The Yorkshire Film Archive collects, preserves, and shows film made in, or about Yorkshire. Our collections are non-fiction, dating from the 1890s to the present day, and providing a rich and visually compelling record of all aspects of lives, cultures, landscape, industries, major events and everyday activities, many of which are available to watch, free of charge, on our website.
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Sheffield Wednesday
In the run up to the 1966 World Cup a chance to sample the average standard of the English league at one of the stadiums used in the competition.
From the collection of:
Overview
This amateur film gives a revealing picture into top flight football in England, the old First Division, in the mid-1960s. The film shows action from Sheffield Wednesday playing at home at Hillsborough Stadium to Arsenal, possibly the match in March 1964: the Scottish centre half Ian Ure looks to be playing for Arsenal. The other two games have quite small crowds, so are probably both reserve team fixtures, possibly against Manchester United and Blackpool.
These films were taken by keen Sheffield Wednesday supporter Harry Wilson of Barnsley, who also filmed around the same time the world champion potato grower, George Brook, also from Barnsley. There is also amateur film of the West Germany v Uruguay World Cup game played at Hillsborough. This is of course a much different looking Stadium to the one that was re-built in the wake of the tragedy there of 1986. It isn’t clear what the connection is, if any, between the football matches and the photograph of the Manchester United Busby Babes displayed at the end, just before another football tragedy, the Munich air crash of February 1958.
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