Just A Vid: Football in 1915

Here we have "Clapton's Khaki Team (1915)" - 56 seconds of silent newsreel of Clapton Orient, later renamed Leyton Orient in a game during World War I. A lot of people in this film would soon be killed in a war that should have been over the previous Xmas. I've watched it a dozen times, it captures an innocence in front of a camera and the use of football matches to recruit the working classes to be cannon-fodder.

The British Film Institute have made hundreds of clips available and there are plenty of sporting and football snippets in the Mitchell & Kenyon Collection. The Fancy Dress Cyclists' Procession filmed at The Cliff, Salford (Broughton Rangers ground, later United's training ground) in 1901 is an amusing distraction - here.

BFI Films on YouTube