1884–85 West Bromwich Albion F.C. season
season of football team

The 1884–1885 season was 7th season of West Bromwich Albion Football Club. It was their third and final season at the Four Acres and their last season as an amateur club. Continuing the trial of various coloured kits during the club's early years, the players wore cardinal red and blue halved shirts. The club reached the FA Cup quarter-final for the first time, played in the semi-finals of the Staffordshire Senior Cup and Birmingham Charity Cup and were eliminated from the Birmingham Senior Cup at the third round stage.
FA Cup
Albion's second season in the FA Cup began with a first round match away at Junction Street School, Derby. The 7–1 victory was Albion's first ever win in the competition, with Jem Bayliss scoring the club's first FA Cup goal. In round two, Wednesbury Old Athletic were defeated by a 4–2 scoreline. Aston Villa provided the opposition in the third round; after a goalless draw in the initial match, Albion won the replay 3–0 in "drenching rain".
In the fourth round, Albion faced Welsh side, Druids, who did not take to the field by the time the match was due to start. Peter Morris records that the Welshmen refused to start the match until one of their late-arriving players turned up, while according to G. A. Willmore, the entire Druids team was late to arrive.
“1884–85 West Bromwich Albion F.C. season” enters the record as season of football team. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what West, Bromwich and Albion can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “1884–85 West Bromwich Albion F.C. season” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.