1886–87 FA Cup
association football tournament concluding in 1887
The 1886–87 Football Association Challenge Cup was the 16th FA Cup, England's oldest football tournament. One hundred and twenty-eight teams entered, two fewer than the previous season, in addition to four of the one hundred and twenty-eight never playing a match.
Rejected entries
The Football Association rejected entries from the following clubs for being received too late:
Aston Shakespeare
Bury
Eckington Works
Hurst
Lancing Old Boys
Romford
Sheffield Wednesday
Stafford Rangers
Stafford Road
Walsall Swifts
Wellington Town
One consequence of this was that a number of Sheffield Wednesday players registered to play with Lockwood Brothers instead, resulting in the works side's best FA Cup run.
First round
[*] The Cannon side (from Tottenham) had entered the competition without being registered with the Football Association, so was ineligible to play
[**] Newton Heath turned up for the match with several ineligible players, and so scratched before the game; the sides played a friendly, which ended 2-2.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “1886–87 FA Cup” as association football tournament concluding in 1887. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as association football tournament concluding in 1887. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2575176. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1886.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “1886–87 FA Cup”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow 1886–87 FA Cup primary sources, 1886–87 FA Cup archive and association research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “1886–87 FA Cup”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “1886–87 FA Cup” 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.