Derby County
Derby County Football Club (/ˈdɑːrbi/) is a professional association football club based in Derby, Derbyshire, England. The club competes in the EFL Championship, the second tier of English football, and has played its home matches at Pride Park Stadium since 1997.
Notable for being one of the 12 founder members of the Football League in 1888, Derby County is one of only 10 clubs to have competed in every season of the English football league system, with all but four of those being in the top two divisions. In 2009, the club was ranked 137th in the top 200 European football teams of the 20th century by the International Federation of Football History & Statistics.
The club was founded in 1884 by William Morley, as an offshoot of Derbyshire County Cricket Club. Its competitive peak came in the 1970s when it twice won the First Division and competed in major European competitions on four separate occasions, reaching the European Cup semi-finals as well as winning several minor trophies. Additionally, the club was a strong force in the interwar years, winning the 1945–46 FA Cup.
The club's home colours have been black and white since the 1890s. The team gets its nickname, The Rams, to show tribute to its links with the First Regiment of Derby Militia, which took a ram as its mascot. Additionally, the club also adopted the song "The Derby Ram" as its regimental song.
Derby County F.C. was formed in 1884 as an offshoot of Derbyshire County Cricket Club in an attempt to give players and supporters a winter interest as well as secure the cricket club extra revenue. The original intention was to name the club "Derbyshire County F.C." to highlight the link, though the Derbyshire FA, formed in 1883, objected on the grounds it was too long and therefore would not have been understood by the fans who may mistake it for a Derbyshire FA team. Playing their home matches at the cricket club's Racecourse Ground, 1884–85 saw the club undertake an extensive programme of friendly matches, the first of which was a 6–0 defeat to Great Lever on 13 September 1884. The club's first competitive match came in the 1885 FA Cup, where they lost 7–0 at home to Walsall Town.
Arguably the most important match in the club's history came in the following season's FA Cup, when a 2–0 victory over Aston Villa, already an emerging force in English football, helped establish Derby County on the English football map, helping the club to attract better opposition for friendlies and, in 1888, an invitation into the inaugural Football League. The opening day of the first ever league season was 8 September 1888, when Derby came from 3–0 down away to Bolton Wanderers to win 6–3, though the club ultimately finished 10th out of 12 teams. In 1891, they absorbed another Derby club, Derby Midland, which had been a member of the Midland League, leaving them as Derby's sole professional football club. Steve Bloomer, generally considered to be Derby County's best-ever player, joined the club in 1892. In 1895, the club moved to a new stadium, the Baseball Ground (so called because it was previously used for baseball), which became their home for the next 102 years. It was then that the club adopted their now traditional home colours of black and white.
Although Derby were inconsistent in the league, they finished as runners-up to Aston Villa in 1896, as well as achieved a number of third-place finishes. They were a strong force in the FA Cup, appearing in three finals in six years around the turn of the 20th century, though lost all three, in 1898 (3–1 to Nottingham Forest), 1899 (4–1 to Sheffield United) and 1903 (6–0 to Bury).
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