The announcement that the Premier League would return on June 17 was greeted, by and large, with relish across the country.
Football’s cancellation left a void in our lives that we’ve been trying to fill ever since with podcasts, TV repeats, and, more recently, the Bundesliga.
But whilst the return of elite sport is a welcome one, clubs that sit further down the pyramid are still in panic.
Lower league football is finished for the foreseeable future, with the 2020/21 season still shrouded in uncertainty. It remains a very real and worrying possibility that COVID-19 may ultimately claim some clubs forever.
In the meantime, fans are finding solace in looking back through the footballing archives, distracting themselves with great chapters of history and origin stories.
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In the case of every club, there’s so much to explore. Football found its feet in separate parts of the country in so many different ways – but the true tale of how the sport took off in Manchester remained hidden until six years ago.
Manchester’s original football club: Hulme Athenaeum
Turton FC was, for many years, believed to be the oldest club in the Lancashire region – founded way back in 1871.
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But when researchers Gary James and Dave Day elected to delve through the annals of local history in 2014, they discovered the region’s first association football team had been forgotten.
Eight years prior to Turton, there was Hulme Athenaeum.
The memories of Manchester’s original football club have been published in James/Day’s paper, The Emergence of an Association Football Culture in Manchester 1840–1884 – a document that ultimately rewrote football history (and has since been expanded upon in James’ superb book: The emergence of footballing cultures, Manchester 1840-1919).
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Research shows that Hulme was one of the most impoverished local areas during the 19th century, with the neighbourhood described as being ‘sunk in filth.’
Sir William Thackeray Marriott – an ordained deacon and curate of St George’s Church and champion of working-class rights – helped to introduce sports to the poverty-stricken settlement in the 1850s, with the aim of giving residents an outlet.
This led to the opening of a clubhouse in 1860 – which was given the name ‘Hulme Athenaeum.’
Sir William Thackeray Marriot – A deacon in Hulme and later an MP
In 1863, members of the club began playing an ‘elementary association game’, before eventually introducing dribbling and passing.
Football was far from prevalent in the North-West at the time and was a new activity for some of the players – several of whom seemingly joined the club purely to take advantage of the clubhouse facilities.
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According to James & Day: “Gas rental collector James Warrington, an early captain of the football club during the 1860s, later admitted he joined ‘for the sake of the gymnasium’.”
Membership was charged at one shilling, and with fifty members in the ranks Hulme Athenaeum ended up developing into an organised, ambitious football club – producing consistently updated records.
Evidence shows they played fixtures every Saturday over the course of five consecutive seasons, competing against the likes of Sale and, a little further afield, Garrick – a team in Sheffield.
With football still in its infancy, rules weren’t exactly concrete, meaning clubs would have to adapt to different regulations when they visited another area; similar to the way you might begrudgingly play along to friends’ Monopoly laws when you’re in their home over the holidays.
One match report from Hulme and Garrick, for example, states that “Sheffield rules” were used.
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Gary James
After 1873, the name Hulme Athenaeum vanished into the footballing wilderness, but James believes the club’s brief existence was crucial to the development of the game in the region.
He states: “Despite the failure to create a viable fixture list each season, the club did encourage individuals to adopt the game at a time when formal association football, if later chroniclers of the game are to be believed, did not exist in Lancashire.
“Moreover, the club deliberately engaged with lower middle class and working men within a densely populated area of the city.”
Some of the men that represented Hulme continued to play on after the team folded – signing for the second club founded in the city: Manchester Association.
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Man City Gifts
As word travelled and the game of football gathered momentum, people came to watch as well as play; leading to the birth of more local clubs in the 1880s such as West Gorton St Mark’s – who eventually turned into Manchester City (via Ardwick AFC) – and Newton Heath Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway: Who would become Manchester United.
Hulme Athenaeum wasn’t just the club that laid the groundwork for local football. It was also an organisation that proved the first people playing the game in Manchester were ordinary, working blokes.
“While football now might be thought of as a predominantly working class sport, typically football clubs in the 1860s were founded by public schools who also set the rules,” says James.
“The re-discovery of Hulme Athenaeum challenges that perception.”
Feature
Review | The Lion, The Witch and The Beaver* – sorry, Wardrobe
The Manc
What an enchanting evening at The Lowry as we were transported to Narnia to review the live stage adaptation of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe in Media City as the production began its festive run in Greater Manchester.
As we entered the playing space, the atmosphere was set with a pianist on stage, slowly drowning out the noise of the outside world and settling the audience in for a night of magic.
Launching ‘Act One’ with a touching rendition of the British wartime classic, ‘We’ll Meet Again’ by Vera Lynne, we meet the large ensemble, multi-instrumentalist cast.
This talented ensemble pivots around multiple roles throughout the performance, creating a shape-shifting atmosphere with some impressive seamless transitions, allowing us to “open our minds” and be absorbed into the mythical world of Narnia alongside The Pevensies.
Sweetly played by Joanna Adaran, Jesse Dunbar, Kudzai Mangombe and Bunmi Osadolor, they excel in exploring sibling dynamics such as rivalry, trust, but most of all, loyalty and love.
The most mind-blowing element of this performance, however, was the production; it truly is the unsung hero of the entire show, so we’ll so the singing on their behalf.
Set and costume (designed by Tom Paris), lighting (done by Jack Knowles), puppetry design and direction (by Max Humphries and Toby Olie), sound design (credit to Tom Marshall) and hair, make-up and wig designer (Susanna Perez).
All this carefully curated talent helped create a world where we had no choice but to believe in magic.
For us as an audience, it made things so much easier to immerse and delight in the world of C.S. Lewis’ imagination, as it is so wonderfully presented in front of us.
This was elevated once again by levitation and disappearing acts – the scene was set on the boards and in the air.
Huge credit goes to Gwen Hales (aerial director) and Chris Fisher (magic and illusions); it felt as if anything was possible, and we needed no convincing that we were in the presence of pure enchantment.
However, arguably the most magnificent moment of the show was the reveal of Aslan himself. As this grand puppet prowled onto the stage, you could hear gasps echo throughout the theatre.
Manoeuvred by three puppeteers, this skilful spectacle was a credit to bringing the story to life in live theatre. The seamless, lifelike movements of breath and king-like presence were both majestic and a credit to the production.
Accompanied by Stanton Wright, we had no doubt that this was the true hero of Narnia.
If you want us to sum up our review of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe at The Lowry, quite simply, this show is nothing short of a marvel.
Make sure to take home a cuddly lion toy, of course. (Credit: The Manc)
With constant playfulness and wit throughout – mainly brought to you from the broad Northern and oh-so lovable Mr Beaver (Ed Thorpe), and fellow believer in magic, ‘The Professor’ (Kraig Thornber).
It’s the lattermost that left us with a lasting thought, as he warmly reminds the audience that even when times feel dark, “the sun is always up there, we just have to look.”
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is running from The Lowry in Salford Quays all the way up until Sunday, 11 January 2026. Don’t miss the magic and grab your tickets HERE.
If you’re interested in finding out what else we’ve enjoyed at the theatre in Manchester recently, then look no further…
Featured Images — The Manc Group/Press shots (Brinkhoff/Moegenburg supplied via The Lowry)
Feature
Hazlett at Manchester Academy 3 – some of the best ‘sad and depressing songs’ you could ever ask for
Danny Jones
On Thursday evening, we finally got to see Hazlett in a small, tightly-packed room here in Manchester and have maybe never heard so many people sing so expertly quietly so as not to even remotely dullen the stunning voice of this rising solo artist.
For anyone who isn’t aware of Hazlett, he’s an Australian singer-songwriter who has been gradually growing in popularity over the last couple of years, but his journey to where he is dates back much further than that.
Noticing a few familiar faces in the crowd from his last visit to the city for a performance at The Deaf Institute just over a year ago – one we sadly missed and have been kicking ourselves ever since – he acknowledged that many may already know his story, but it’s nevertheless worth sharing with the class.
After self-deprecating (how oh-so British) about gigging in pubs when he was younger, and being told to stick to covers rather than try any of his own material, he moved to Sweden in 2019 and fell in love with not only a much more seasonal European but winter, specifically. No wonder he looked at home here.
Here’s our review of Hazlett at Manchester Academy 3, 4/12/2025. (Credit: Audio North)
Kicking off with one of his best-known tracks, ‘Please Don’t Be’, it immediately struck us how full and mournful it all felt in the flesh – arguably even more so than the studio version we’ve been playing in our headphones since 2023.
The atmospheric but not over-produced engineering is an aspect we’ve always admired about Hazlett‘s discography, and we were so relieved it came across on the night, with the Brisbane-born ex-pat crediting his talented live band with helping bring that same sound to life on stage.
It’s a regular trapping, we’ve found, when it comes to acoustic-led music; that instinct, perhaps, for an artist and/or a producer to use seemingly as many of the tools at their disposal as possible just because they’re available to them.
Sadly, this easy pitfall often ends up taking away from what makes those tunes so beautiful to begin with – but not in this case.
The rising solo star seemed to have an expert command not only of his vocals, but the second mic that added those subtle and yet stirring layers, and built those moving, almost ethereal effects on top of the words themselves.
Honestly, we were literally in awe of him just whistling…
Admittedly, it’s hard to put a finger on what exactly made this such a special show, but we think it is THAT same appreciation and embrace of colder months and how it’s inspired his music.
Just bear with us for a minute, it’ll make sense soon.
He actually said it was one of the things he loves the most about people in this country, and this specific part of the world, as well as other parts of Europe, such as his now beloved Sweden, where he says he found his creative spark.
It’s that feeling of the weather and the mood it brings so intensely that he says it helped him write ‘Bones Shake’, which was fittingly chilling as he played it to the spellbound, would-be choir, and could hear the soft sibilance of people gently repeating those S-sounds back to him.
There’s a genuine sense of being able to chart the slight sorrow in the passing of time through the seasons, and while some may not be afforded that same feeling from the sun-soaked shores of his homeland, it’s a concept he’s really run with – especially on his most recent LP.
Simply titled, last night you said you missed me, it’s almost something he kind of tried to resist, confessing that he wrote and finished the album in the space of about a month, fearing that it couldn’t be good enough/ready purely because it came together so quickly.
Given that two specific tracks from this record made a lady standing with us well up and eventually shed several tears (you know who you are), we’d say he absolutely nailed it.
Our only minor gripe was not getting to hear ‘Tell Me What You Dream About’. (Credit: The Manc)
He did joke that his set is filled with nothing but “a bunch of sad and depressing songs” and had a laugh at the idea of people being “dragged along” without any real idea of who he is or the kind of stuff he makes, but having now witnessed him play live, we can assure you it’s much more than that.
Bloom Mountain was an emotional, magical debut that found us in a particular place and time in our lives that we’ll always appreciate, but hearing him knit it together with his newest material confirmed to us that his music has to be more than listened to – it has to be felt.
Like the changing of the seasons. Like the winter. Like the cold.
We unfortunately didn’t manage to make it in time to watch the support act, Hans Williams, but judging by the reaction from the audience who did get in there early enough, the authentic but inventive stylings of the Americana, folk and soul-infused indie-pop artist, he definitely won over plenty of new fans.
As Mitchell Hazlett Lewis, to use his full name, he’s had our hearts since the very start and will continue to do so for however long he keeps bringing his relatable lyricism, delicate but impressive guitar-picking and gentle charm to Manchester.
Please check out his tour dates and see him the next time he’s in town. You can guarantee you’ll find
Please enjoy the song from his latest album that he says his mum likes best.
The Manc -
18th June 2020 
