Kent County Cricket Club in 1906
After dominating county cricket in the early years of Queen Victoria's reign, the players who made up Kent's great side of the 1840s had retired and by the 1850s the county had been reduced to often having to amalgamate with other sides to produce a challenging team. The formation of a County Club in Maidstone in 1859 and the amalgamation of this with the original Kent Cricket Club in 1870 to create the modern Kent County Cricket Club, provided the basis for re-emergence, although the club suffered from financial instability and Lord Harris's view was that Kent could not hope to compete at the level it once had throughout the 1870s and 1880s. When the County Championship was formerly established in 1890 Kent were initially able to finish only in mid table.
Kent Rugby Football Union
One of the oldest unions in the country, the Kent Rugby Football Union was founded in 1880. In 1891, the Kent RFU created the Kent Cup as a county-wide competition for their members, one of the first few county cups established in England and the second in southern England after the Hampshire Rugby Football Union. They have a rich history in the men's senior County Championship since the early years of the competition, finishing as one of the regional winners in 1892, and became outright winners for the first time in 1897. They have gone on to win the top flight competition several more times, although the last time was way back in 1927.