With tension between amateur clubs and the
Football Association mounting due to the rise of professionalism, the organisation was formed in May 1906 as the Amateur Football Defence Council, following unanimous agreement at a meeting of around 100 clubs from the
London metropolitan area. In September 1906, the AFDC warned the
London FA that its clubs would be boycotting the
London Senior Cup the following season. Later that month, the organisation was renamed the Amateur Football Defence Federation.
Split from football association Following the general meeting of
The Football Association on 31 May 1907, it was decided by the Federation that in the best interest of amateur football that a new and separate organisation must be created. The inaugural meeting of the Amateur Football Association was held in the Crown Room of the Holborn Restaurant on 7 July 1907. They were addressed by
Alfred Lyttelton MP, before B.A. Glanville of
Clapham Rovers proposed the formation of the Association, which was seconded by N.C. Bailey. It was stated that the foundation of the Association wasn't in opposition to professionalism in sport but instead to the "fungus growth which had become attached to the machinery of football management".
Lord Alverstone was elected as the first president of the new society, and resulted in the end of the
Sheriff of London Charity Shield after the FA refused to provide a professional team for the match, and barred all its members from either playing or providing facilities. However a later resolution by the FA meant that any player who had played for his school, college or university team which was a member of the Amateur Football Association was not banned from playing for a professional team. Furthermore, the FA asked the
Scottish,
Welsh and
Irish Football Association not to recognise the formation of the AFA. A number of teams were forced to choose between one association or the other.
Cambridge University pledged their allegiance to the Amateur Football Association and in response, so did
Oxford University although they would have preferred to remain neutral between the two. Both the
Leicestershire and
Essex Football Association were early supporters of the actions of the Football Association against the AFA. Meanwhile, both the
Army and
Royal Navy Football Associations took the question of which Association to support by holding a vote of its member clubs; this resulting in both remaining with the Football Association. The AFA tried to join
FIFA, but it was not admitted, so it founded
UIAFA along with French
USFSA and Bohemian
ČSF in March 1909.
Ban repealed The schism lasted until 1914, when the FA agreed to allow the AFA to retain its amateur policy. The AFA, Oxford, Cambridge, and the
public schools would each nominate one member of the
FA Council, with the AFA also represented on the
national team selection committee and
Amateur Cup committee. A maximum of twelve clubs per year (four from one county) could join the AFA. Two current AFA clubs are former
FA Cup winners:
Old Etonians and
Old Carthusians, who both currently play in the
Arthurian League. Past members of the AFA include
Ipswich Town,
Barnet,
Cambridge City, the
Casuals and
the Corinthians.
Sir Stanley Rous, who was president of
FIFA, was also the president of the AFA. The AFA's flagship competition is the
AFA Senior Cup which is contested by AFA-affiliated clubs on Saturday afternoons. Most of these clubs enter one of the two AFA-affiliated Saturday leagues, the
Southern Amateur League,
Amateur Football Combination (now merged with the Southern Amateur League in July 2025) and the
Arthurian League, the SAL having been founded in the same year as the AFA (1907) by more or less the same group of people. The Amateur FA's heartland is in
London and the
Home Counties. The organisation changed its name to the Amateur Football Alliance in April 1934. ==References==