1939 Mulryne Cup

The 1939 Mulryne Cup was the eleventh season of the Mulryne Cup, and the final season open to professional and semi-professional teams.

The Cup in Decline
The competing National Cup had seen significant success against the Mulryne Cup in the previous three seasons, but going into the 1939 tournament the organisers were optimistic of a resurgence. Talks were ongoing, but the AFGM was convinced as late as March 1939 that they would manage to persuade Southeringdale Town - who had resigned from the 1936 competition and not returned since - to enter once again.

Instead, the cup was dealt a series of blows in April. The first of these was the news that Camdin City - the only professional side in Mindano's capital and the Mulryne Cup champions two years in a row - had decided not to enter and defend their title. This was compounded when a number of smaller teams, perhaps most notably Brylow, chose to compete in the National Cup as well as the Mulryne Cup.

In the event, the Mulryne Cup took place with a reduced roster of sixteen teams, of which only two - Welbury Steel and Acreham's Jessimina - were professional. Jessimina had only turned professional after the 1938 season. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these two teams met in the final.

After the semi-finals, AFGM president Lemuel Mulryne, owner of the Mulryne's Borough Swifts, tabled a motion to ban professional clubs outright. This was passed by a majority of AFGM members in early September, and Mulryne then attempted to organise a new final between the two defeated semi-finalists, his own Swifts and Bromyard, on the grounds that neither of the two teams involved in the 1939 final was still a member of the AFGM. This never came to pass, but Mulryne's team acquired a reputation as the AFGM's favoured club.