In 1878 the first Macclesfield Rugby Club affiliated to the Rugy Football Union along with such clubs as Bowdon and Sale. Whilst there is no surviving internal register of RFU affiliated clubs from this period, Charles W Alcock’s ‘Football Annual’ of 1878 lists ‘Macclesfield’ as one of the clubs affiliated with the RFU at that time. The annual was written with the assistance of Mr Guillemard (then vice-president of the RFU) and is the RFU’s most reliable source of information for this time. Macclesfield Rugby Union Football Club isn’t listed in the annual until the 1929-30 edition and are then, as before, listed simply as ‘Macclesfield’.
