March 1897 was a particularly cold, wet and windy month in Manchester. The evening of 15 March was no exception and people on their way home from offices and shops struggled against heavy, gusting rain. There were groups all along Deansgate huddled against walls and shop-fronts as they waited for the horse-drawn buses to take them home. Some fought a losing battle with their umbrellas against the wind but most stood and waited, resigned to the cold and soaking rain.

In contrast, the Deansgate Hotel looked bright, cheerful and welcoming with a procession of hansom cabs depositing their fares. In a flurry of coats, hats and umbrellas, people, mostly men, scurried into the foyer of the hotel, peeling off their heavy coats before moving into the main lounge. There, although only just after six o'clock, it was quite full with people sitting at tables, standing near the curved bar at one end of the room or sitting in the alcoves which were dotted around the room. Each alcove had its own fire-place in which burned a cheery, blazing fire; also a table about six to eight feet in length with a leather and green baize top. Some of the tables were being used for card games whilst others held papers and ledgers for impromptu meetings. There were white-aproned waiters everywhere. In one of the alcoves sat a group of men in earnest conversation, well dressed, well-to-do, with an aura of the professional businessmen, the accountant and the lawyer. Their topic of conversation was football, rugby football and the formation of a new rugby football club.

Was it really a cold, wet, windy night that 15 March 1897? Did that group of men, in fact, sit in the main hotel lounge as has been suggested? It doesn't really matter, of course. What is significant and intriguing is that they were there and that they agreed to establish a new club. There are many questions, which come to mind. Why a new rugby club? Were there not enough already? Indeed, more questions than answers. It is not that memory has been blurred with the passage of time; it is not that records, memorabilia, photographs are mixed, jumbled and open to misinterpretation. After almost a hundred years there are, of course no people and everything else from those early days is sparse and insubstantial. Instead of piling up tedious questions it might be better to look at what we know about England, Manchester in 1897 to see whether the social and sporting backgrounds of the times provide any of the answers.

Queen Victoria had been on the throne sixty years; indeed, the year was the Diamond Jubilee of her reign. Manchester was already a splendid Victorian city in which the population had almost doubled in fifty years to about half-a-million. The city was the hub of the sprawling industrial mass of the North West with a jumble of towns - linked by chains of canals and railways. The Manchester - Liverpool Ship Canal had been open for two years turning the city into a great port as well as an industrial centre. The city was not, however, only a place to work but was also a centre for leisure, a centre for music, and for the Arts. And, Sport? Yes! Sport, too!

The most popular mass sport was Association Football, which had flourished amazingly since the formation of the Football Association in 186S. The FA Cup Competition had started in 1872 with Leagues and paid professional footballers following in the 1880's. There were clubs everywhere. The most famous of these was the Newton Heath Club from which eventually Manchester United was to evolve. Cricket, too, had been gaining strength steadily following the formation of the County Championship in 1873. But what of rugby....?

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