I've a sneaking suspicion that those Southampton-bred stokers might have supported Southampton, Tarn! Perhaps you're thinking that people in 1912 might, as is common today, have supported high profile teams like Man United even if they'd never been near that city or even this country. No, in those times you supported your local team, or at least the team which played for the locality in which you'd been born and bred.
Now some thoughts about economics. Professional players in the Edwardian era were almost always from working class backgrounds and were generally well-paid compared with most of those who paid to watch them, but even those who found fame didn't find great wealth. Within the football league there was concern that the wealthier clubs should not have the opportunity to buy all the best players, so in 1901 it was ruled that even the 'star' players could not be paid more than £16 per month - a little less than the rate of pay for a 1st Officer on an
Olympic Class ship. With due allowance for changes in the general standard of living, that would equate today with around £5000 per month. The celebrity players didn't drive the 1912 equivalents of Ferraris and Aston Martins in those days; for many years only one player owned any kind of car, and he was Captain of the England team!
For the same reason, the one-off 'signing-on fee' for a player joining a new club was limited to just £10. But there was no limit placed on transfer fees - the money which one club could demand from another when a player was 'sold'. And that was the means by which the wealthier clubs in the larger cities began to dominate the game, with the first £1000 transfer fee being paid in 1905 and, as Sam mentioned above, £2000 by 1913. The smaller clubs just couldn't compete in that kind of marketplace.
There were around 150 professional teams playing in England in 1912, and around 30 in the Scottish league. But though all clubs were run very much as commercial operations funded mainly by gate money (from around 15,000 spectators at a 1st Division game), few of them paid much in the way of dividends because almost all of the profits (if any) were used to buy even better players. The object was to create not profit but prestige for the community and for the directors of the club.
And in those days England's professional footballers were without question the best in the World. A 1st Division club could embark on a friendly tour in South America, for instance, and expect to beat any
National team which dared to take them on.
But that was a long time ago!
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