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1903–04 Small Heath F.C. season

season of football team

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 30, 2026
Entity authorityQ4558185 ↗
Source-derived summary

The 1903–04 Football League season was Small Heath Football Club's 12th in the Football League and their 4th in the First Division, having been promoted from the Second Division as runners-up in 1902–03. After spending much of the season in the relegation places, they won six of the last nine matches to finish in 11th place in the 18-team league. They also took part in the 1903–04 FA Cup, entering at the intermediate round (between the qualifying rounds and the rounds proper) and losing in that round to Manchester United after three replays. In locally organised competition, they lost to Aston Villa in the first round of the Birmingham Senior Cup.

Twenty-three players made at least one appearance in nationally organised first-team competition, and there were twelve different goalscorers. Forward Charlie Athersmith played in 37 matches over the 38-match season. Billy Jones and Freddie Wilcox were joint leading scorers with eight goals, all of which came in the league.

Football League First Division

League table (part)

FA Cup

Appearances and goals

This table includes appearances and goals in nationally organised competitive matches – the Football League and FA Cup – only.

For a description of the playing positions, see Formation (association football)#2–3–5 (Pyramid).

Players marked † left the club during the playing season.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “1903–04 Small Heath F.C. season” is season of football team. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Small, Heath and season, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1903, 1902—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Small, Heath and season is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “season of football team” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4558185. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1903 and 1902.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. 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

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “1903–04 Small Heath 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.