Everton were founded as St Domingo's FC in 1878, named after the nearby St Domingo Methodist Chapel, to give members of the congregation the chance to play sport all year round, not just cricket in the summer months. But as an empowered working class began to enjoy more leisure time, football also became a spectator sport.
"It was the people in the church trying to get the local village folk involved in sport to give them some good, healthy Christian exercise instead of being down the pub," Rob Sawyer, a member of the Everton Heritage Society - a voluntary group researching and chronicling the club's history - told BBC Sport.
"Within a few years, people would start to come and stand on the touchline at Stanley Park, where the team was first playing, and it soon caught the imagination."
The Toffees moved to Anfield in 1884, winning the first of their nine league titles there in 1891. But a dispute with landlord John Houlding saw the club move across Stanley Park to Goodison, with Houlding forming a new club - Liverpool FC.
Going to the match soon became a weekly ritual - red or blue - offering a distraction from the difficulties of everyday life, particularly during the docks' decline in the early 1900s, the trauma of two World Wars and the economic recession of the 1970s and 1980s.
'It’s your great escape, isn't it?" said Rob. "If you're somebody who's working a very hard 60-hour week on the docks, on a shipyard or in a factory, it was the great leisure pursuit, the great escape from the hardship of work.
"Then as the industry and maritime trade decreases, with high unemployment, it was again an escape from the doldrums that you might find yourself in, and brought some pride to the city.
"There was always that connection with the fans, who were from predominantly, but not entirely, a working class background, in the areas of Anfield and Walton and the wider north Liverpool area. Those areas saw a lot of hardship, but you've got these two beacons of light [ Everton and Liverpool] divided by the park."