Polytechnic Football Club (1875-present)

Quintin Hogg, founder of the Polytechnic, and his friend and colleague Arthur Fitzgerald Kinnaird (1847-1923, 11th Baron Kinnaird), were both skilled footballers at Eton at a time when the game, until then limited to public schools playing to their own rules, was first being organised. The FA rules were established in 1863. On leaving school, both continued to play for the Wanderers, a team of public school old boys which won five of the first seven FA cup finals. FA cup was first played in 1871-72 season. They also played in the first unofficial England Scotland internationals (for Scotland). Lord Kinnaird was later President of the Football Association.

Kinnaird was involved with Hogg's charitable foundations and retained his connection with their football teams. Hogg's Institute encompassed members who were not students, but were involved in its other activities.

The first Institute football club was formed in 1875 as the Hanover Football Club, for which Hogg and Kinnaird both played. The series of matches organised against boys clubs, public school city settlements and other teams during the 1870’s marked part of the movement which helped to spread football to the working classes, ensuring the game’s widespread popularity and also the rise of the professional player- soon to displace the public school amateurs.

In 1882 the Young Men’s Christian Institute moved to 309 Regent Street, former home of the Royal Polytechnic Institute. It soon adopted the name Polytechnic, and the football club became the Polytechnic Football Club. The Club, which had previously had grounds in Barnes and in Wimbledon, moved to the Quintin Hogg Memorial Ground at Chiswick in 1906. The Club continues to play there, as members of the Southern Amateur League, with up to seven teams fielded every week.