Who was the first newspaper football columnist and where did he write? Paul Brown believes he has the answer. In an article for The Blizzard, he argues the case for the man (surely it was a chap) who worked under the pseudonym Off-Side and was published in the Darlington-based daily, the Northern Echo.

Paul discovered that Off-Side began writing "football notes" in February 1885. He may have been the first of his kind, but there were other contenders with similar pen-names, such as Goal-Post, Full-Back and Spectator.

According to Brown - author of the book Goal-Post: Victorian Football - these early writers played a key part in the development of football.

And Off-Side certainly saw himself in the role of ambassador for a sport only then taking shape, as his introductory Northern Echo column implies:

"The object of the writer will be raising the status of the game… A main feature of the notes will be their thorough independence. There will be no trucking with this club or that; everyone will be treated alike.

This is the most important point and the general public can depend on it being observed. The writer is not officially connected with any club, and will not sing the praises of one club at the expense of the rest."

And in an early example of a consistent journalistic theme down the years, he was no fan of the game's administrators:

"Football legislators are a queer set, and a capital type of the standstill, querulous old Tory. The Durham Association have sunk so low lately; it is questionable whether they could sink lower… The decisions are unworthy of any body of representative gentlemen."

So who was Off-Side? Sadly, Paul couldn't discover that. The Northern Echo's historian had no idea. Off-Side's final column was published at the end of 1887-88, the season before the foundation of the Football League.

His successor, called Observer, wished him well "in his new sphere across the herring pond" where "may he haul in the dainty shekels to his heart's (and his pocket's) content".

We might therefore have assumed that Off-Side emigrated to America. Paul drew a blank in the States but he did discover that, in July 1888, a new columnist appeared in the Wanganui Herald in New Zealand: "Football Notes by Off-Side".

And he believes the mystery man continued to write about the game for various Kiwi newspapers for the next 20 years.

If anyone can throw any light on Off-Side's identity then please comment below or contact Paul here.

Incidentally, Paul, a Newcastle man, tells me the main reason he carried out his researches at the Darlington paper was due to the failure of the two Newcastle papers - the Journal and the Evening Chronicle - to cover football in the 1880s.

Nowadays, of course, they live off Newcastle United, which was founded in 1892 when the city's East End side adopted the name after the West End team had folded.

Sources: Anton Rippon, SJA/Victorian Football/Phone conversation with Paul Brown