One of the great football contests of Victorian football took place at Hampton Park on 19 May in the presence of 6,000 enthusiastic spectators. Scottish Cup winners Renton FC,  from the Vale of Leven (a hotbed of football in Scotland), faced English FA Cup winners West Bromwich Albion in a match that was billed as the "Championship of the United Kingdom and the World". According to the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News which has left us a magnificent account of the match, ‘The wonderful record of both clubs during the season, combined with other circumstances, made feeling run high. The West Bromwich is one of the English clubs which have never had a Scotchman either as a coach or a player. The Renton, on the other hand, is a thoroughly representative Scotch team, so in a sense the contest might be called international, especially as each club had beaten the best teams in their respective countries.’  Most of the West Brom players were employed in the George Salter Spring Works in the Midlands. The Renton team were mostly employed in Dalquhurn Tin-key Red Dye and Print Works, of which is chief patron Alexander Wylie, was the senior partner. Up until the 3:30 kick off the weather had been good, but a thunderstorm erupted after half an hour of the match.  ‘The sky grew darker and darker, till at last the sun was totally obscured the rain fell heavier and faster with each succeeding peal, finally bursting into a solid sheet of water, which poured from a rent in a curtain-like cloud hanging above the city in inky darkness, a background which showed with startling effect the terribly and grandly fantastic sheets and forks of coloured flame which flashed forth between the cannon-like roar of each electric discharge.’ As the pitch turned into a quagmire, the Renton team adopted quickly to the conditions.  According to the match report ‘During all this time the game --to the players-- was so engrossing and exciting that the elemental warfare was more or less lost sight of, till at last the thunder plump was so heavy that the goalkeepers could not see each other. The umpire blew his whistle, and a general rush was made by the players to the pavilion, where there was breathing time.’ The Renton team was quick to return to the pitch but the game was interrupted again by the atrocious conditions.  By this time Renton were leading 3-1 and as the condition of the pitch worsened the long passing game played by Albion in such weather was less effective than the close passing of the Renton team.  Renton scored again after the second break and hemmed in the visitors from this point to the finish with score standing at 4-1 to the Scottish team. Renton treated the West Brom team to supper before they headed south by the night mail.  The team returned to the village of Renton to a heroes welcome which was immortalised by Hugh Caldwell in a poem printed in the The Lennox Herald on 26 May, 1888 printed a poem by Hugh Caldwell:

Tonight the conqueror’s banner in Renton town’s unfurled

To welcome home their heroes, the champions of the world;

The band in triumph playing – the busy stir’s begun

And the fire of victory’s blazing on the braes of old Carman.

The Athletic News, 22 May 1888, took a more jaundiced view: ‘I suppose Renton now claim the championship of the world, since they beat West Bromwich Albion on Saturday, but I should like to hear the opinion of the latter team on what passes for a summer’s afternoon in Glasgow. The Albion could have stayed at home and been drowned’.