His name was Peter Jackson, and he was elected captain of Naples Foot Ball Club at their inaugural meeting in the spring of 1906. He was a key player as organised football made its first steps in Naples but only remained with the club for a couple of years. His identity has remained hidden until now.
Naples FBC is a direct ancestor of SSC Napoli, which came into being in 1926 but its exact date of founding is uncertain. Around 1904/05 a group of Italian, British and Swiss residents with links to cricket and rowing came together to play football, and in February 1906 they established a standalone club.
Peter Jackson was a popular choice as captain at that meeting. An influential player who led by example, when he left Naples at the end of 1907 for work reasons, his departure was perceived as a 'heartfelt loss' according to Stampa Sportiva, which said he had 'trained his team with such diligence since the formation of the NFBC'.
Somewhat misleadingly, the same article called him a champion player of 'the First Union of Newcastle', which has baffled historians as there is no such club. So, who was Peter Jackson?
Jackson had actually learned his football at school in Harrogate, where he attended Western College along with his elder brother Thomas. They both played for the school, then progressed to the Harrogate Corinthians amateur team. Peter was good enough to be picked for the town select in 1903.
The reason he ended up in Naples is that he followed his father into the steel-making industry. His father James, from Glasgow, was a metals expert whose career had taken him as far as Russia. While there, he married his Scottish wife Janet in St Petersburg, and when they came back to the UK their second son Peter Ainslie Jackson was born in Govan, the shipbuilding heart of Glasgow, in the summer of 1883.
The family did not remain in Scotland for long as James Jackson then took up a post as foreman steel smelter in Newcastle, moved to Harrogate and came back to Newcastle in the mid 1900s. Peter appears to have been taken on by WG Armstrong but was sent to the Pozzuoli factory to serve his apprenticeship. He was clearly a useful employee, as his name appears in the Journal of the Iron and Steel Institute in 1907, for contributing to a research project.
He was not the only Pozzuoli apprentice to play for Naples, as the name of George Pratt appears in some early reports.
However, their time in Italy concluded at the end of 1907 when Jackson and Pratt were recalled to Newcastle, probably because there was an Italian management buyout of the Pozzuoli plant.
He was still in post when he died in 1939, aged just 55. As he had no children, and his siblings did not marry, there were no descendants to carry on the family name.
Peter Ainslie Jackson
Born 28 June 1883 at 23 Burndyke Street, Govan, Glasgow.
Died 8 May 1939 at Mellor, Cheshire.
In the course of researching this article, I identified some other early Naples players:
William Henry Potts (1883-1959) was an important player for Naples through their first decade, one of the founders of the club and its captain after Peter Jackson left in 1907. After winning the Lipton Challenge Cup for the second time in 1911 he joined US Internazionale Napoli. Originally from South Shields, he came to Naples as a young man and remained there until the Second World War, apparently as a local agent for the White Star Line. He spent his final years on Merseyside, dying in Southport.
Harry Saltmarshe (1870-1929) was not only a player but also club treasurer in 1907. He moved to Naples around the turn of the century and worked for Dent Allcroft & Co, luxury glove makers. Originally from London, he married in Naples and spent the rest of his life there.
George Archibald Pratt (1888-1971) played alongside Jackson in the first games between Naples and Rome in 1907. An engineer, after returning to England he became a well-known tennis player in Cheshire, and even played once at Wimbledon against Bill Tilden.
Harold Frederick Greaves (1881-1962) appears in an early team line-up. Originally from Derbyshire, he was a shipping clerk in Liverpool before heading to Italy, and married in Naples in 1907.
George Edgar Little (1884-1961) played for Naples in 1906 and settled in the city for most of the rest of his life, although was forced to return to his home town of Liverpool during World War 2. He was a director of a pharmaceutical firm, Bell Sons & Co Ltd, and died in Naples.
I have more detailed information about these players which I will gladly share if you contact me using the form on the home page.
I would like to thank Felice Ba, football historian in Naples, for his assistance in researching this article.
Click on these links to the site Calcio Antico for further information on the early years of Naples Foot Ball Club:
La fondazione del Naples
Pionieri del Naples