I go along with professor Collins too, but the 2007 shirts (and other merchandise sold at the time) make it a bit difficult to now say the club was actually founded in 1863, at least without appearing to be money grubbing and only looking to another marketing opportunity.

Much as I (and others) may disagree I think, for the sake of credibility, the club has to stick with 1907, even though, as the rugby actually carried on throughout, the only thing which was founded on that date was the Park Avenue soccer club, and which IIRC is the date they recognise (or, at least, the date recognised by the 'old' Park Avenue club.

Completely agree but the club have stuck their neck out and decided for some reason to stick with 1907. If they make an about turn and change their minds it will make to club look rather silly!!!

I'm sure that if it presented a marketing opportunity and a chance to increase revenue the club would be able to put a spin on it.

Well, in terms of rugby heritage, it counts, even if they don't want to use it as a 'club' event. '150 years of rugby in Bradford' , not sure how they wore the old RA&B back in those days, but It sounds OK to me.

[size=50So long as they get them in the right order..........[/size

I agree with Bulliac, anything that presents a marketing opportunity should be exploited and '150 years of Rugby in Bradford' sounds like an opportunity to me

A replica of the exact shirt worn back in 1863 would be a great move, perhaps used as a 'third kit' for the season or worn for the match nearest the exact anniversary of the first ever match. In fact, if the club asked far enough in advance, we could probably get a match on the exact date. Who were the opposition? Maybe we could even play the same team (assuming its not Broughton Rangers or Heckmondwike or some other long defunct outfit)

It would also be good to be planning a really comprehensive and wonderfully illustrated club history, by which I mean one that has more than two pages on the first 50 years of the club

And we'll probably be playing at Valley Parade by then, the way things are going, so we could exploit the whole Manningham connection. In fact why not just go the whole hog and present the move to VP as a positive attempt to 'get back to our roots'

I'll put my tin hat on now

Yeah you're probably right Mat. I never liked history at school

According to [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_football_clubsthis[/url, the Bradford club is the 37th oldest football club of any kind anywhere in the world. Not counted but at a glance there are only two or three in the entire football league that are older.

A bit more honorific than centenaries invented by a well meaning marketing dept, even if we did get a nice jersey out of it.

If they are the oldest regby league club then who did they play in the first season?


They must have walked the league that year....

What is it with this 1907 centenary invention stuff. I would say that it's more credible than the 1863 one. The original Bradford club switched to Association Football and a new club was formed, hence the 1907 claim seems quite right.

As I said previously, i'd love us to be the oldest club but given what I have read we're not.

In 1907 [ipart[/i of the 'old' club moved to soccer and another [ipart[/i about one third of the original members stayed with rugby. Nothing actually ended, so they didn't start another rugby club, it was a split: they kept the rugby kit, their membership of the Northern Union and the historic timeline was continuous, many of the old committee were still running the club and the rugby fans remained. They moved to a new ground and decided to change the name to Northern, but the only new entity to be born on that fateful day in 1907 was the Park Avenue soccer club.

I would suggest that 1963/4, when the company running the club folded and fixtures were left unfulfilled, was more of an ending and new beginning than 1907. Not that companies folding, grounds changing or other physical and financial events can ever end the continuity that is the 'club'.

For what it's worth I don't know which is the oldest club and there is no true reason to believe it was Bradford. You have to remember that clubs in the early 19th century didn't necessarily major on paperwork. Virtually all would have been loosely organised clubs of friends or people with similar interests and wouldn't have left a great paper trail behind them. The 1863 date for instance, isn't an actual date of formation, it's merely the date of the earliest evidence that people were playing a handling version what would have then been called football. The actual foundation of the club may well have been before that, and in fact probably was.

That's correct, there is no connection between the old Bradford FC (original name of Northern/Bulls) and Manningham (later BCFC). I don't know why this keeps coming up.