In his book “ Colossus, The True Story of William Foulke”, Graham Phythian gives us some timeline of the early days of Football in Blackwell Parish as he wrote:
It’s round about now (1891) that Blackwell cricket and football teams, playing ad hoc matches against neighbouring collieries, first begin to make their appearance. …..As for the football team, whose home ground was the colliery pitch at Scanderlands, it was strong enough to graduate to the Derbyshire League a couple of years later….It was in the 1892/3 Derbyshire League that Blackwell carried all before them………The Colliery attack ran riot that year. Typical results were :
10-3 v. Alfreton, 4-0 v. Riddings, 9-0 v. Wirksworth, 7-0 v. Ilkeston Town, 7-1 v. Tibshelf ( 3 goals downhill and uphill 4), 10-1 v. Ripley Town, and the campaign was rounded off with a 9-1 rout of Alfreton. This brought the season’s tally to 114 goals for, 29 against.
Most of the housing built in the 1880s in Newton was for the workers at the neighbouring Tibshelf Collieries, and the recorded 7-1 defeat of the Tibshelf Team probably included some Newton lads who went home grim faced on that occasion.
The mine at Blackwell had been opened in 1871, and Tibshelf almost 20 years later, so perhaps Tibshelf hadn’t had the same time to develop a team. (If you live in Newton, that’s what you can claim!)
The two photographs here are the earliest we have of the Blackwell FC and Newton Rovers FC and are both from the 1906/7 season. From the background in the Newton picture, it appears that the photo was taken around about where the Newton Trail is now, with Main Street and Shooters Row on the horizon and Shooters cottage on the right.
