The Old Foresters Football Club is an association football club made up exclusively of former pupils of Forest School, located in Epping Forest, Walthamstow, London, England.
The Old Foresters Football Club is probably one of the half dozen or so oldest football clubs in the world. It has a continuous and proud history going back before its own formal constitution in 1876 and the founding of The Football Association in 1863. Forest played a considerable part in the development of association football and Rugby Football, and "The Common" in front of the school may well be regarded as a cradle of the game.
Forest School F.C. is the second oldest continuous member of the F.A. (since December 1863), behind only the Civil Service, and it is the only school to have played in the FA Cup (Donington School entered the first F.A. Cup but never actually played a game). The Old Foresters Football Club's main on-field achievements are reaching the quarter-final of the F.A. Cup in 1882, and the last sixteen a further three times. The Old Foresters have won the prestigious "old boys cup", The Arthur Dunn Cup three times, the Essex Cup three times and the London Senior Cup twice. Two Old Foresters F.C. players have played for England while at the club: Percy Fairclough and Fred Pelly. Old Forester Robin Trimby played for England Amateur Team in the late 1950s and co-wrote several books on football skills including one co-written with Jimmy Hill. Old Forester Quinton Fortune appeared in the first Boodle & Dunthorne ISFA Cup Final in 1993, whilst a schoolboy player with Tottenham. Quinton later went on to play for Real Mallorca, Atletico Madrid, Manchester United and Bolton Wanderers, as well as for South Africa, for whom he appeared in both the 1998 and 2002 World Cup Finals.
The club currently fields two regular Saturday sides in the Arthurian League. Home matches are played at Fairlop Oak Playing Fields, Fairlop.
Club history
Early football at Forest School
Forest School was founded in 1834 and for the first decade or so there was no organised sport, football was only played in informal kick-abouts organised by the pupils. In John Gildersleeve's reign as headmaster (1848-1857) the school participated in cricket and hockey but there was no football at this time. It was on the appointment of Frederick Barlow Guy as headmaster in 1857, that football became quickly established and joined cricket as the dominant sport at the school. Football was played on The Common, at the front of the school. It was a rather uneven playing surface, with the great chestnut trees at the side of the pitch "in play" and some famous iron railings marking the north end of the pitch. Tradition records some great battles between Charles W. Alcock and F.J. Poole, in which the object was to barge the other player over the iron railings! The earliest reported match against another school was in Forest's first season on 24 February 1858, when Forest beat Chigwell School 5-4 on The Common. Another early game was on Saturday 16 November 1861, when Forest School, (playing as "Walthamstow"), lost to a Westminster School side (playing as "Bounding Bricks") by three goals to nil. A return match was played four weeks later, and in 1862 the school played against Old Westminsters (playing as Elizabethan Club).
By 1863, Forest football had a major influence on the development of the game, and it was involved in the formation of the Football Association and also the leading club at the time, The Forest Club. Forest School joined the F.A. for its fifth meeting, on 1 December 1863, when John Bouch (brother of a pupil) and David John Morgan (recent Old Forester) represented the school on a 15-man committee. It was at this fifth F.A. meeting that the important amendment was made to the rules that running with the ball and hacking would be removed, and Forest, with only limited running with the ball in their rules, are likely to have been influential in voting for this change. Walter Cutbill, an Old Forester, served as an early member of the F.A. Committee and Henry Tubb, captain of Forest in 1867, helped the F.A. committee evolve its rules in that year.
The Forest Rules
Although a member of the F.A. from almost the very beginning, the school's own rules, "The Forest Rules", were still played up until 1867, with 15 players a side. The Wanderers described the Forest Rules as "a happy mixture of Rugby, Harrow and Charterhouse rules". It was essentially a dribbling game, and "shinning, hacking and tripping" was not allowed.
The Forest Rules, as played in 1866, were as follows: