The likelihood is that all of the major ‘football’ codes that are played today worldwide can trace their origins back to Medieval England - and beyond to Britain’s Dark Ages, through the ‘town games’ that were played between factions of the citizenry.
The oldest of these town games – and in this sense the mutual ancestor or ‘concestor ‘ - was the town game played in the City of Chester, Cheshire (where I went to school).
Legend has it that its town game began when the Roman Army pulled out of Chester around 410. It seems the local citizens or ‘Cestrians’ were so incensed at being deserted by their erstwhile colonial masters that they attacked the stragglers and cut off the head of one of the departing legionaries. The head was then used as a football for a town game – and this in turn became an annual event.
However, lacking a regular annual supply of Italians, the citizens shifted to a stuffed pig’s bladder.
The regular ‘Gottesday’ football match was played on Shrove Tuesday in February on the river flats known as the Roodee that lie beneath the town wall. By 1533, the game had become so violent that it was replaced by horse racing on the same site in 1539 (with the consent of the Lord Mayor Henry Gee, whose name apparently led to the use of the term "gee-gee" for horses).
From the 16th Century onwards, town games gradually evolved into team games – and this trend was given impetus by the adoption of compulsory sport in the ‘public’ (i.e. private boarding) schools that educated the upper and upper middle classes.
The modern rules of football are based on the mid-19th century efforts to standardize the widely varying forms of football played at the public schools of England.
The Cambridge Rules, first drawn up at Cambridge University in 1848, were particularly influential in the development of subsequent codes, including association football. The Cambridge Rules were written at Trinity College, Cambridge, at a meeting attended by representatives from Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester and Shrewsbury schools. They were not universally adopted.
During the 1850s, many clubs unconnected to schools or universities were formed throughout the English-speaking world, to play various forms of football. Some came up with their own distinct codes of rules, most notably the Sheffield Football Club, formed by former public school pupils in 1857, which led to formation of a Sheffield FA in 1867. In 1862, John Charles Thring of Uppingham School also devised an influential set of rules.
These ongoing efforts contributed to the formation of The Football Association (The FA) in 1863, which first met on the morning of 26 October 1863 at the Freemasons' Tavern in Great Queen Street, London. The only school to be represented on this occasion was Charterhouse. The Freemason's Tavern was the setting for five more meetings between October and December, which eventually produced the first comprehensive set of rules.
At the final meeting, the first FA treasurer, the representative from Blackheath, withdrew his club from the FA over the removal of two draft rules at the previous meeting: the first allowed for running with the ball in hand; the second for obstructing such a run by hacking (kicking an opponent in the shins), tripping and holding. Other English rugby football clubs followed this lead and did not join the FA, or subsequently left the FA and instead in 1871 formed the Rugby Football Union.
The eleven remaining clubs, under the charge of Ebenezer Cobb Morley, went on to ratify the original thirteen laws of the game. These rules included handling of the ball by "marks" and the lack of a crossbar, rules which made it remarkably similar to Victorian rules football being developed at that time in Australia.
The Sheffield FA played by its own rules until the 1870s with the FA absorbing some of its rules until there was little difference between the games.
The kicking and handling forms were later codified by The Football Association and the Rugby Football Union (RFU) respectively. Rugby football had its origins at Rugby School, Warwickshire, England.
The origin of rugby is reputed to be an incident during a game of English school football at Rugby School, Rugby, England, in 1823 when a pupil William Webb-Ellis picked up the ball and ran with it. Although this tale is apocryphal, the Rugby World Cup trophy is named after him.
Rugby football stems from a game played at Rugby School, Rugby, which old pupils initially took to university; with Cambridge believing that Old Rugby pupil Albert Pell was the first student to form a 'football' team.
During this early period different schools used different rules, with former pupils from Rugby and Eton attempting to carry their preferred rules through to their universities.
Significant events in the early development of rugby were the production of the first set of written laws at Rugby School in 1845, the Blackheath Club's decision to leave The Football Association in 1863 and the formation of the Rugby Football Union in 1871. The code was originally known simply as "rugby football"; it was not until after a schism in 1895, which resulted in the separate code of rugby league, that the name "rugby union" came to be used for the game itself.
Supporters of either code will frequently refer to theirs as merely "rugby", unless they are differentiating between the two.
The first rugby international took place on 27 March 1871, played between England and Scotland.
In 1895, a schism in Rugby football resulted in the formation of the Northern Rugby Football Union (NRFU). Although many factors played a part in the split, including the success of working class northern teams, the main division was caused by the RFU decision to enforce the amateur principle of the sport, preventing "broken time payments" to players who had taken time off work to play rugby.
Northern teams typically had more working class players (coal miners, mill workers etc.) who could not afford to play without this compensation, in contrast to southern teams who had other sources of income to sustain the amateur principle. There were similar movements in other countries.
In 1895 a decree by the RFU banning the playing of rugby at grounds where entrance fees were charged led to the famous meeting on 29 August 1895. Twenty-two clubs (plus Stockport who negotiated by telephone) met at The George Hotel, Huddersfield in the West Riding of Yorkshire and formed the "Northern Rugby Football Union".
Within fifteen years of that first meeting in Huddersfield, more than 200 RFU clubs had left to join the rugby revolution.
In 1897, the line-out was abolished and in 1898 professionalism introduced.
In 1906, the Northern Union changed its rules, reducing teams from 15 to 13 a side and replacing the ruck formed after every tackle with the play the ball.
A similar schism occurred in Sydney, Australia. There on the 8th August 1907 the New South Wales Rugby Football League was founded at Bateman's Hotel in George St. Rugby league then went on to displace rugby union as the primary football code in New South Wales and Queensland.
The history of American football can be traced to early versions of rugby football and association football. Both games have their origins in varieties of football played in the United Kingdom in the mid-19th century, in which a ball is kicked at a goal and/or run over a line.
Many games known as "football" were being played at colleges and universities in the United States in the first half of the 19th century.
In 1840, a reporter wrote of a Yale University game: "If the truth were told, the game would make the same impression on the public mind as a bullfight. Boys and young men knocked each other down and tore off each others' clothing. Eyes were bunged, faces blackened, much blood was spilt and shirts and coats were torn to rags."
By 1860 the game was abolished in many American schools, but in 1862 Gerritt Smith Hiller organized a group at Yale to play again, using rules that were a reasonably close imitation of soccer. Still, the game was often more an excuse to beat up freshmen than anything else.
In 1871 Harvard University started to play a variation known as the "Boston Game." This allowed a player to pick up the ball and run with it if he were chased, varying from the game that had been prohibited in 1840.
Harvard captain Henry Grant was anxious for his football team to engage in competition and had heard that a similar game was played at McGill University.
Consequently, he contacted the captain of the McGill team, David Roger, and invited them to play two games in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on May 13 and 14, 1874. These were to be the first real football games.
Until this time, Harvard had been playing a game that today would be considered very similar to what we call soccer football. McGill arrived in Cambridge several days prior to the game and practised each day.
The Harvard team was surprised when the McGill players kicked the ball and subsequently ran with it under their arms.
The Harvard captain pointed out politely that this violated a basic rule of American football. The McGill captain replied that it did not violate any rule of the Canadian game. When asked "What game do you play?" Roger replied, "Rugby." They then managed to agree to play the forthcoming games with half-Canadian, half-American rules.
The following day a notice appeared in the Harvard University paper: "The McGill University Football Club will meet the Harvard Football Club on Wednesday and Thursday, May 13th and 14th. The game probably will be called at 3 o'clock -admittance 50 cents. The proceeds will be donated to the entertainment of our visitors from Montreal."
Early in the first half, the Harvard team so enjoyed running with the ball that they agreed to play the remainder of the game with Canadian rules, which stipulated that the ball could be picked up and carried.
Harvard normally played with 15 players, but McGill could only field 11 athletes (the number fielded in the present game of American football). The first game was won by Harvard 3 to 0 and the game played on the following day ended in a scoreless tie. Harvard liked the McGill game so much that it adopted the downs as well as field goals. These rule changes, which included tackling, led inevitably to the physical contact of our present-day collision sport.
American football resulted then from several major divergences from rugby football, most notably the rule changes instituted by Walter Camp, considered the "Father of American Football". The introduction of the line of scrimmage and of down-and-distance rules were among the most important changes.
Canadian football is a form of gridiron football played almost exclusively in Canada. It is very similar to American football and the two sports have shared origins and are closely related.
As early as 1841, there is documented evidence of "foot-ball" being played in Australia. In 1858 English public school football games began to be played in Melbourne and surrounding districts. The earliest known such match was played on 15 June 1858 between St Kilda Grammar School (now defunct) and Melbourne Grammar School on the St Kilda foreshore.
On 31 July, a knock-a-bout match at Yarra Park was played between a "St Kilda scratch team" and "Melbourne scratch team". Trees were used for goal posts and there were no boundaries and the match lasted from 1pm until dark. There were no rules and fights frequently broke out.
Melbourne being a relatively young city, most of the early players were migrants and the media of the time noted that participants of each nationality played the game their own distinctive way: the English played in a fashion that resembled rugby football, the Scottish played recklessly, and the Irish preferred to kick the ball.
This led to the development of Australian Rules Football which has been described as ‘Gaelic Football played on a Cricket Pitch’ (the pitch is oval unlike all the other codes).
So the English city of Chester has a claim to be the source of all the main forms of football that are played internationally.
And, as I mentioned in a previous post, there is some evidence that the Celtic Leader Einion Yrth born around 445 AD was the original King Arthur, making Chester the model for Camelot. This in turn could mean that Einion Yrth’s father Uther Pendragon was the first football impressario!
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