Football may be the world’s biggest professional sport, but it was not always a career. In the nineteenth century, association football was officially an amateur game. Players were expected to work during the week and represent their clubs in their spare time. Paying someone to play could lead to punishment from the Football Association.
That began to change as working-class clubs became more ambitious and crowds grew. At the centre of this transformation was Fergus Suter, a Scottish stonemason who moved to Lancashire and became one of the first footballers to make a living from the sport. His story is not completely free from uncertainty, but there is strong evidence that Suter was paid to play years before professionalism was formally legalised.
From Glasgow Stonemason to Footballer
Fergus Suter was born in Glasgow in 1857 to an Irish immigrant family. His father was a stonemason, and Suter followed him into the trade. He grew up in Partick, where football was becoming increasingly popular among working-class men. Suter played for Partick from the mid-1870s alongside his brother Edward and fellow footballer James Love.
Scottish teams had developed a more sophisticated style of football based around passing and combination play. Strange as it may sound, passing was almost considered contrary to the spirit of the game back then! English football was more direct, with individual players dribbling the ball forward. Lancashire clubs became increasingly interested in Scottish players because they could bring this new approach with them.
Suter’s move south was helped by circumstances away from football. In 1878, the City of Glasgow Bank collapsed, causing enormous financial problems across Scotland. Suter appears to have lost his employment as a stonemason, while a strike by Partick masons made finding work even harder. After his former teammate Love had already moved to Darwen in Lancashire, Suter followed him in late 1878, officially arriving as a stonemason. However, he would spend very little time working with stone.
Was Fergus Suter Really the First Professional?
Calling Suter the first professional footballer requires some qualification. Professionalism did not officially exist at the time, and clubs were forbidden from paying players. There were also other players who benefited from money, employment arrangements or time away from work.
However, Suter later provided unusually strong evidence about how he and Love were compensated at Darwen. In a 1902 interview with the Lancashire Daily Post, he explained that they had no fixed wage but could approach the club treasurer when they needed money. They might go several weeks without payment before receiving £10.
That was a significant amount when ordinary workers earned considerably less. Suter also stopped working as a stonemason shortly after arriving in Darwen. Contemporary accounts suggested that he was effectively earning his living from football, even though the arrangement remained officially against the rules.
Some historians therefore describe him as the first professional footballer. Others are more cautious because similar arrangements existed elsewhere and the evidence is incomplete. It is safer to say that Suter was one of the earliest, and arguably the first clearly documented, footballers to earn a living directly from playing.
The Darwen Revolution
Suter made an immediate impact at Darwen. He played his first match for the club in November 1878 and quickly became one of its most important players. His arrival, alongside Love, helped transform the team’s fortunes. The pair introduced the combination style they had learned in Scotland. Instead of relying on individual players to run with the ball, Darwen began using passing to move around opponents.
The difference was clear in the 1879 FA Cup. Darwen faced the powerful Old Etonians in the quarter-finals, a club associated with the country’s wealthy elite. At half-time, Darwen were losing 5-1, yet they produced an extraordinary comeback to draw 5-5. The comeback was ultimately in vain, though, as they lost the second replay 6-2 to the eventual champions. Still, taking the Old Etonians to two replays showed that the northern clubs could compete against the established southern sides.
Move to Blackburn
Suter became captain of Darwen, but his relationship with the club eventually broke down. In 1880, he moved to Blackburn Rovers in controversial circumstances. It was widely believed that money was behind the transfer. One account states that Blackburn offered Suter £100 to join, an enormous sum at the time. Darwen suspected that their rival had effectively bought their star player, but making an official complaint would have been awkward because Darwen themselves were suspected of paying Suter.
The existing rivalry between Darwen and Blackburn became even more bitter. When the teams eventually met, tensions surrounding Suter’s transfer contributed to a violent confrontation and the match was abandoned. The clubs would not meet regularly outside the FA Cup for some time.
Winning the FA Cup
Suter’s move proved successful. Blackburn Rovers quickly established themselves among England’s leading clubs and reached the FA Cup final in 1882. They lost 1-0 to the Old Etonians, but the balance of power was beginning to shift. Rovers went one step further in 1884, beating Scottish side Queen’s Park, one of the pioneers of a passing-based game, in the final to win the FA Cup for the first time. They retained the trophy in 1885 and completed a hat-trick in 1886, making them the only surviving club to win the competition three times in a row.
Suter was a key figure throughout this period, playing primarily at full-back and featuring in all the victorious cup finals. The success of clubs such as Blackburn demonstrated that working-class teams could compete with the old amateur elite. More importantly, it became increasingly difficult for football authorities to maintain the fiction that players were not being financially rewarded.
Football Finally Turns Professional
The pressure for change continued to grow during the 1880s. Clubs attracted larger crowds and generated more money, while talented players had an obvious financial value. Paying them secretly became increasingly common. The Football Association eventually legalised professionalism in 1885, allowing clubs to employ players under regulated conditions. Three years later, the Football League was founded, providing a permanent competition for clubs increasingly built around professional footballers.
Suter’s career had helped demonstrate why that change was necessary. He had crossed the border, left a traditional trade and effectively made football his occupation while the authorities still insisted the sport was amateur. Although he only made one appearance in the Football League’s inaugural season in 1888 before retiring, it was players like him who helped make its creation possible.
The English Game
Long after Suter’s death in 1916, the Scot’s story was brought to a wider audience through Netflix’s 2020 drama, The English Game, which tells the story of professional football’s origins. Although the six-part series takes some liberties with the historical record for dramatic effect, it still manages to capture the significance of players such as Suter.