1903–04 Burslem Port Vale F.C. season
season of football team
The 1903–04 season was Burslem Port Vale's sixth consecutive season (tenth overall) of football in the English Football League. The club played home fixtures at the Athletic Ground under the direction of manager‑secretary Sam Gleaves and chairman Robert Audley. Vale finished 13th in the Second Division with 29 points (10 wins, 9 draws, 15 losses), scoring 54 goals and conceding 52. Remarkably, they went the entire season without registering a single away win, part of a club record of 29 successive away matches without victory.
In cup competition, Vale were eliminated in the First Round of the FA Cup by Southampton, and suffered first‑round exits in both the Staffordshire Senior Cup and Birmingham Senior Cup, losing to Stoke in each case. The club's leading scorer was Adrian Capes, with 14 league goals and 17 across all competitions. Attendances peaked at approximately 5,000 spectators for the festive fixture against Bristol City on 26 December 1903, while the lowest recorded crowd was just 500 for the match against Grimsby Town on 13 February 1904, giving an average attendance of around 2,250. The season also witnessed Arthur Rowley become the first player to score from a direct free‑kick, following the introduction of the new free kick rule that season.
Overview
Second Division
A rather quiet pre-season saw no major signings or departures, and hopes were built of an improvement on last season's ninth-place finish. The first game of the season was on 7 September 1903 against Bolton Wanderers, where Arthur Rowley wrote himself into the history books by becoming the first player to score from a direct free kick.
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