Arthur Kinnaird, 11th Lord Kinnaird

KT
Portrait of Kinnaird by Alexander Bassano, c. 1905
Born	Arthur Fitzgerald Kinnaird 16 February 1847 Kensington, England
Died	30 January 1923(1923-01-30) (aged 75) England
Occupation(s)	Football player and executive
Known for	Player of Wanderers and Old Etonians[1] President of the FA (1890–1923) President of the YMCA[1]

Arthur Fitzgerald Kinnaird, 11th Lord Kinnaird,

Kinnaird also served as president of The FA for 33 years.[1] For his contributions to football and the FA Cup, he was given the FA Cup trophy itself to keep in 1911 when a new trophy was commissioned.^[5][6]

Life

Kinnaird's father,

In 1875, he married Mary Alma Victoria Agnew (1854–1923), the daughter of Sir Andrew Agnew, 8th Baronet, and Lady Mary Noel, and had seven children, including :^[8][9]

• Douglas Arthur Kinnaird, who was born on 20 August 1879 and served during the
  First World War as a captain in the 1st Battalion of the Scots Guards; he died on 24 October 1914 and is buried at Ypres in Belgium.^[10]
• Kenneth Fitzgerald Kinnaird (1880–1972), who inherited his father's titles; he married Frances Clifton (1876–1960) and was the father of Graham Charles Kinnaird (1912–1997), 13th Lord Kinnaird, upon whose death the titles became dormant.
• Arthur Middleton Kinnaird, who was born on 20 April 1885 and served as a lieutenant in the 1st Battalion of the Scots Guards; he died on 27 November 1917 and is buried at Ruyaulcourt.^[11]
• Patrick Kinnaird (1898–1948), who married, in 1921, Margaret Stella Wright (div.) and, in 1925, Violet Sandford.

Football career

Player

Kinnaird first played football while at Cheam School and was captain of the school team in 1859, aged 12, for a match against Harrow School. He continued to play football at Eton College, winning the House Cup in 1861 with Joynes's House, but was never selected for the school eleven. He first played association football, which was codified in 1863, early in 1866.

As a player, Kinnaird had a remarkable record in the

He was renowned as perhaps the toughest tackler of his day, giving rise to the (probably apocryphal) story that his wife once expressed the fear that he would "come home one day with a broken leg." A friend is said to have responded: "You must not worry, madam. If he does, it will not be his own." Posterity has awarded Arthur Kinnaird the reputation of being fond of 'hacking', i.e. deliberately kicking his opponents. This is not entirely fair: reports from his playing days do not criticise him, and he owes his notoriety to an oft-repeated anecdote which first appeared in an October 1892 issue of Pastime magazine, a weekly sporting journal that was edited by Nicholas Lane 'Pa' Jackson, founder of the Corinthian Football Club and a committee member of the Football Association.

Jackson wrote: 'The keen rivalry which at one time existed between the Old Etonians and Old Harrovians lent an additional zest to the matches between them, and in one of these Lord Kinnaird's energy was expended as much on the shins of his opponents as on the ball. This at length caused a protest from the captain of the Harrovians, who asked, 'Are we going to play the game, or are we going to have hacking?' 'Oh, let us have hacking!' was the noble reply.' Jackson later reveals that the opposing captain was

Sportswriters and fellow internationals queued to pay tribute to Kinnaird's skill as a footballer both during and after his career. He was, according to "Tityrus" (J.A.H. Catton), editor of the Athletic News:

"of yeoman build and shaggy auburn beard, [and] did not quite look the part of a Scottish laird, until one spoke to him, and heard his rich, resonant voice and his short ejaculatory sentences. Of course, he had the voice and manner of an educated man of distinction.

"He was a leader, and above all things, a muscular type of Christian... As a player, in any position, [he] was an examplar of manly robust football. He popularised the game by his activity as a footballer among every class. He was at much at home with the boys of the Polytechnic, London, as he was with the Old Etonians.

"There was a time when the white ducks of Kinnaird, for he always wore trousers in a match, and his blue and white quartered cap were as familiar on the field as the giant figure of

W.G. Grace

with his yellow and red cricket cap... Lord Kinnaird used to say that he played four or five matches a week and never grew tired, but he added, late in life, that he would never have been allowed to stay on the field five minutes in these latter days. Nevertheless, he was fair, above board, and was prepared to receive all the knocks that came his way without a trace of resentment."

Administrator

As an administrator, Kinnaird was an FA committeeman at the age of 21, in 1868. He became treasurer nine years later and president 13 years after that, replacing Major Francis Marindin in 1890. He was to remain president for the next 33 years, serving alongside long-serving vice-president Charles Crump, until their deaths in 1923, just days before the opening of Wembley Stadium.

He was an all-round sportsman, twice winning a blue at tennis, in 1868 and 1869, while at

He was appointed a Knight of the Thistle by George V in the 1914 Birthday Honours.^[19][20] This gave him the Post Nominal Letters "KT" for Life.

Portrayals

Kinnaird is one of the main characters in the Netflix mini-series, The English Game (2020), portrayed by Edward Holcroft.^[21][22]

See also

• List of Scotland international footballers born outside Scotland

Bibliography

• Arthur Kinnaird: First Lord of Football, Andy Mitchell. CreateSpace, 2011.
  ISBN 978-1-4636-2111-7
  . (Revised and republished in 2020).
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
• The Official History Of The Football Association, Bryon Butler,
  ISBN 0-356-19145-1
• Association Football and the Men Who Made It, William Pickford and Alfred Gibson. London: Caxton 1906.
• The Story of Association Football, "Tityrus" (J.A.H. Catton). Cleethorpes: Soccer Books, 2006 reprint of 1926 original.
  ISBN 1-86223-119-2
  .
• Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, 100th Edn, London, 1953.
• Hesilrige, Arthur G. M. (1921). Debrett's Peerage and Titles of courtesy. 160A,
  Fleet street, London, UK: Dean & Son. p. 526.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link
  )