Last month, Crystal Palace staked its claim to be recognised as the oldest league club in existence still playing professional football – with new research showing a direct lineage between the professional club thought to have been founded in 1905 and the amateur side formed in 1861.
But Palace don’t have their history, as once thought, with just any amateur team of football-keen employees from the Crystal Palace Company. Instead, Crystal Palace started as one of the most influential clubs in English football.
Established in 1861, Palace was a fully formed club by the time 12 London and suburban teams met to devise “a definite code of rules for the regulation of the game” in 1863.