Notts County

Nottingham’s older football club

Notts County’s founding history dates to 1862. The neighbouring club’s official history supplies a useful comparison: Nottingham Forest began in 1865 and played its first official match against County in 1866. The two names represent separate clubs with separate beginnings, rather than different versions of one Nottingham institution.

County’s widely recognised oldest-professional distinction also needs its precise meaning. It identifies an old club that plays professional football; it does not establish that players were paid from the founding year. Our oldest-clubs guide keeps this question separate from Sheffield FC’s independent-club status and from the earlier origins claimed by some institutions.

The FA Cup win changed the competitive record

In 1894, Notts County became the first Second Division side to win the FA Cup. The FA’s competition history records the victory over top-flight Bolton Wanderers. That makes the achievement more specific than simply adding a nineteenth-century trophy to a list: a club from outside the top division won the game’s major knockout competition.

The result also gives County a sporting story alongside its age. An early founding date cannot explain every later success or setback, but this Cup win provides evidence of a team changing expectations in its own period. It belongs in a club history even for a reader who arrived looking only for the world’s oldest professional side.

A black-and-white connection with Turin

Juventus traces the arrival of its black-and-white colours in 1903 to Nottingham-born Tom Gordon Savage and Notts County. The Italian club revisited that connection in 2017 when County supporters and members of Savage’s family visited its museum. The relationship survives in a visual identity recognised far beyond either city.

There was a further meeting in 2011, when County took part in the friendly that inaugurated Juventus Stadium. This is an unusually direct link between a historic English club and the modern home of a major European team. It makes County’s story useful beyond an argument about dates: the club left a trace in another team’s identity that a viewer can still recognise on a matchday.