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This article deals generally with the development of different sports around the world known as "Football". The most
well-known such sports are Association Football ("Soccer")
and American football. For more links, see the list at the bottom
of this article.
Football refers to a number of different team sports, all of which
involve scoring points with a round or ellipsoid ball into or
onto a goal area defended by the opposing team. Many of the modern football games have
their origins in England.
Summary
The object of all football games is to advance the ball by kicking, running with, or passing and catching, either to the
opponent's end of the field where points or goals can be scored by, depending on the game, putting the ball across the goal line
between posts and under a crossbar, putting the ball between upright posts (and possibly over a crossbar), or advancing the ball
across the opponent's goal line while maintaining possession of the ball.
In all football games, the winning team is the one that has the most points or goals when a specified length of time has
elapsed.
History
Throughout the history of mankind the urge to kick at stones and other objects must have inevitably led to many early
activities involving kicking and running with a ball. Football-like games undoubtedly predate recorded history in all parts of
the world and the earliest forms of football can only be guessed at.
Ancient games
Documented evidence of what is possibly the oldest organised activity resembling football can be found in a Chinese military
manual written during the Han Dynasty in about 2nd century BC. It describes a
practice known as "tsu chu" which involved kicking a leather ball through a hole in a piece of silk cloth strung between
two 30 foot poles. It was not a game as such but more of a spectacle for the amusement of the Emperor and it may have been
performed as many as 3000 years ago.
Another ball-kicking game of Far Eastern origin that may have been influenced by
tsu chu is "kemari" which known to have been played within the Japanese imperial court in Kyoto from about 600AD. In kemari several individuals stand in a
circle and kick a ball to each other, trying not to let the ball drop to the ground (much like keepie uppie). The game survived through many years but appears to have died out sometime before the mid
19th century. In 1903 in a bid to restore ancient traditions the game was revived and it
can now be seen played for the benefit of tourists at a number of festivals.
The Greeks and Romans are
known to have played many ball games some of which involved the use of the feet. The Roman writer Cicero describes the case of a man who was killed whilst having a shave when a ball was kicked into a barbers shop.
The Roman game of Harpastu is believed to have been adapted from a team game known as
αρπαστον(episkyros) or Pheninda that is mentioned by Greek playwright, Antiphanes (388-311BC) and later referred to by Clement of Alexandria. The game appears to have vaguely resembled rugby.
There are a number of less well-documented references to similar ball games all around the world. William Strachey of the Jamestown settlement is the first to record a game played by the
Native Americans called Pahsaheman, in 1610. In Australia, Robert Brough-Smyth's book "The
Aborigines of Victoria" published in 1878 quotes from Richard Thomas in about 1841, who had witnessed Australian aborigines playing a ball game called Marn Grook. Mr Thomas describes how the
foremost player will drop kick a ball made from the skin of a possum and how other
players leap into the air in order to catch it. The game may well have had an influence on the modern Australian Rules Football (see below).
These games and others may well stretch far back into antiquity and have influenced football over the centuries. However, the
route towards the development of modern football games appears to lie in Western Europe and particularly England.
Mediaeval football
The first description of football in England is given by William FitzStephen (c1174-1183) [1] . He described the
activities of London youths during the annual festival of Shrove Tuesday. "After lunch all the youth of the city go out into the fields
to take part in a ball game. The students of each school have their own ball; the workers from each city craft are also carrying
their balls. Older citizens, fathers, and wealthy citizens come on horseback to watch their juniors competing, and to relive
their own youth vicariously: you can see their inner passions aroused as they watch the action and get caught up in the fun being
had by the carefree adolescents".
The game played in England at this time may have arrived with the Roman occupation, but there is little evidence to indicate
this. Reports of a similar game being played in Brittany, Normandy and Picardy known as "Choule" or
"Soule" suggest that it could have arrived with the Norman
Conquest.
The first reference to football in Ireland occurs in the Statute of Galway of 1527, which allowed the playing of football and archery
but banned "'hokie' - the hurling of a little ball with sticks or staves" as
well as other sports.
The Middle Ages saw a huge rise in popularity of annual Shrovetide football
matches throughout Europe and particularly in England. These chaotic games would be played between neighbouring towns and
villages in which an unlimited number of players on opposing teams would clash in a heaving mass of people struggling to drag an
inflated pig's bladder by any means possible to markers at each end of a town. A legend that
these games in England evolved from a more ancient and bloody ritual of kicking the "Dane's Head" is unlikely. Shrovetide games
are still played in a number of English towns such as Ashbourne in Derbyshire and Sedgefield in County Durham.
Most of the early references to the game speak simply of "ball play" or "playing at ball" and not "football" leading to
speculation that the games played at the time did not necessarily involve the ball being kicked. However, in 1424, James I of Scotland issued an edict to
ban the playing of "fute-ball". Later on the modern spelling appeared in Shakespeare's play King Lear: "Nor tripped neither, you base football player" (Act I Scene 4).
He also mentions the game in A Comedy of Errors (Act II Scene 1):
- Am I so round with you as you with me,
- That like a football you do spurn me thus?
- You spurn me hence, and he will spurn me hither:
- If I last in this service, you must case me in leather.
Spurn literally means to kick away, thus implying that the game involved kicking a leather ball between
players.
Calcio
Fiorentino
In the 16th century, the city of Florence celebrated the period between Epiphany and Lent by playing a game known as "o Calcio storico" ("kickball in costume") in the Piazza della Novere or the
Piazza di Santo
Croce. The young aristocrats of the city would dress up in fine silk costumes and embroil themselves in cross between
football and wrestling. It was a mass brawl in which kicking, punching, shoulder charges, and hitting below the belt were all
allowed, it probably originated as a military training exercise. The most famous match took place on 17 February 1530. Whilst the troops of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor were besieging Florence a game of "calcio" was organised as a
show of defiance. In 1580 Count Giovanni de' Bardi di Vernio wrote "Discorso sopra 'l giuco del Calcio Fiorentino." This is
sometimes credited as the earliest known published rules of any football game. The game was played up until January 1739 but it was revived in May 1930 to celebrate the 400th
anniversary of this famous match and is still played as a tourist attraction today.
Controversy
Numerous attempts have been made throughout history to ban football, particularly in its most rowdy and disruptive forms. In
England alone there were over 30 Royal and local edicts prohibiting the game. King Edward II was so troubled by the unruliness of football in London that on April 13 1314 he issued a proclamation banning it. It read
-Forasmuch as there is great noise in the city caused by hustling over large balls from which many evils may arise which God
forbid; we command and forbid, on behalf of the King, on pain of imprisonment, such game to be used in the city in the
future. - Edward III imposed a similar ban June 12
1349, but his concern was of a practical nature. Football and other recreations distracted the populace from practising archery,
and after the great loss of life that had occurred during the Black Death,
England needed as many archers as possible.
The game featured in similar attempts to ban recreational sport across Europe. In France it was banned by Phillippe V in 1319 and Charles V in 1369. In Scotland it was banned by James I of Scotland in 1424. Later attempts at banning the game
in England (notably by Richard II in 1389, Henry IV in 1401, and Henry VIII in 1540) and
Scotland (James II in 1457) all failed to curb the people's desire to play the game. Only Oliver Cromwell had any success in firmly suppressing the game, which then became even more popular
following the Restoration in 1660. Charles II of England gave the game royal approval in 1681 when
he attended a fixture between the Royal Household and George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle's servants.
Continued efforts to try ban the game at a local level forced the game off the streets. In 1827 Hugh
Percy, 3rd Duke of Northumberland allowed the annual Alnwick Shrove Tuesday game
to proceed by providing a field for the game to be played upon and presenting the ball before the match - a ritual that continues
to this day. In 1835 the Highways Act banned the playing of football on public highways, with a maximum penalty of forty
shillings.
English public schools
By the early 19th century, (before the Factory Act of 1850), most
working class people in Britain had to work six days a week, often for
over twelve hours a day. They had neither the time nor the inclination to engage in sport for recreation. Feast day football on the public highway was at an end. Thus the public schools of England, where upper, upper-middle and
professional class boys were able to enjoy freedom from constant toil, became the breeding grounds where organised football games
with formal rules could be developed and evolve into the modern games that we know today.
The earliest evidence that games resembling football were being played in English public schools comes from the
Vulgaria by William Horman in 1519. Horman had been headmaster at Eton College and Winchester and this Latin textbook includes a translation
exercise with the phrase "We wyll playe with a ball full of wynde". The first specific mention of football can be found in a
Latin poem by Robert Matthew, a Winchester scholar from 1643 to 1647. He describes how "...we may play quoits, or hand-ball,
or bat-and-ball, or football; these games are innocent and lawful...". A document from 1766 (Nugae Etonenses by T.
Frankland) speaks of the "Football Fields" of Eton.
It is known that by the early 19th century the game had come to be adopted by a number of public schools as a way of
encouraging competitiveness and keeping youths fit. Each school drafted their own rules as they saw fit and they often varied
widely and were changed over time with each new intake of pupils. In 1823 William Webb Ellis is said to have "showed a fine disregard for the
rules of football, as played in his time" by picking up the ball and running to the opponents' goal, but the evidence for this
bold act does not stand up to close examination. However, by 1841 (some sources say 1842),
running with the ball had become acceptable at Rugby School, as long as a player gathered the ball on the full or from a
bounce, he was not offside and he did not pass the ball. Soon, two schools of thought
about how football should be played had developed. Some favoured a game in which the ball could be carried (as at Rugby, Marlborough and Cheltenham), whilst
others preferred a game where kicking and dribbling the ball was promoted (as at Eton, Harrow, Westminster and Charterhouse). The division into these two camps was partly the
result of circumstances in which the games were played. At Charterhouse and Westminster the boys were confined to playing their
ball game within the cloisters making the rough and tumble of the handling game difficult.
During this period, the Rugby School rules appear to have spread at least as far, perhaps further, than the other schools'
games. For example, it is said that the world's first "football club" (that is one which was not part of a school or university),
was the Guy's Hospital Football Club, founded in London in 1843.
The club is said to have played the Rugby School game. However, some have argued that this club is too poorly documented to be
considered to have existed since that time.
With the coming of the railways people were able to travel further and with less
inconvenience than they ever had before. Inter-school sporting competitions became possible. Whilst local rules for athletics and some other sports with simple rules could be easily understood by visiting
schools, it was nearly impossible for schools to play each other at football as each school played by their own idiosyncratic
rules.
The establishment of modern codes of football
In 1848 at Cambridge
University, Mr. H. de Winton and Mr. J.C. Thring, who were both formerly at Shrewsbury
School, called a meeting at Trinity College,
Cambridge with 12 other representatives from Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester and Shrewsbury. An eight-hour meeting produced what amounted to the first set of modern
rules, known as the Cambridge Rules. No copy of these rules now exists, but a revised version from ~1856 is held in the
library of Shrewsbury School. The rules clearly favour the kicking game. Handling was only allowed for a player to take a
clean catch entitling them to a free kick and there was a primitive offside rule, disallowing players from "loitering"
around the opponents' goal. However the Cambridge Rules were far from universally adopted.
The increasing interest and development of the various English football games was shown in 1851, when William Gilbert, a shoemaker from Rugby,
exhibited both round and oval-shaped balls at the Great Exhibition
in London.
Sheffield Football Club also has a claim to be the world's oldest
surviving "football club", in the sense of a club not attached to a school or university. It was founded by former Harrow pupils
Nathaniel Creswick and William Prest, in 1857. Creswick and Prest devised their own rules
(the Sheffield Rules). Under the rules of 1857, players were allowed to push or hit the ball with their hands and there
was no offside rule at all so that players known as 'kick throughs' would be permanently positioned near the opponents'
goal. How long this lasted is unclear, but by 1866, when Sheffield played a London FA side
they were employing their own version of offside that differed from the FA rule. In 1867
the Sheffield Football Association was formed by a number of clubs in the local area and the
Sheffield clubs continued to play by their own rules until they decided to fall in line with the FA in 1878.
On the other side of the world, Tom
Wills began to develop Australian Rules
Football in Melbourne during 1858.
Wills had been educated in England at Rugby School and played cricket for Cambridge University. The extent to which Wills was
directly influenced by the various English football games is unknown, but there were similarities between some of them and his
game. Australian Rules also has similarities to Gaelic football
(which was not codified until much later) and Marn Grook (see above). The Melbourne
Football Club was also founded in 1858 and is the oldest surviving Australian football club, but it did not necessarily use
Wills' rules during its first year. The first proper rules were written, by Wills and other members of the club, in 1859. These rules had some similarities to the Sheffield rules, most notably in the absence of an
offside rule. However, running with the ball was allowed, and although it was not specified in the rules, an
oval ball was used. Australian Rules is sometimes said to be the first form of football to be codified but, as was the
case in all kinds of football at the time, there was no official body supporting the rules, and play varied from one club to
another.
In 1862 J.C. Thring, who had been one of the driving forces behind the original Cambridge Rules, was now a master at
Uppingham School and he issued his own rules in 1862 of what he called "The Simplest Game" (these are also known as the Uppingham Rules).
In early October of 1863 a new revised set of Cambridge Rules rules were drawn up
by a seven man committee representing former pupils from Harrow, Shrewsbury, Eton, Rugby, Marlborough and Westminster. This later
revised version of the Cambridge Rules rules were to form the basis of what eventually became the rules adopted by
The Football Association.
The Football Association
On the evening of October 26, 1863 at
the Freemason's Tavern in Great Queen Street, London, The Football Association (FA) met for the first time. It
was the world's first official football body. The meeting had been called, not by public school figures, but by members of
several football clubs in the London Metropolitan area. Charterhouse was the only
school represented at that first meeting. The aim was to produce a single code of football that everybody could agree to and to
set up a governing body for the regulation of the game. The first meeting resulted in the issuing of a request for
representatives of the public schools to join the association. With the exception of Thring at Uppingham most schools declined.
Rugby, Eton and Winchester didn't even reply. In total, six meetings were held between October and December 1863. At the close of the third meeting a draft
set of rules were published that most of the delegates were happy to endorse, but this agreement was not to last. At the
beginning of the fourth meeting attention was drawn to the fact that a number of newspapers had recently published the
Cambridge Rules of 1863. The Cambridge rules differed from the draft FA rules in two significant areas; namely 'running
with the ball' and 'hacking' (kicking an opponent in the shins). The two contentious draft rules were as follows:
- IX.A player shall be entitled to run with the ball towards his adversaries' goal if he makes a fair catch, or catches the
ball on the first bound; but in case of a fair catch, if he makes his mark he shall not run.
- X.If any player shall run with the towards his adversaries' goal, any player on the opposite side shall be at liberty to
charge, hold, trip or hack him, or to wrest the ball from him, but no player shall be held and hacked at the same time.
At the fifth meeting a motion was proposed that these two rules be expunged from the FA rules. Most of the delegates were
favourable to this suggestion but F. W. Campbell, the representative from Blackheath, objected
strongly. He said, "hacking is the true football". The motion was carried nonetheless but at the final meeting, Campbell withdrew
his club from the FA. After the final meeting on 8 December the FA published
the "Laws of Football", the first comprehensive set of rules for
the game later known as Association football (or,
colloquially, soccer). These first FA rules still contained elements that are recognisable in other games for instance,
a player could make a fair catch and claim a mark and if a player of touched the ball behind the opponents' goal line,
his side was entitled to a free kick at the goal 15 yards from the goal line.
Rugby, American and Canadian football
The first "football club" in the USA was the short-lived Oneida Football Club in
Boston, Massachusetts, founded in 1862. It is often said that this was the first club to play soccer outside Britain. However, the Oneida club was
formed before the FA rules were formulated; it is not known whether they played a kicking or handling game, or
both. The first US match generally said to have occurred under English FA (soccer) rules was a game between Princeton and Rutgers in 1869. By this time, most US university teams used rules which were closer to
the soccer rules, although this was soon to change.
In Britain, by 1870, there were about 75 clubs playing variations of the Rugby School game,[2] , including Blackheath (founded in 1858 and arguably the world's oldest surviving, non-university rugby club). There were also "rugby"
clubs in Ireland, Australia and
New Zealand. However, there was no generally accepted set of rules for rugby
until 1871, when 21 clubs in England came together to form the Rugby Football Union (RFU). (Ironically, Blackheath now lobbied to
ban hacking.) The first official RFU rules were adopted in June 1871.
Modern American football and Canadian football are direct descendants of rugby, as it was played at Canadian universities in the
early 1870s. Both games grew out of a series of matches between McGill University and Harvard University in 1874. The two teams alternated between the
kicking and handling games. Within a few years, however, Harvard had persuaded other US universities to adopt
rugby-type rules, and in 1876 the Intercollegiate Football Association (IFA) was formed, the first American football
body. At the time a touch-down in rugby only counted toward the score if neither side kicked a goal. The IFA decided
that four touchdowns would be worth one goal; in the event of a tied score, a goal converted from a touchdown would take
precedence over four touch-downs.
In 1880, Yale coach Walter Camp, devised a number of major changes to the American game, beginning with the reduction of
teams from 15 to 11 players, followed by reduction of the field area by almost half, and; the introduction of the
scrimmage, in which a player heeled the ball backwards, to begin a game. These were complemented in 1882 by another of Camp's innovations: a team had to surrender possession if they did not gain five yards after
three downs (i.e. successful tackles).
Meanwhile, in Britain, by the 1890s, a long-standing Rugby Football Union ban on professional players was
causing regional tensions within rugby football, as many players in northern England and Scotland were working class and could not afford to take
time off to train, travel, play and recover from injuries. In 1895 representatives of the
northern clubs met in Huddersfield to form the Northern Rugby Football
Union (NRFU), a professional competition. Within a few years its rules had started to diverge from the RFU, most notably
with the abolition of the line out. The separate Lancashire and Yorkshire competitions of the NRFU merged in 1901, forming the Northern Rugby League, the first time the name Rugby League was used officially.
Both forms of rugby and American football were noted at the time for serious injuries, as well as the deaths of a significant
number of players. By the early 20th century in the USA, this had resulted
in national controversy and American football was banned by a number of colleges. Consequently, a series of meetings was held by
19 colleges in 1905-06. This occurred reputedly at the behest of President Theodore Roosevelt, who was considered to be a fancier of the game but
who had threatened to ban it, unless the rules were modified to reduce the numbers of deaths and disabilities. The report of the
meetings introduced many restrictions on tackling and two more divergences from rugby: the banning of mass formation
plays, and legalisation of the forward pass. These meetings are now considered to be the origin of the National Collegiate Athletic
Association. The changes did not immediately have the desired effect, and 33 American football players were killed during
1908 alone. However, the number of deaths and injuries did gradually decline.
Rugby League rules also diverged significantly from Rugby Union in 1906, with the
reduction of the team from 15 to 13 players, and the introduction of the play the ball (heeling the ball back
after a tackle). In 1907, a New Zealand
professional rugby team toured Australia and Britain, and the New South Wales Rugby League was formed, the first organisation to use the name "Rugby
League". The British organisation became known as the Rugby Football League in 1922.
Gaelic football
Football had been played in Ireland for centuries. The earliest recorded game, between Louth and Meath at Slane occurred in
1712. As far as can be determined the games of this era resembled the unruly games with few
rules that were still being played in England at the same time. Gaelic
football was not formally codified until after the establishment of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in 1884. The GAA sought
to promote traditional Irish sports and to reject "foreign" (particularly English) imports. The first football rules were drawn
up by Maurice Davan in and
subsequently published in the United Ireland magazine on the 7
February 1887.
Football today
Today there are many games that are called football by its players and spectators and each game has its own well-defined codes
and governing bodies. The main games are listed below and described in their own articles.
Games descended from FA rules
(Based on older games played at Eton, Harrow, Winchester and other English
public schools.
Games descended from Rugby School rules
Irish and Australian varieties of football
- Gaelic football
- Australian rules football — sometimes
(erroneously) referred to as "AFL", which is really the name of the national league
involved.
- International
Rules — a compromise code used for games between Gaelic and Australian Rules players.
- Auskick — a version of Australian
Rules designed for young children
- Austus — a compromise between
Australian Rules and American football, invented in Melbourne during World
War Two.
- Traditional Shrove Tuesday matches in the UK -- annual town- or village-wide football games with their own rules
- Calcio Fiorentino
— a modern revival of Renaissance football from 16th century Florence.
Other surviving public school games
Modern Inventions and derivations
- Based on Mediaeval 'mob' football
- Based on FA rules
- Based on Rugby
Tabletop games and other recreations
- Based on FA rules
- Based on Rugby
- Based on American Football
The use of the term "football" in English-speaking countries
Depending on which part of the world you live in, the word football when referring to a specific game can mean any
one of the above. Because of this, much friendly controversy has erupted over the term football, primarily because it is
used in different ways in different parts of the world.
- In the Republic of Ireland, "football"
is somewhat ambiguous. Whilst it often refers to Gaelic football, the
word "football" is also used when referring to Association football, particularly at the international level (as in the Football Association of Ireland the official
national body) and also with a large number of Association football clubs using the initials "F.C" (Football Club) in their name.
The word "soccer" is often used to avoid confusion.
- In South Africa, "soccer" and "football" both refer to
association football, although the name "soccer" is more commonly used. Rugby football is called "rugby".
- In the United States, "football" refers to American football. Association football, which is hugely popular by way
of participation despite lacking commercial success, is called "soccer", and rugby football, which is less popular still, is
usually called "rugby" or occasionally "rugger".
- Of the 48 national football associations affiliated to FIFA, in which English is an official or primary language, six (Australia, Canada, the
Marshall Islands, New Zealand, Samoa and the United States) use soccer in their name whilst the rest use football.
Recommended Reading
- The Meaning of Sports by Michael Mandelbaum (PublicAffairs, ISBN: 1-58648-252-1).
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