Billy Meredith

The game’s first superstar. Billy Meredith played top-flight football for thirty seasons — Manchester on both sides of town, Wales forever — and outlasted every defender who tried him. The toothpick he worked at the wing became the most famous piece of equipment in Edwardian football; the newspapers drew it when they couldn’t afford the photograph. He organized the first players’ union, took on the Football Association over the maximum wage, and kept playing until he was forty-nine. Longevity is the rarest trophy, and nobody in the first sixty years held it longer.

Maker

period photograph

Date

c. 1905

Medium of the original

Period photograph

Original held by

Unknown photographer, 1905 · Wikimedia Commons

Credit

Unknown photographer, 1905 · Wikimedia Commons

Rights

Public domain, verified

Catalogue number

PA-01080