1893–94 Small Heath F.C. season
season of football team
The 1893–94 English football season was Small Heath F.C.'s 13th season of competitive association football and second season in the English Football League. In 1892–93, the inaugural season of the Football League Second Division, Small Heath, based in Birmingham, had won the divisional championship but failed to gain promotion via the test match system. This year, they finished as distant runners-up in the League, eight points behind Liverpool, but were successful in the test match, defeating Darwen 3–1 to confirm their place in the First Division for the 1894–95 Football League season. The club struggled financially during the season, and there were suggestions that it might have disbanded had promotion not been secured.
Small Heath entered the 1893–94 FA Cup in the first round proper, and lost in that round for the second consecutive year, this time to the eventual losing finalists, Bolton Wanderers of the First Division. In local competitions, they were eliminated by Midland League club Loughborough in the first round of the Birmingham Senior Cup and by Wolverhampton Wanderers in the semi-final of the Mayor of Birmingham's Charity Cup. Small Heath played fewer friendly matches than in the previous season, instead competing in a regionally organised supplementary competition, the United Counties League, in which they finished third of four teams in the southern section.
Small Heath used 23 different players in nationally organised competitive matches during the season and had 12 different goalscorers. Four players, Ted Devey, Fred Wheldon, Tommy Hands and Billy Ollis, appeared in every League match, all but Devey for the second consecutive season. The top scorer was inside-forward Frank Mobley with 25 goals – his total of 24 League goals made him the Second Division's leading scorer – and all five first-choice forwards reached double figures for the second season running.
“1893–94 Small Heath F.C. season” enters the record as season of football team. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Small, Heath and season can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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