Love and Suter, the first professional football players
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I am writing this blog for one reason. I have seen Netflix’s TV series “The English game” from 2020. Since I knew a little about the history of Love and Suter, I reacted with factual errors in the TV series. After delving a little more, the whole TV series is as wrong as it gets. I will write a little about what actually happened.
Fergus Suter
The first football player we can say with 100% certainty was professional was Fergus Suter. But there is reason to believe that his friend Jimmy Love actually got paid to play football a little earlier.
In the Netflix series, it was told that Suter and Love traveled together from Patric in Scotland to Darwen. It also emerged in the series that they received money to play in Darwen. Fergus Suter himself confirmed many years later that he was paid to play for Darwen. But the truth is that he did not travel with Jimmy Love as it appeared from the TV series for Netflix. Love went a little earlier to Darwin.
Netflix with the wrong FA cup final
It is true as it appears in the TV series that Fergus Suter after some time in Darwen went to Blackburn to play there. What Netflix misses is that really a big mistake. There were two teams in Blackburn. In the Netflix series, it is stated that Blackburn was the first working-class club to win the FA Cup. That’s right, the problem is that it was Blackburn Olympic, while Fergus Suter played for Blackburn Rovers. In other words, Fergus Suter did not win the FA Cup in 1883. Fergus Suter won the FA Cup the following year, that is in 1884 in the cup final against Queen’s Park (The Scottish club must not be confused with Queen’s Park Rangers).
Jimmy Love
For a long time, Jimmy Love was a person who just disappeared. No one showed exactly where he went. Not until Scottish Sport History in 2016 could document who Jimmy Love was and where he went.
There had long been contacts between the Scottish club Patric and the English club Darwen. Both Jimmy Love and Fergus Suter played for Patric. But in Scotland all was not well for Jimmy Love.
Scottish Sport History believes that Jimmy Love is actually the first professional footballer. He went to Darwen a little before Suter. Strong evidence suggests that he received payment. But the reason he went to Darwen was dramatic. A warrant had been issued for his arrest after he failed to appear at a bankruptcy court. In short, the whole family experienced a financial tragedy after the father was declared bankrupt. Jimmy Love also had creditors on his neck, but did not appear in a bankruptcy court on 21 November 1878. He had gone to Darwen. With the contacts between Darwin and Patrick, it went well.
Done with football
Jimmy Love stopped playing football rather suddenly after just one year at Darwen. But in that time he had managed to become a crowd favorite and a dangerous goalscorer.
For many years Jimmy Love seemed to just be gone. No one really showed what happened to him until Scottish Sport History, after much work, was able to document that he enlisted in the Navy and went to Egypt. This was on 24 August 1880. Jimmy Love died in a military hospital in Egypt in 1882 after falling ill.
In the Netflix series it is stated that he got married in Darwen and that he was badly injured in the foot and had to stop playing football. This is simply not true.
Big mistakes in Netflix
I am very doubtful that a TV series that is supposed to base its action on an actual story contains so many gross errors. It is fair enough that certain artistic considerations can be taken to make the series a little more dramatic, or to emphasize certain events. But in my terms, the historical errors here are so gross it’s almost unbelievable. To pretend that Fergie Suter won the FA Cup as the first club from the working class is completely wrong. They clearly thought that Blackburn Rovers and Blackburn Olympic were the same team.
Netflix does a good job, in my opinion, of portraying the tension between the “society” teams that had dominated English football until 1883 and the working-class clubs.