(left), Aston Unity's Trinity Road (top middle),
Birmingham C&FC's Aston Lower Grounds (top right), Aston Shakespeare's Aston Cross (bottom right). The club was founded by members of the Aston Unity
cricket club, as a winter activity to keep them fit. The cricket club was founded in 1868, and the cricketers started to play football matches in the winter of 1874–75, at the instance of Sam Durban, the cricket captain and motive force for cricket - and later football - in Birmingham. In its first season, the club played home matches at Aston Park, had 39 members, and won 4 and drew 1 of the five matches in its first season. At the time the club was called
Aston Park Unity. In January 1875 one match became
Aston Villa’s first recorded game. For 1875–76 the club had a second team. Before the 1876–77 season the club left Aston Park and changed its name to
Aston Unity. The club was a founder member of the
Birmingham & District Football Association and played in the first
Birmingham Senior Cup in
1876–77, losing to
Saltley College in the first round after a replay. In 1878–79 the club beat
Aston Villa in the first round of the competition, in front of a crowd of 1,700 at the Trinity Ground. Unity's best run in the Senior Cup, at the time the second-most prestigious tournament for football clubs in the Midlands, came in 1879–80, the club beating
Small Heath Alliance and
St George's (the latter 9–1 away from home), before losing to Villa at the
Aston Lower Grounds in the third round (in that year's competition, the last six); because of Villa's predatory poaching of players in the area, and importation of Scots
shamateurs, "partisanship on both sides ran high", and Unity played a more brutal game than normal, Villa's
Eli Davis having to go off injured, but the ten men won with a late goal from
George Ramsay. The club's only final came in the
Wednesbury Charity Cup in 1882, Unity losing to the defending champions
Wednesbury Old Athletic, in a replay held in torrential conditions; Unity had come within three minutes of winning the original tie, only to concede a late equalizer in the final after a defensive mis-kick. In the
1882–83 season, Unity entered the FA Cup for the first time, and obtained a bye through the first round. The club beat "the coming club" St George's 3–1 in the second, at the Pickwick Cricket Ground, but lost to Villa by the same stage in the third, at the latter's
Wellington Road ground, in front of a crowd of 4–5,000. However, as the season progressed, the now-professional Aston Villa had built up a squad made of the strongest players in the district, while Unity stayed within the FA rules on amateurism. Villa outpaced Unity by such a degree that, six weeks after the close FA Cup tie, in the fourth round of the Birmingham Senior Cup, Villa beat Unity at the
Aston Lower Grounds by 16 goals to 0. Ten of the goals were scored by
Arthur Brown, who had left Unity for Villa earlier in the season, and had persuaded a number of team-mates to join him. The club entered the FA Cup in the next four years, but suffered heavy defeats in the first round on each occasion. Its financial situation was such that it sold home advantage to
Derby County F.C. in 1886–87, and lost 4–1, playing for 70 minutes with ten men due to injury. Unity's last match in the competition was in
1887–88, losing 6–1 to
Small Heath Alliance. When the
Football Association introduced qualifying rounds in 1888–89, Unity stopped entering senior competition; the club was "a cricket club first and a football club next", and had "great difficulty" in raising a football team "owing to the way in which the promising young players trained in the club have been snapped up by wealthier organisations. At length they have grown tired of acting the lion's [Aston Villa's] provider...most of the Unity football members have joined that club with the object of playing for the reserve team". The club continued playing football at a junior level until 1908, when the Trinity Road ground was closed, and continues as a cricket club to the present day. ==Colours==