game. Perhaps the fact a Jewish team played on Sundays as well as Thursdays had simply come to the SHFA’s attention; perhaps the SHFA had been keeping an eye on them; perhaps someone shopped them. By 1939 Benny Rosenberg was still active in local sport, but under the auspices of the Sheffield Maccabi Association, described by the press as “catering for the sporting needs of Sheffield and district Jews”. His teammates included Alf Levi, who once captained a YMCA team. Both had given up on football controlled by the FA.

And so had many others, Jew and non-Jew. Countless local football leagues refused to affiliate to the FA. They disliked its rules and regulations, its fees. They wanted to play on Sundays, in a few cases because they were Jewish but in many more cases because Sunday was when they had more time to play. In cities with higher Jewish populations like Manchester, Liverpool and London there were Jewish leagues. There were many more Sunday leagues where Jew and non-Jew alike could play. This was a parallel universe of local football, often very well-organised, that had nothing to do with the FA.

Of course some Jews, unlike Benny Rosenberg, could put up with the FA rulebook. There was always a trickle of well-known Jewish players: Louis Bookman before 1914, Harry Morris banging in goals for Swindon in the 1920s, defender Les Goldberg in the 1930s and 1940s, Mark Lazarus firing QPR to League Cup success in 1967. In local football Wingate was famous as an exclusively Jewish team after the Second World War. Local Jewish businessmen sometimes joined big club boards: the Glikstens were responsible for the turnaround of Charlton Athletic after 1930, while Harry Zussman became chairman of Orient in 1949. All these were having to take part in Saturday football.

But at grassroots level, there was widespread Jewish participation in local football as part of a wider movement that the FA gave up resisting. By the 1950s local footballers had been voting with their feet: Sunday football was getting more and more popular. There were big well-organised Sunday football leagues in London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle: all the big football centres. The FA realised that it either recognised Sunday football, or lost control of the local game.

The critical meetings took place in 1960. The FA met representatives of Sunday football leagues in Birmingham and London. Also present, significantly, were leaders of the Manchester Jewish Soccer League and the Union of Maccabi Associations. The Association of Jewish Youth was also consulted. This recognised the stake Jewish players had in Sunday football. Result: FA rules forbidding and punishing Sunday football were rescinded.

There was an immediate explosion of clubs affiliating to the FA. Jewish clubs across London swelled the new division devoted to Sunday football. Jewish Youth Clubs from East Finchley to Ilford, Edgware to Stepney; Brixton Synagogue Maccabi, Stepney Jewish Lads and, not least, a Jewish Chronicle team. Scores of non-Jewish clubs representing pubs and working-class neighbourhoods and clubs from Catholic, Caribbean and Turkish communities, now affiliated to the FA.

Sunday football meant that FA-controlled football, finally, put inclusion above its older principles. Within ten years a further boost for democracy and inclusivity came when the FA ban on female football was lifted. The persistence and patience of Jewish footballers was neither the only nor the biggest reason why the FA opened football up to everyone. But it played its part. Sixty years on all local players should be grateful. Benny Rosenberg deserves a statue.

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Nicholas Fishwick’s book, Moving The Goalposts: The Transformation of English Football, is published by Polity on October 30