CCFC Programme Corner: 1939 – When City & Villa Contested Lord Mayor’s Cup In Brum!

One of CCFPA’s aims is to protect and promote the heritage of Coventry City Football Club. For many years CCFC’s Official Historian Jim Brown (who is also CCFPA chairman) and CCFPA Committee member Mike Young have been curating complete images of any home and away programmes involving the club up to the end of World War II. They have now amassed just over 700 issues from 1908-1945 and are always looking out for items to fill in the gaps in their collection. An interesting addition to our collection comes from just before the outbreak of war which we share with you now.

Between the wars many football clubs played benefit games to aid various charities and often challenge cups were put up by sponsors both public and private as an award for the competiting times. Civic pride sometimes meant the dignatories of towns and cities put their names to the cups presented to the winners of such challenge matches for charities and both Birmingham and Coventry’s mayors instituted such a competition for a period. The Lord Mayor of Birmingham’s (Charity) Cup was of of the oldest instituted, in fact predating (just) the foundation of CCFC (or rather their predecessor club Singers FC) in 1883 and indeed the Football League itself (1888)!

Founded in 1882 and going 57 years already by the time of this game between Aston Villa and Coventry City on 13th May 1939 the organisers (the Council of the Birmingham County FA) issued an invitation to two leading member clubs in the area to an annual contest with net profits going to nominated charities. Both clubs had to guarantee their strongest side and only the Great War (1914-18) and the General Strike (1926) prevented the game. If the result was a draw at full time extra time could be played or the trophy was to be shared! Villa won the cup in its first three seasons (and many other times subsequently). It fluctuated between being contested at the start and the end of each football season. 

The other teams invited to take part included the likes of Walsall Town Swifts, Small Heath and Wednesbury Old Athletic (in the earlier days) as well as, many times overall, Wolverhampton Wanderers, West Bromwich Albion, Birmingham and, strangely, Sheffield United once in 1896! In fact this was only the second time CCFC had been invited to compete, the previous time being the previous season (1938-39) when City shared the trophy with Birmingham after a 1-1 draw. Even though this was the first weekend after the season had ended this was a full sixteen page edition of the pre-eminent programme of its day, ‘The Villa News & Record’ packed full of information for the purchaser (it cost two old pence)!

Alf Wood

The Villa were First Division club who had finished twelfth and CCFC had finished fourth in Division Two. As far as the game itself is concerned the two sides were as per programme (left) except that our goalkeeper Bill Morgan (who later became City trainer) was replaced by Alf Wood – who also became CCFC’s trainer and emergency ‘keeper again in 1958-59 when he played a dozen games for the club aged 43!

Harry Storer

The ‘Bantams’ as City were nicknamed then, managed by legendary ‘gaffer’ Harry Storer were:-

Alf Wood, Jack Astley, Charlie Elliott, Billy Frith, George Mason (c), Harry Boileau, George Ashall, Tommy Green, Tom Crawley, Ellis Lager and Lol Coen

Sadly, the City lost the game 1-0 in front of a surprisingly small Villa Park crowd of less than 5,000 thanks to a fortieth minute goal from Villa’s winger Albert Kerr. 

In amongst the copious detail within the programme was news that the previous week the Villa had travelled to East Anglia to defeat Ipswich Town 3-2 to bring back the Ipswich Hospitals Cup (also for Charity) and the amazing stat that across all the Villa teams in all competitions (D1, Central, J.O.C., Combination, Central and various cup competitions) they had scored 563 goals that season!

The Cup

The following season (1939-40) only lasted until the first week of September before WW2 was declared, the ‘proper’ League system was closed down until 1945-46 and many footballer’s careers were blighted or finished (and of course some gave their lives to their country! The Birmingham Cup was not resurrected again until 1961-62 and 1963-64 when in both seasons the ‘Birmingham Charity Cup’ was offered as the prize for a match between the youth teams of Birmingham City and the Villa. From then on the competition was discontinued completely and the trophy used for the Birmingham Senior Amateur Cup competition!

If you have a pre WW2 programme that you think might fill a gap in our collection please let us know through the contacts page and we will check and if we have not already got an image of it we will request one from you (or arrange to do it for you).

Thanks to CCFPA’s Mike Young for researching the srticle and sourcing the images