page_title: History of Crystal Palace F.C.
section_title: Southern League (1905–20)
hierarchical_section_title: History of Crystal Palace F.C. / Southern League (1905–20)
caption_attribution_description: English: A Crystal Palace FC line up for the 1905-06 season.
context_page_description: Crystal Palace Football Club is an English professional association football club based in Selhurst, South London, England. Although their official founding date is 1905, the club recognise their true founding date to be 1861, when the original amateur Crystal Palace football club was first established, after historians discovered a direct lineage through their ownership under the same Crystal Palace Company. This would make Crystal Palace the oldest professional football club in the world. The amateur and professional clubs were both founded at the Crystal Palace Exhibition building and played their home games inside the Palace grounds. The amateur club shared the cricket pitch in the Crystal Palace Park with the Crystal Palace Cricket Club, and the professional club played at the FA Cup Final stadium until 1915, when they were forced to leave due to the outbreak of the First World War. They eventually moved to their current home at Selhurst Park in 1924.
context_section_description: The newly-formed professional club applied to join the Second Division of the Football League, but were rejected and forced to settle for a place in the Southern League Second Division. To increase the number of club fixtures, Palace also joined the mid-week United Counties League. The club's manager John Robson established a team of sixteen professionals, mainly drawn from his previous club Middlesbrough. Palace's inaugural campaign, which consisted mainly of matches against other clubs' reserve sides, alongside Southall, Southern United, St. Leonards United and Grays United, was a successful one. Their opening match was against Southampton Reserves, and approximately 3,000 people paid 6d to stand or a shilling to be seated. Palace led 3–0 after 30 minutes, before fading and losing 3–4. However, that was the club's only defeat in the league all season, and Palace won the championship and were promoted to the Southern League First Division. The season included a run of seventeen straight victories, one of them being a 9–1 win over Grays United. The crowd attendances for the season were regularly between 2,000 and 3,000 although 4,000 attended the 4–0 defeat of Watford Reserves in March.
  Following their promotion, Palace started their second season as a club playing in the Southern League First Division, finishing in nineteenth place, but they enjoyed better form in the FA Cup. After beating Rotherham County in a qualifying tie, Palace were  drawn away to Newcastle United in the First Round proper. Newcastle had played in the previous two FA Cup Finals, were league champions in 1905 and were on their way to another title. In what still stands as one of the club's greatest ever wins, Palace scored through Horace Astley against the run of play and then held off Newcastle to come away with a shock 1–0 win. The second and third rounds saw Palace dispose of Fulham and Brentford respectively, the latter after a replay, and in the quarter-finals, Palace were drawn at home to First Division club Everton, who were flying high in second place. In front of a record crowd of 35,000, Palace took the lead, but their opponents equalised taking the tie to a replay, where Everton proved too strong, running out 4–0 winners.
  John Robson left Palace to manage neighbours Croydon Common F.C. for the 1907–08 season, and Edmund Goodman took over as manager and club secretary. Palace had a good season, finishing fourth. Bill Davies became the first player from the club to be capped at international level when he was called up for Wales. The club could not sustain their league form the following season, finishing in a disappointing sixteenth place. In the FA Cup, Palace lost 0–9 to Burnley in a second round replay, which was a record defeat for the club. Palace managed to finish fourth again in the league the following season, losing just one game in the first twelve, and repeated their fourth-place finish the season after, with league attendances as high as 12,000. The club won the London Challenge Cup in 1913, overcoming West Ham United 1–0. After seventh and fifth-place finishes, Palace enjoyed good form in the 1913–14 season, with the club putting together some long unbeaten runs and finishing the season runners-up to Swindon Town on goal average. They also retained the London Challenge Cup, defeating Tottenham Hotspur 2–1 at Highbury, and provided their first England representative in Horace Colclough, who played in the team that beat Wales in Cardiff on 16 March.
  Following the outbreak of the First World War on 4 August 1914, Palace had three players called up as Reservists before the season started. Former Palace players Ginger Williams and Joe Bulcock were amongst those killed in the conflict. In March 1915, The Admiralty, who had taken over the Palace and its grounds at the start of the war, ordered the club to leave and Palace chose to move to Herne Hill Velodrome. When Croydon Common F.C. failed to return to business after the war, Palace moved to their ground known as The Nest which was opposite Selhurst railway station. In the first f
caption: The Crystal Palace squad of 1905–06.
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