Army FA teams up with National Army Museum to place Army Football memorabilia on public display

The Army Football Association has joined forces with the National Army Museum to preserve forces football artefacts which will soon be accessible to the general public. 

Memorabilia dating back to the late 1800s and the two world wars have long been stored away in boxes in the previous home of Army football. 

Now it has been decided that the time has come to share the history of the 'soldiers' game'.

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"We need to do something about this because we've got all of this history," Secretary for Army Football, Graham Brookland, explains.

"We are one of 50 county associations in the country. There isn't another county association in the country that has the heritage and the history that the Army Football Association has, so it needs to be in the public eye.

"We have within the Army Football Association started to initiate plans to widen the initiative from there."

Co-founder and chair of the Football and War Network, Alex Alexandrou, has overseen the project where he was tasked to catalogue and list the many items in the Army's possession. 

"This is a fantastic find for us," he said. "We have found documents and photographs that include the late Duncan Edwards, Bobby Charlton, Cliff Jones, Jack Charlton, Gordon Banks, and a number of those featured in the 1966 World Cup Final.

"They had only recently completed their National Service, so we have a lot of information on National Service personnel who were professional footballers."

Once the National Army Museum has archived the artefacts, they will be available to researchers and readers all over the world when they are eventually put on public display.