The 1914-15 Football League continued with Everton as champions, Oldham as runners up and Tottenham, one point less than Chelsea, at the bottom. The next season the league was suspended and regional competitions allowed, to raise morale and fitness. In 1919-20, Spurs won Division 2.
On September 5th 1914, Harrogate Town FC was due to play its first game ever but it was cancelled.
The 1914 FA Cup Final took place at Crystal Palace on April 25th with 71,000+ watching Burnley beat Liverpool 1-0. Tommy Boyle was the first catain to receive the cup from the reigning monarch, King George V; it was the last formal act carried out at the last and twentieth final held at the Crystal Palace. Wearing a red rose, the King showed allegiance to both Lancashire clubs. 476 clubs entered the cup and three months later, war was declared.
The games were used to help recruitment and indeed Billie Nevill from the East Surrey Regt, went "over the top" kicking a football, to set an example.
Bradford Park Avenues' Donald Bell, a boy at Harrogate GS and a graduate teacher at Westminster College, played for Crystal Palace and Newcastle Utd, became a English school teacher, below, won the Victoria Cross at the Somme in 1916.
90,000 women worked in the various factories in Britain and Dick Kerr's Ladies Team was formed in Preston in 1917, once again to raise morale as they toured the country playing charity games.
In 1915 Sheffield United won the FA Cup beating Chelsea 3-0 at Old Trafford in a fin,al known as the Khaki Final, when a majority of the crowd were soldiers wearing their uniforms. The Punch journal drew an illustration including a sarcastic comment about the match taking place with so many young men who should have been at the front. The FA had taken advice from the War Office, who told the FA to go ahead with the game to help national morale.
https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/9-facts-about-football-in-the-first-world-war
The next Cup Final was held in 1920.
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