THAT FIRST FOOTBALL LEAGUE GOAL!!

Today marks 138 years since Kenny Davenport scored the first goal in the history of the Football League, netting for Wanderers against Derby County at our old Pikes Lane home. It remains one of the proudest facts in the club's history and one that very nearly went uncredited forever. A goal that waited 125 years for its due Bolton Wanderers were one of just twelve founder members invited to form the Football League in 1888 - the world's first organised league competition of its kind and the blueprint for every league that has followed it since. On this opening day of that inaugural season,  Wanderers welcomed Derby County to Pikes Lane and with the game barely two minutes old, forward Kenny Davenport turned the ball home to open the scoring. Wanderers led that afternoon before eventually going down 6-3, with Davenport getting Wanderers' first two goals of the new league era. But for well over a hundred years, football's record books credited a different moment as the League's first-ever goal: an own goal by Aston Villa full-back Gershom Cox, scored in a match that had, in fact, kicked off later than Bolton's. It took painstaking research by football historian Mark Metcalf and librarian Robert Boyling, published in 2013, to set the record straight. By establishing the true kick-off times across all the opening day fixtures, they proved that Wanderers' clash with Derby County had started first - meaning Davenport's strike, timed at 3.47pm, was in fact the first goal ever scored in Football League history. As Metcalf himself put it, it is "definitely the most important goal in football." The achievement is now permanently marked in Bolton. In November 2016, a blue plaque was unveiled close to the old Pikes Lane site on Bankfield Street, generously hosted by the Lostock Electrical Projects Company at the invitation of Wanderers supporter and owner Duncan Simm. The unveiling was attended by PFA chief executive Gordon Taylor, Mark Metcalf and the Mayor of Bolton Lynda Byrne - a fitting tribute to a piece of history that belongs to this club and this town. Kenny Davenport was born James Kenyon Davenport in Bolton, on 23 March 1862, Davenport joined Wanderers in 1883 from local side Gilnow Rangers and went on to spend a decade with the club, scoring 25 goals in 56 appearances. He won two England caps, in 1885 and 1890, and after hanging up his boots in 1893 he returned to Bolton Wanderers to coach the reserve side, staying close to the club that his goal would one day make famous. Davenport died in his hometown of Bolton on 27 September 1908, aged 46. 

The ground, Pikes Lane was Bolton Wanderers' home from 1881 until 1895, when the club moved on to Burnden Park, where Wanderers would go on to play for 102 years before the move to our current home. It was at Pikes Lane, in front of a crowd gathered for the very first day of League football, that Wanderers and Kenny Davenport made history - a reminder that long before the modern game of super-stadiums and global audiences, this club was there right at the start, helping to invent the competition that the world now watches every week. Bolton Wanderers were founder members of the Football League. Bolton Wanderers scored its first goal. In a game with a history as rich and as fiercely contested as English football's, that is a fact no one can take from this club and on the 138th anniversary of that afternoon at Pikes Lane, it's one every Wanderer can be proud of !!

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