15 November 1894: Historic day for Austrian football

Austria's very first official football match took place in Vienna 130 years ago today, on 15 November 1894. It was played between the First Vienna Football Club and the Vienna Cricket and Football Club, from which the Veilchen split in October 1910. The cricketers came out on top with a clear 4-0 victory.

Around 300 people gathered on the Kuglerwiese, Vienna's home ground at the time, to witness - in retrospect - the birth of Austrian football. Although a football match was already documented in Austria, more precisely in Graz, in March 1894, this match was played between two teams from the Akademisch-Technischer Radfahr-Verein (ATRV).

Eight months later, two different clubs met. The Cricketers, whose team consisted exclusively of British players, won the match 4-0. The match was played according to the international rules in force at the time, namely two 50-minute matches with a ten-minute break.

How the cricketers became the Violets

The history of the Vienna Cricket and Football Club began in 1892, when British people working and living in Vienna began playing football, which was already popular on the UK, alongside the traditional game of cricket. Although the Blue and Blacks subsequently became a club, they failed to register with the club authorities at the time.

And so, on 22 August 1894, the football-playing gardeners that Baron Rothschild had brought from England to look after his property on the Hohe Warte were the first to register a football club: The First Vienna Football Club. This makes Vienna the first and oldest Austrian football club. One day later, on 23 August 1894, the Vienna Cricket and Football Club also registered. Initially also with the addition ‘First’, which later had to be cancelled.

On 29 October 1910, after years of discord within the Cricketers, a split took place in the basement of the Vienna Urania: 20 per cent of the officials and the second team remained with the original club, while the rest founded the Vienna Cricketers with the club colours violet and white - the birth of the Violets.

However, there were later difficulties with the name Wiener Cricketer, as the Vienna Cricket and Football Club objected and claimed the right to the name Cricketer for itself. As a result, the club was renamed Wiener Amateur Sportverein, or the Amateurs for short, on 30 November 1910. After lengthy negotiations, the club joined the Austrian Football Association on 15 March 1911, the official founding date of Austria Wien.