“Fleming dribbled, passed, and immediately got clear to receive the ball again, and after a short dribble, sent the ball into the corner of the net with a left-footed shot.”
Harold Fleming notched his second with such precision that Barnsley’s goalkeeper hit his head against the Parc des Princes post trying to deny him in front of 5,000 spectators. The goal confirmed the victory and got Wiltshire hands on The Dubonnet Cup. This kicked off what was one of the club’s finest seasons as they won the Southern League and Southern Charity Cup. A treble I am pretty sure nobody else has achieved.
On Thursday, May 5, 1910, Swindon Town played their first-ever game on foreign soil against Barnsley in Paris. A clash between FA Cup semi-finalists and finalists from the previous season. The two sides were invited to Paris to compete for The Dubonnet Cup, a brand-new competition put on by the House of Dubonnet which was essentially an exhibition match.
Whilst France is a footballing powerhouse these days, the sport took quite some time to gain traction in the country. The Coupe de France didn’t begin until 1917 and the French championship, run by the Union des Societes Francaises de Sports Athletiques, was an amateur competition until 1932 and it didn’t even take place for 14 years across three spells of its 39-year history. The Dubonnet Cup was the first major cup competition ever hosted for club sides in France, and it was the first trophy won by a professional side in the country.
In France, the biggest sport was cycling following the establishment of the Tour de France in 1903, with rowing, gymnastics, and rugby all more popular than football. In Chris Lee’s book ‘Origin Stories’, he details how when the idea came to host a French cup competition, what would become The Dubonnet Cup, interest and quality domestically was so low that it became an invitational competition for English sides instead.
The idea for the trophy was partly inspired by a friendly played between Southampton and Bristol Rovers in France in 1909 and was helped in its formation by Jules Rimet – the man who drove the idea for the first World Cup whilst president of FIFA. This was along with Henri Delaunay, who, according to an article by Michael Cox in The Athletic, was inspired by watching Southampton play Sheffield United in the 1902 FA Cup and looked to drive the development of the game in France.
“The French FA had a high regard for English football and wrote to the English FA and asked them to send over two good quality teams to compete for this trophy and help to show the French what good football really was,” Swindon Town historian Dick Mattick said. “It was like what they do in America where high-profile players go over there to raise the profile of the game.”
Those sides ended up being Swindon and Barnsley, having been the two teams defeated by Newcastle in the previous year’s FA Cup. They were helped to be tempted by the prize on offer, the huge trophy, which was described by the Parisian journal L’Auto, from whom the opening line of this piece was quoted, as “The prize offered by the Dubonnet house is a real marvel, it is the "Col de Cygne" faithful reproduction of the one that was found in the excavations and whose original, acquired years ago by the English government, is in the British Museum in London. It is a classic vase and very famous for its pretty shape and its beautiful old sculpture, which was created by Mr. Edmond Ettling and Co.” This would be along with 11 gold medals for the players on the winning team.
“The scale of the trophy and the medals seem quite disproportionate to what it was,” adds Mattick. “I think it was to make sure that good teams were sent over.”
From Swindon’s end, this is the first recorded instance of the club playing matches abroad, something which would soon become something of a common occurrence. They visited Argentina on a tour two years later and went undefeated across eight matches, including against select sides for Argentina and Uruguay.
Whilst it was their first time playing abroad, they were already well-known in France. The hype around the team – and in particular Harold Fleming – was very high. L’Auto wrote a big preview and also report on the game which combined are over 5,000 words long. They wrote of wanting local players to come and watch the game to see the level football could reach.
“Big matches are rare,” wrote L’Auto the day before the match on May 5. “When French teams are involved, they give the impression of games of novices, and when we see a French team take on a great amateur team from another country, it is a complete crushing. At the Parc des Princes, we will be deprived of the participation of a French team, but all of our players and our fans will be present because we will all want to attend this marvellous duel which will bring together 22 artists, and two players in the England team, who are among the most famous in the world. It is therefore to a lesson of the very first order that we invite the French footballers today. This afternoon they will realise the incredible skill of the famous players of Swindon Town and Barnsley; they will also witness their power, their strength, and their understanding of the noble game.”
Fleming is the only player to have represented the full England side whilst playing for the club, making his debut in 1909, and, along with Billy Silto who had also been selected by England but never won a full cap, were the main focuses of French interest.
L’Auto wrote: “If we rely on information communicated to us by our counterparts across the Channel, it is indisputable that Swindon are a more scientific team than that of Barnsley. For Swindon, we will admire Fleming, the inside right; Silto, the left half; and Skiller, the goalkeeper. We will get to see at work the famous Fleming, the most extraordinary right inside forward from across the Channel.”
“He had this dribbling style,” said Mattick of what made Fleming great. “He would get the ball and just dribble, à la Don Rogers in a way, and shoot. It was actually said that he didn’t have a very good shot and he would just dribble the ball all the way into the goal. There was one report of a match against Manchester United where he scored the winning goal, and it was written that he centred the ball and then collected his own centre before scoring.”
Thankfully for the French crowd hoping to learn from him, Fleming did not disappoint at the Parc des Princes. The reports of the match have his name plastered all over them, dazzling with his dribbling and Barnsley having to play rough to try and stop him.
“Fleming, it was always him, is the one that the English nicknamed ‘The Wonder of the World’ and he began to work and provided two wonderful dribbles, one resulting in an unconverted corner and the second forcing a block from [Dickie] Downs.”
They couldn’t stop him for much longer and in the 25th minute he went on another dribble before firing an excellent left-footed shot into the net. Barnsley were level ten minutes later as Wilfred Bartrop’s cross was initially missed by Town defender Jock Walker and fell to George Lilycrop to equalise.
But Fleming was again the one to find the net as Harry Kay found Charlie Bannister, who quickly passed to the England international. He went on another signature dribble before playing a one-two and finding the net.
According to the report by L’Auto, the 5,000 spectators were rooting for Barnsley based on what they had seen. “Boyle, thanks to his heading and his return kicks, became the favourite of the numerous and very knowledgeable public.” And also “The public encourages Barnsley forward to attack.” Their enthusiasm was eventually rewarded with a penalty for the Yorkshire club given away by a foul by Kay, but Len Skiller made a marvellous save from Downs to not only make the first stop but also dive on the ball to prevent a rebound.
Swindon continued to look just as likely to get the next goal for the rest of the match and became the first Dubonnet Cup champions. L’Auto reported Town’s captain Bannister saying after the match he “is delighted with their victory and is proud to bring the Dubonnet Cup and gold medals back to the ‘Railway town’. Our wonderful Fleming, he says, was as good as the best, and all his men played with admirable enthusiasm. It is right that they should be rewarded.’”
After the game, not only did they win the trophy and medals, but both sets of players were treated to a full evening of events in Paris. They attended the Folies Bergere, where they received a standing ovation, and then the Bal Tabarin.
The Swindon Advertiser reported the team arriving back in Swindon on Saturday evening, with a large crowd flocking to the train station to greet them and the trophy. The Dubonnet Cup was then put on display in The Eagle Hotel for people to come and view.
“The Frenchmen seem to have been highly delighted with the match, which was not in any sense a ‘holiday game’” concluded the Swindon Advertiser back in 1910 and the competition does seem to have been a success.
“What should we admire more?” asked L’Auto. “The lightning agility of a Fleming, or the mastery of Boyle? The sureness of a Skiller or the power of a Downs? We saw yesterday one of the best, if not the best, forwards in England: Fleming, The Red Devil, was stunning and his special play excited the crowd.”
The competition ran for another two seasons with Clapton Orient defeating Millwall the following year and then Fulham winning in 1912 against Queens Park Rangers. All of this seemed to raise interest in the sport and led to the founding of the Coupe de France in 1917, with Delaunay a driving force behind it.
For Swindon, as mentioned, this also became something of a theme as they headed to South America not long after. Mattick believes that manager and secretary Sam Allen was a driving force behind Town’s pursuit of exhibition matches on foreign soil.
“I think that he was a very good publicist. He wrote a series of articles for The Daily Mail on the trip to Argentina. There was a chap called Charles Alcock, who was the FA councillor, and he was set on developing the game and making it more widespread and there would have been that with Sam Allen.
“The other thing is that when he started with Swindon they were really struggling, and that was partly due to finance. He was saying to the directors that if they were going to compete at the Southern League level then they needed to earn enough money to pay £20-a-week in wages.
“You had your matches in the Winter but you needed to do something to generate money out of season in as many ways as you can. They didn’t have the facilities at the ground to do catering or that sort of thing, so it was only by getting involved in other competitions that you would generate funding to make the team competitive.”
Victory in The Dubonnet Cup was the first success in what would prove to be one of Swindon’s most successful periods. Allen would lead the club to two Southern League titles in four seasons, along with a Southern Charity Cup trophy and contesting the 1911 Charity Shield against Manchester United. It was arguably the finest era in the club’s history in terms of success at the sharp end of the game along with players earning international recognition.
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