The White Rovers

Origins

Paris was introduced to football around 1890, thanks to the British colony that worked and lived there (and later through the French returning from studying abroad), among whom a certain Jack Wood stood out, a Briton who had previously played amateur football in his home country. So when he arrived to work in Paris in 1891, one of his first thoughts was to organize games of football in his new home, since at the time football was a sport practically unknown in the French capital. On 30 October 1891, Jak Wood and his brother Tom, together with other football pioneers in the city, mostly of British and American nationality, met at the Café Français on rue Pasquier in Paris, where they voted narrowly to play association football rather than rugby rules, thus founding the first football club in Paris, the White Rovers Football Club. The entity's Board was subsequently elected, appointing for secretary Mr. Pullard, who works at Galignani's Messenger, whose head office located at 224 rue de Rivoli also serves as the headquarters of the White Rovers, and for treasurer William Sleator, a Worcestershire youth who is widely regarded as one of the “fathers of football in France”, having organized the first known football match in Paris in the winter of 1890–91, and having also imported the first set of goalposts to France. Some of the remaining members were Emile Ernest Cox, Walter Hewson, a tailor, Edward Barclay, a lawyer born in London, and Claude Rivaz, an artist,…