What if Leeds, the one club city, had two?

This weekend the FA Cup is going to bring something interesting to Leeds: hordes of Harrogate Town fans. Will the A61 be able to cope, after all this week's winter? Will Northern Rail add a carriage or two to their Saturday night trains back north? How will it feel, in Leeds, on derby day? Is this even a derby? Or isn't everything a derby now, if you give it a name? What's this one, El Dalesico? El Betty's-ico? The Nora Batty Challenge Trophy?

It's a quaint third round match, for now, at least until it isn't. The Sulphurites, founded 1919, are not only twenty miles away but a promotion and a relegation away from being among Leeds United's Football League fixtures. It's a heady reminder of 2007, when the same divisional gap separated Leeds and Farsley Celtic, although it wasn't a given whether league football would be hosting that clash or the Peacocks would crash into the Conference. York City were there too. If only Guiseley and Garforth could have got their act together, we could have had quite a party.

All of which is food for idle thoughts. Like, what if the city of Leeds had two big football clubs? As in, always had? Or at least, if we couldn't go further back and convince our Victorian ancestors to get over their rugby obsessions sooner, since the start of the 20th century? It's often said that Leeds stands out as a massive city with only one massive football club, but the flipside of that is also true: we're of the few without two. Economically, socially, culturally, what would make the biggest difference to Leeds as a place: decent public transport, or a second professional football club?

This is alternate history, a speculative fantasy, but not impossible as reality. In summer 1915, when Leeds City were struggling to make ends meet in wartime, the Leeds Cricket, Football and Athletics Company offered to buy the club, its players, officials, stands and its place in the Football League Division Two, and move it all to their home, Headingley. Their company was already the much larger enterprise, and although it may have been a defensive move to stop their spectators migrating south of the River Aire for soccer, on face value it was a statement of support for the idea of association football in the north of the city. It didn't go ahead because a rival syndicate, led by Joseph Connor, bought Leeds City. They wanted soccer to stay at Elland Road, close to the working class communities in Beeston, Holbeck, Hunslet and Morley who supported it.

What would have become of those supporters if the Headingley company had got its way? Few of them had the means or the inclination to take a tram so far north for their entertainment, especially not to the home of their local Hunslet rugby league club's great rivals. The Headingley mavens must have factored that in, believing they could draw crowds for soccer locally, without the old supporters. Even if Elland Road had lost its stands, it would still have had a pitch and terraces, and a location close to the factories and homes where the growing game, across the north, was growing in popularity. A problem for soccer in the city of Leeds was that, while the workers lived in the industrial south, the bosses had fled for higher, smokeless ground to the north, taking with them the means to found and build professional football clubs. But that was where Norris Hepworth had come in, underwriting Leeds City for a decade before his death while living in a large villa on Victoria Road. And where Joseph Connor had stepped in with his consortium to keep a football club close to the south Leeds factories. And where alderman Alf Masser — of the north-west ward — who longed for a club free of rich benefactors and whose energy propelled Leeds United into existence after Burslem Port Vale's conspiring ensured City's demise in 1919, may have felt compelled to start a new club in 1915 on the old, emptied Peacock grounds.

Picture Leeds City, established 1904, relocated from Beeston to Headingley and remarketed for the middle classes; and Leeds United, newly founded, taking over at Elland Road. Now might be a good time to mention by way of precedent that, from 1884 to 1892, Anfield's first occupants were Everton. The First World War may have been a hard time for it, but 1915 was about a cheap opportunity following Norris Hepworth's death. The appetite for soccer at Headingley did not spring up and abate just then, nor was theirs the only interest. Alf Masser didn't get his own way, in 1919, because Hilton Crowther sensed an opportunity to move a renamed Huddersfield Town to Elland Road and, even without the Terriers, was enthused enough to help found Leeds United. There was enterprise in Leeds, and no shortage of proposals for stadiums at places like Roundhay Park; soccer was booming and Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield all boasted two top clubs. Even Bradford, against whom Leeds measured itself in all things including the insurgent success of Bradford City AFC, also had Park Avenue. What seems to have been lacking is something I've diagnosed about Leeds but don't have time to get into here: a sense that, if something is being done in the city, then it's enough. Whether this is not wanting to step on another's toes, I'm not sure, or a feeling that if someone started first there's no point in following. Whatever the cause, the city of Leeds often only seems to have one of something, and is often panicked when that one of a thing is closed down and there isn't another.