This article is about the 19th-century amateur football club. Modern football clubs with 'Wanderers' in their name include Bolton Wanderers F.C. and Wolverhampton Wanderers F.C.

The Wanderers Football Club were an amateur football club, who were one of the leading clubs in English football in the 1860s and 1870s. They are chiefly noted for winning the first-ever FA Cup final, held at the Kennington Oval, London, on March 16, 1872. They beat the Royal Engineers 1-0, the winning goal scored by Morton Betts, under the pseudonym A.H. Chequer. In all they won the cup five times between 1872 and 1878.

Initially formed as Forest Football Club in 1860 and based in Leytonstone, London, they were a founder member of the Football Association in 1863. They adopted the title 'Wanderers' a year later, after moving across London to Battersea. The team consisted mostly of ex-public schoolboys, and was captained by Charles Alcock , who was also chairman of the FA from 1870 to 1895 and the original proponent of the FA Cup. The club was eventually disbanded when individual schools set up their own clubs (such as Old Etonians and Old Carthusians ).

External links

• Details of the 1872 FA Cup Final (PDF file)
• The Wanderers on footballculture.net

Sources

• History of football
• AFS - Formation of the Football Association
• History of Association Football