Competition during ww1

English club Harrogate town were due to play their first ever match on 5 September 1914, but the match was cancelled due to the outbreak of the war.

Between 1915 and 1919 pro football was called off in England. Many footballers signed up to fight in the war and as a result many teams were depleted, and played  guest players instead. Many teams joined the forces and made pals battalions there were a lot of sport team based battalions during  the war but these were split up after they stopped allowing pals battalions. The first of the footballers pals  battalions was formed  in Edinburgh in November 1914 by a man called Sir George McCrae. The 16th Royal Scots included players and supporters from Hearts, Hibernian, Falkirk and Raith Rovers, and recruitment of 1350 officers and men was completed in only six days.

Walter tull

Walter tull was an English professional footballer who played as an inside forward for Tottenham Hotspur and Northampton Town. He was the second person of mixed race to play in the top division of the Football League, the first mixed race outfield player in the top leauge of English football, and the first to be singed up as an infantry soldier in the British Army. His pro football career began after he was spotted whilst playing for his local club, Clapton FC. He started playing for Clapton in 1908 and within a few months he had won medals in the FA Amateur Cup,Walter Tull was brought up in an orphanage in

London, along with his brother, after the death of their parents. He joined Tottenham in 1909, and moved to Northampton Town in 1911, where he made 111 first-team appearances.

During the First World War walter  Tull served in both Footballers Battalions of the Middlesex Regiment, 17th and 23rd, and also in the 5th battalion, getting to the rank of sergeant and fighting in the Battle of the Somme in 1916. In may 1917 he became the first black combat officer in the British Army, despite his race and coulor.He was killed in action on 25 March during the Spring Offensive, near the village of Favreuil in the Pas-de-Calais.

Conscription

Conscription was introduced in 1916 due to the lack of men joining the front lin. The number of soldiers weren’t high enough, so the British government had to do something.

Conscription led to people becoming conscientious objectors (c.o’s or conshies). Some of these people would go to war as doctors or ambulance drivers, where as others completely refused to go any where near the war.

There was nearly 20,000 c.o’s in all, most had settled for non-fighting roles in the army but, about 1000 others refused to have anything to do with the war.

Conscription is a law which stated that any man aged between 18 and 41 could be forced to join the army if their name was randomly selected.

Before conscription was introduced the government used a national register of all men between the ages of 15-65 and the derby scheme, this was introduced to ask men to promise to sign when needed. This didn’t work because when the men where needed they just said that they’d changed their mind.

Christmas day truce The Christmas truce was an unofficial truce between the soldiers fighting on the front lines in the western front  during ww1 ,World War One had been on for several months but German and Allied soldiers got out of their trenches, and agreed a truce so the dead could be buried. The soldiers also used that truce to to eachther and it is believed even play a football match. Unofficial truces between opposing forces occurred at other times during World War One but never on the kind of levelof the first Christmas truce.