The English Game
Netflix
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Julian Fellowes's six-part The English Game dramatizes the moment football stopped being a gentlemen's pastime. In 1879, Darwen — a Lancashire mill town — secretly pays two Scottish players, Fergus Suter and Jimmy Love, to strengthen its FA Cup side. Suter (Kevin Guthrie), a stonemason, becomes the game's first true professional: paid to play, and resented for it by the southern amateurs who ran the Football Association.
The period detail is industrial north at full tilt: smoking mill chimneys, terraced streets, muddy pitches, and the class war fought through sport. The mill owner Arthur Kinnaird (Edward Holcroft) — a real figure, FA Cup winner and later FA president — embodies the amateur ideal, while the working-class lads of Darwen and Blackburn embody the future. The show makes the 1880s battle over 'shamateurism' feel as urgent as any boardroom drama.
Victorian fans love it because it shows the Victorians inventing modern sport in real time — the FA Cup, the passing game, the very idea of paying a player. It is Downton Abbey's creator turning his eye to the other England: the one that worked the looms.
Frequently asked
Is The English Game a true story?
It is a dramatization of real history. Fergus Suter was a genuine Scottish stonemason who became football's first professional when Darwen secretly paid him in 1879, and Arthur Kinnaird was a real FA Cup winner who later became FA president. The six-part series builds toward the FA's legalization of professionalism in 1885.
Who created The English Game?
The English Game was co-created by Julian Fellowes — the creator of Downton Abbey — with Tony Charles and Oliver Cotton. It was released on Netflix in 2020.
When is The English Game set?
The series is set in Lancashire mill towns like Darwen and Blackburn between 1879 and the mid-1880s — the years when working-class players began to be secretly paid and the amateur establishment fought back.
Why it matters today
The series put Fergus Suter — football's forgotten first professional — back in the story of the sport, a reminder that the modern game was built by Victorian mill workers as much as by gentlemen amateurs.
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