Links With The Past: Training Rules & Players’ Instructions

This copy of Leicester Fosse’s ‘Training Rules & Players’ Instructions’ was recently donated to the Club by Jen and Andrew Morris, whose grandfather was George Morris, a Leicester Fosse reserve who played for the Fossils during the 1912/13 season.

Issued by Jack Bartlett, the Fosse’s Secretary-Manager, it details several rules which had to be ‘strictly adhered to’, by order of the Directors. 

Full-time players had to be at the ground at 10am every morning and be under the trainer’s orders for the rest of the day. Part-time players had to attend training on Tuesday and Thursday evenings or ‘oftener if required’. Training involved running, sprinting, skipping, punching the ball, walking and football dribbling and practice.

‘Outfits’ for playing and training were the Club’s property. Match shirts could not be worn for training. Players had to keep their boots ‘in proper condition’.

Players were forbidden to bring friends into the ground or dressing room on training and matchdays. They would be suspended if they bet on any match. Players had to be at the ground half an hour before kick-off and at the railway station 15 minutes before the train’s departure for away matches.

Smoking at the ground was strictly forbidden in the dressing room on training days and on the outward journey to away matches. Reserves not playing on matchdays also needed to assist the groundsman at half-time and after the match. Drinking to excess, it says, would also ‘be severely dealt with by the Directors’.