A century has passed since the demise of the most successful football team the city of Portsmouth has ever seen. The vanished decades have hidden the achievements of Royal Artillery FC, an elite Army team who swept all before them in an unsurpassed five-year period and laid the foundations for the professional club of today, Portsmouth FC.

The Victorian team made national headlines during their rapid ascent as they won cup competitions against top opponents from around the country. Their fall from grace was equally spectacular when their fortunes were wrecked by a scandal, which reached the very top of the football establishment.

Their players were a colourful bunch of characters, in particular, their brilliant goalkeeper Matt Reilly, who became Portsmouth’s first sporting star and was later capped for his country and courted by the top clubs of his day. He was idolised by the thousands of fans who packed The Gunners’ home games in the heart of the city to create the biggest sporting spectacles it had known, as was Bombardier John Hannah, team captain and centre forward, who became Portsmouth’s first ever international player.

Buried in the archives since Victorian times, the fascinating story of this pioneer football team can now be told… The inheritance they bequeathed to soccer in the city of Portsmouth included the nickname ‘Pompey’ – still used by the club to this day – and the famous ‘Pompey Chimes’ sung to the tune of Big Ben’s bells with the words Play up Pompey that still stir the heart of every true Portsmouth FC fan.