Episode 2: They Took the Lead - Clapton Orient, the Footballers' Battalion, and the Cost of War ( 1905–1929)

Send us Fan MailIn December 1914, with the First World War four months old, ten Clapton Orient players attended a recruiting meeting at Fulham Town Hall and enlisted together. They were the first Football League club to enlist en masse. Within two years, three of them were dead on the Somme.This episode covers the first quarter-century of Orient's life in the Football League — early respectability in Division Two, the royal visit of 1921, a record crowd of 38,000 at Millfields Road — but its heart is the First World War, and the extraordinary sacrifice of the men who wore the club's colours on Saturday afternoons and then wore army uniform on the battlefields of France. We tell the story of Richard McFadden, who died near Serre in October 1916, and of what it means for a football club to carry the weight of that history.Player of the Era: Richard McFadden.The following is a collated record of all research sources used across the ten episodes of Orient Through the Ages. Sources are listed by episode and organised into books and primary sources, digital archives and databases, journalism and fan media, and Wikipedia entries. All facts, dates, scorelines, and biographical details were verified against at least one source before inclusion in the scripts. Where sources conflicted, the most reliable or corroborated account was used, and the discrepancy is noted in the relevant episode’s production notes.Episodes01The Cricketers’ Club, 1881–190502They Took the Lead, 1905–192903Coming Home, 1929–195504A Season in the Sun, 1955–196605The Boy from Archway, 1966–197706...