Pegasus FC - Amateur Giants

Pegasus FC were unique and their like will never be seen again.

Giants of the amateur game in the 1950s Pegasus titanic Amateur Cup Final clash with the mighty Bishop Auckland provided the highlight of the decade yet the club itself existed for only 15 years.

But the Pegasus FC story is one of great achievement on the field of play and their decline due more to a changing university culture rather than inadequacy on the pitch.

The brainchild of Harold ‘Tommy’ Thompson, who later become chairman of the Football Association, Pegasus FC were a team made up of players from both Oxford and Cambridge universities. Their ethos was to rekindle the Corinthian spirit within football and their brief was to compete in the FA Amateur Cup – two objectives that they managed to achieve very successfully.

The club would take part in no league competitions but would prepare for their cup matches by playing friendly matches although the players would still turn out for their own universities and club sides.

The 1948-49 FA Amateur Cup saw the competitive debut of the new club in a Fourth Qualifying Round tie with Enfield. Such was the interest in the new club that the match was televised with a Doug Insole penalty sealing a 3-1 win for Pegasus.

Further victories came against Smethwick and previous seasons finalists Willington before eventual defeat against Bromley in front of 12,000 fans at Iffley Road, Oxford. Reaching the Quarter-Final proper in that first campaign was remarkable but the club would eclipse that by winning the Amateur Cup in 1951 and 1953.

The 1951 Cup Final was eagerly awaited as it pitted the new ‘glamour’ boys Pegasus against the granite-hard northern giants of Bishop Auckland. A record crowd of 100,000 packed into Wembley Stadium and witnessed a thrilling match with Pegasus holding on for a 2-1 victory.

The national press headline “Pegasus Showed the Spurs Touch,” neatly emphasising the different footballing approach of the two teams.

Wembley again hosted Pegasus FC in 1953 and another capacity crowd saw the university men hammer Harwich and Parkestone 6-0, the match being over as a contest inside 15 minutes with Pegasus already two goals to the good.

Unbelievably, Pegasus FC had won the Amateur Cup twice within five years of being formed with the explicit intent of doing just that. But it couldn’t last.

The clubs explosive arrival on the scene ended with a gradual decline that began the minute the whistle blew at the end of the 1953 final.

Plenty of silverware was won but a falling membership, a reluctance of new and younger players to get involved together with many of the ‘old-stagers’ preferring to play for Corinthian-Casuals saw the club eventually disband in 1963.

The club had seen more than twenty internationals don its colours in becoming one of the best sides in the country, albeit for an all to brief period. The clubs epitaph was written by famous football writer Geoffrey Green who wrote, “Pegasus FC came and went like a shooting star. But in their short life they shed a brilliant light on the game as a whole. They were something different.”