The Khaki Final, 1915

The last final before the guns — the terraces half in uniform, the game about to stop.

Work: press photograph, 24 April 1915
Maker: press photograph
Date: 1915
Ground: Old Trafford, Manchester
Era: The Edwardian game · 1901–1918
Source: Unknown press photographer, 1915 · Wikimedia Commons

The fixture list is a kind of peace treaty.

Format

The full-resolution scan, colour-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and explore.

$29.00

The story

The Cup Final of April 1915, Sheffield United against Chelsea, moved to Old Trafford and played under the shadow of the war — the terraces so salted with soldiers on leave that the papers named it the Khaki Final. Lord Derby, presenting the Cup, told the players and the crowd to “play with one another for England” now; competitive football shut down for four seasons the same summer. The photograph holds the last Saturday of the old world: the flat caps, the uniforms among them, everyone about to be somewhere far worse. The fixture list is a kind of peace treaty.

See it on your wall

The piece, in the room it was made for

The Khaki Final, 1915, printed large and framed — in the den, the club bar, the supporters’ bar. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.

The Khaki Final, 1915 framed on the wall

About this reproduction

A reproduction of press photograph, 24 April 1915 — press photograph, 1915 — from the copy held by Unknown press photographer, 1915 · Wikimedia Commons. The source. The work was published before 1931 and is public-domain verified.
Printed faithful to that source scan — restore honestly, disclose always. We do not re-colour it, complete it, or interpret it; the piece you receive is the image as it survives, halftone grain honored as history, not damage.
Printed to order on museum-grade cotton-rag stock with pigment inks — the pairing is rated 100+ years.
Colour-managed to the source; the tone of the paper and the ink is the period’s, not ours.
Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed editions ship flat-packed).
If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.

Why our pieces cost more than a poster: a poster is a mass run on wood-pulp stock, colour-corrected to whatever flattered the press that day. This is one sheet, pulled for you, at a size where the maker’s hand is visible — the linework, the halftone grain, the lettering — on materials made to outlast their owner.

From the same hand