(Redirected from History of football)
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.
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2.1 Ancient games
2.2 Mediaeval football 2.3 Calcio Fiorentino 2.4 Controversy 2.5 English Public Schools 2.6 The Establishment of Modern Codes of Football 2.7 The Football Association 2.8 Rugby, American and Canadian football 2.9 Gaelic football |
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.
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.
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 (sse 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.
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):
Spurn literally means to kick away, thus implying that the game involved kicking a leather ball between players.
Football has been the subject of countless attempts to ban it. 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 (JamesII 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 go ahead 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.
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 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 similiarities 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.
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.
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 possesion 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 between 19 colleges in 1905-06, introduced many restrictions on tackling and two more divergences from rugby: the banning of mass formation plays, and legalisation of the forward pass. (These 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.
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.
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.
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