by The Cube »
30 May 2007 19:40
Stoke City's real formation date is 1873. Rotherham's claim of 1870 is also fake - there's an article about it on a fan's webpage somewhere. Basically they've just taken the date of the oldest football club in the town regardless of the fact that there was no connection to the current Rotherham United.
The old "who did they play against" question is of course posed only by execptionally stupid people. Firstly, just because you're the oldest club in existence now does not mean you were the first ever club. Secondly as someone pointed out, games can easily be arranged within the club (basically the same as a golf club might do now).
Reading used to play games between the town players and the countryside players, whilst Maidenhead used to split between different halves of the town (west and east, I think).
The "different rules" suggestion about the Preston game is just complete rubbish.