A handful of games into the new season and it seems already that for us Saints fans it will be another season bereft of silverware. Not that we had much of a chance of the league title anyway which – Leicester aside – has only been won by a team from either London, or Manchester all the way back to 1995.
So perhaps there is an element of grasping at straws in this act of historical revisionism, but if we can’t win league titles in the present day then at least give us our due for the league titles we won in the past, but which seem today to have been all but forgotten.
It was back in April 1899 that a special train pulled into Southampton’s Docks Station at 10:30pm, carrying the team which had just won the league following a thrilling 4-3 victory over Bristol City in a winner-takes-all title decider. Despite the late hour the team were greeted by crowds of townsfolk as well as the town band, all eager to greet the league champions.
This though was not the championship of the Football League, but the Southern League and whilst this may not have had any effect on the undoubted enthusiasm of the crowd present at the time it has meant that over the years the teams feat – and those of others- has been gradually eroded from memory.
Established in 1894 the Southern League was in effect a parallel competition to the Football League, which had been running since 1888. It was a necessity as with the Football League being based in the industrial north any clubs from the South of England wishing to join faced exceptionally high travel costs whilst for their part the northern clubs were similarly reluctant to embark on long journeys south. For the game to develop in the South however, clubs required regular league competition. The clear answer to this problem was to set up an alternative, Southern-based, football league competition and such was the appetite for such a contest enough clubs came forward for a second division to be formed.
The first team to win the new contest were Millwall Athletic, a feat which they followed up in the league’s second season however, they were denied a third title when they were beaten into second place by Southampton (then known as Southampton St. Marys). Southampton, a boomtown experiencing rapid growth on the back of the docks and the railway – soon came to dominate the league, and their victorious return to the Docks Station in 1899 in fact marked their third consecutive championship.
Consult the Nationwide Football Annual, or the Sky Sports Football Yearbook however, and in the clubs honours section none of their six Southern League titles, gained between 1897 and 1904 gets a mention.
One possible reason for this collective memory slip is that of the two contests the Southern League is often regarded as inferior to the Football League. Whilst perhaps the Southern League lacked the strength in depth of its older sibling it did boast a number of clubs who were more than equal with their northern counterparts. As the only truly national competition at the time the FA Cup provides a unique insight into relative strength and in his book Vain Games of No Value?: A Social History of Association Football in Britain During its First Long Century Terry Morris points out that between 1894-95 and 1919-20 Southern League sides notched up 63 victories in the Cup over First Division clubs and a further 54 victories over second division sides.
Southampton had themselves collected several prominent Football League scalps, defeating Football League royalty Bolton Wanderers 4-0 in 1898 and knocking out reigning Football League champions Liverpool en-route to the 1902 final. In three years from 1900 to 1902 the cup final included a Southern League side on each occasion; Southampton themselves, in 1900 and 1902 and Tottenham in 1901, who defeated Sheffield United 3-1 in a replay.
Without a doubt, this period, around the turn of the century, was the Southern League’s high-point, leading to sentiment such as that expressed by some in the London press calling for a re-organisation of the Football League’s First Division to accommodate Southern League clubs.
Had the two leagues had come together at this point it is quite conceivable that Southern league titles might today carry equal weight to the Football League titles of the era however, it was not to be. And though the Southern League called a meeting with the Football League in 1907 to discuss a new national league ‘on the basis of fusion between the Football League and the Southern League’ the moment for such a merger had already passed by.
By that point the application of wage limits in football acted to stem the flow of top players who could no longer gain an advantage by switching to the Southern League and a decline was evident at clubs such as Southampton. Results in the Charity Shield, which from 1908 until 1912 was contested by the winners of the respective leagues, also revealed a growing disparity and was only once claimed by a Southern League Club when Brighton defeated Aston Villa 1-0 in 1910.
From this position of strength the Football League seemed content to rebuff all further attempts by the Southern League at merging, instead opting to cherry-pick the best Southern League clubs, this included the then Southern-League runners-up Bristol City in 1901, champions Fulham in 1907, Tottenham in 1908 and West Ham in 1919.
When the two league’s did come together shortly after the war it was far the marriage of equals that it may have been had it taken place a few years prior. Rather than a merger the Football League simply absorbed the Southern League’s first division as its newly created third tier, leaving the Southern League with primarily reserve teams.
In doing this the football league achieved two things. It had categorically established its pre-eminence over the Southern League and in finally reaching the South Coast the Football League had created England’s first truly national league football competition. The manner of this final victory however, resulted in the devaluation of the honours gained by clubs such as Southampton, Tottenham, Fulham, Bristol Rovers, Portsmouth – particularly unjust for Southampton whose victories came principally during the Southern League’s competitive nadir at the turn of the century.
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