IT'S ALL FOR A GOOD CAUSE!

The 93rd Community Shield is being played in a few hours time and I am starved of football. I should have gone to Oakwell yesterday to see The Tykes beat The Terriers 2-1 in a pre-season friendly. Hoping to save some money, however, I went to Penistone Church but they played their weekend friendly the night before! Couldn't find Hepworth United?

So I would quite like to see the next instalment of Mourinho v Wenger challenge but it's on BT Sport and if I go to pub, I shall only drink beer. So much for the community and charity in the FA Community Shield, or as it was once called the Charity Shield.

Thomas Dewar was a Scottish Whisky distiller who gave the original Sheriff of London Shield in 1898 to the winner of an annual match between a professional club and an amateur club, to raise money for hospitals and charities. Good idea.

The first match was between the Corinthians and Sheffield United, a drawn game in which the Old Carthusian, G.O.Smith, played and he also scored in the 2-1 defeat of Aston Villa at the Crystal Palace on the 8^th November.

This charming contest continued till 1907. The professional side tended to win and as the gap between pro and amateur became too great, the idea ran out of steam. So the FA adopted the idea and ran the FA Charity Shield from 1908-9. 

After the 1^st World War, the contest was played occasionally between A Professional XI v An Amateur XI and later between the First Division Champions and Second Division Champions, but quickly changed to the FA Cup winners and First Division Champions.

This format has remained the same virtually for the entire time. However, in 1950 the England World Team played an FA XI that had toured Canada. A reminder that England had lost to the USA in the World Cup!

In 1961 Spurs played another FA XI because Spurs had done the double that season, for the first time since the contest was devised.

In 1971, Arsenal couldn't play due to a pre-season match clash, so Liverpool, the Cup winners took on and lost to Leicester City, the Second Division champions.

In 1972 Derby and Leeds declined the invitation to play so Aston Villa, Third Division champions, played Manchester City, fourth placed in the top division. City won 1-0.

There were other oddities but in 2002 the Charity Commission challenged the specification of what happened to the ticket money and the contest was renamed the Community Shield. Arsenal have won 13 times out of 21 games and Chelsea have won 4 times out of 10. Manchester United has won most times, 20.

It's still all for Charity, let's hope the two managers show some today!

Below is Sunderland FC and the original 6' high shield sold at auction for £26,000 and now in the Watford Museum.