Encyclopedia
Football is the name given to a number of different, but related,
team sports. The most popular of these worldwide is
association football, which can be abbreviated
soccer. The
English language word
football is also applied to
rugby football , North American football ,
Australian rules football, and
Gaelic football.
While it is widely believed that the
word football originated in reference to the action of a foot kicking a ball, there is a rival explanation, which has it that football originally referred to a variety of games in
medieval Europe, which were played
on foot. These games were usually played by
peasants, as opposed to the
horse-riding sports often played by aristocrats. While there is no conclusive evidence for this explanation, the word football has always implied a variety of games played on foot, not just those that involved kicking a ball. In some cases, the word football has been applied to games which have specifically outlawed kicking the ball.
All football games involve scoring with a
spherical or
prolate spheroid ball , by moving the ball into, onto, or over a
goal area or line defended by the opposing team. Many of the modern games have their origins in
England, but many peoples around the world have played games which involved kicking and/or carrying a ball since ancient times.
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 , 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
For the history of only Association Football, see History of football Throughout the history of mankind the urge to kick at stones and other such objects is thought to have led to many early activities involving kicking and/or running with a
ball. Football-like games predate recorded history in all parts of the world, and thus the earliest forms of football are not known.
Ancient games
Documented evidence of what is possibly the oldest organized 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
cuju which involved kicking a leather ball through a hole in a piece of silk cloth strung between two 30 foot poles.
Another
Asian ball-kicking game, which may have been influenced by
cuju, is
kemari. This is known to have been played within the Japanese imperial court in
Kyoto from about 600 AD. 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 .
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.
Mesoamerican ballgames played with rubber balls are also well-documented as existing since before this time, and are thought to have resembled football in their earlier versions; but since later versions have more similarities to
basketball or
volleyball, and since their influence on modern football games is minimal, most do not class them as football.
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
Harpastum is believed to have been adapted from a team game known as "ep?s?????" or pheninda that is mentioned by Greek playwright, Antiphanes 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
prehistoric,
ancient or traditional ball games, played by
indigenous peoples all around the world. For example, William Strachey of the
Jamestown settlement is the first to record a game played by the
Native Americans called
Pahsaheman, in 1610. In
Victoria, Australia,
Indigenous Australians played a game called
Marn Grook. An 1878 book by Robert Brough-Smyth,
The Aborigines of Victoria, quotes a man called Richard Thomas as saying, in about 1841, that he had witnessed Aboriginal people playing the game: "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." It is widely believed that Marn Grook had an influence on the development of
Australian rules football . In northern
Canada and/or
Alaska, the
Inuit played a game on ice called
Aqsaqtuk. Each match began with two teams facing each other in parallel lines, before attempting to kick the ball through each other team's line and then at a goal.
These games and others may well go 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.
Mediæval football
The
Middle Ages saw a huge rise in popularity of annual
Shrovetide football matches throughout Europe, particularly in England. 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 game played in
Brittany,
Normandy and
Picardy, known as
Choule or
Soule, suggest that some of these football games could have arrived in
England as a result of the
Norman Conquest.
These archaic forms of football, typically classified as
Mob Football, would be played between neighbouring towns and villages, involving an unlimited number of players on opposing teams, who 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 to be true. Shrovetide games survive in a number of English towns .
The first description of football in England was given by William FitzStephen . 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.
Most of the very early references to the game speak simply of "ball play" or "playing at ball". This reinforces the idea that the games played at the time did not necessarily involve a ball being kicked. Kicking was certainly part of some 14th century games, as is illustrated
in a 1321 dispensation granted from Avignon by Pope John XXII to William de Spalding of Shouldham:
"To William de Spalding, canon of Scoldham of the order of Sempringham. During the game at ball as he kicked the ball , a lay friend of his, also called William, ran against him and wounded himself on a sheathed knife carried by the canon, so severely that he died within six days. Dispensation is granted, as no blame is attached to William de Spalding, who, feeling deeply the dath of his friedn, and fearing what might be said by his enemies, has applied to the pope."
Likewise
Chaucer offers a tantalising allusion to the manner in which contemporary ball games may have been played in
England. In the
Canterbury Tales he uses the following line: "rolleth under foot as doth a ball". Edward the Third issued the declaration below in 1363. It is noteworthy that at this time game of football in England was already being differentiated from handball.
"Moreover we ordain that you prohibit under penalty of imprisonment all and sundry from such stone, wood and iron throwing; handball, football, or hockey; coursing and cock-fighting, or other such idle games".
The next clear reference to football was not recorded until 1409, when King
Henry IV of England issued an edict to ban it. In 1424, King
James I of Scotland also attempted to ban the playing of "fute-ball". However, the first clear reference to a ball being used did not occur until 1486. There is an account from 11 April 1497 of a sum of money "giffen [given] to Jame Dog [James Doig] to b[u]y fut ballis to the
King". The oldest surving football is probably one made in about 1540 in Scotland, from leather and a pig's bladder. It has, however, not been possible to confirm this incredible find's actual use as a FOOT ball and because of its small size it has been suggested by the national museum of Scotland that it was in fact used for a tennis like game called pallone.
A 15th-century monk descibed a game of football at Caunton, Nottinghamshire: 'The players propel a huge ball, not by thowing it up into the air, but by striking and rolling it along the ground and not by their hands but by their feet" This confirms that distinct kicking football games were being played in England at this time. Nevertheless they were still rough, as the monk goes on to confirm: "a game, I say, abominable enough . . . and rarely ending but with some loss, accident, or disadvantage of the players themselves.'
The first record of a pair of football boots occurs when Henry VIII ordered a pair from the Great Wardrobe in 1526 . Unfortunately these are no longer in existence . It is, however, remarkable that the king of England should have considered playing the game.
The reputation of football as a violent game persists throughout most accounts from 16th century England. In 1531 Sir Thomas Elyot noted in his "Boke named The Governour" the following quotation that again alludes to the dangers of football :
"Some men wolde say, that in mediocritie, whiche I haue so moche praised in shootynge, why shulde nat boulynge, claisshe, pynnes, and koytyng be as moche commended? Verily as for two the laste, be to be utterly abiected of al noble men, in like wise foote balle, wherin is nothinge but beastly furie and exstreme violence; wherof procedeth hurte, and consequently rancour and malice do remaine with them that be wounded; wherfore it is to be put in perpetuall silence. In classhe is emploied to litle strength; in boulyng often times to moche; wherby the sinewes be to moche strayned, and the vaines to moche chafed. Wherof often tymes is sene to ensue ache, or the decreas of strength or agilitie in the armes: where, in shotyng, if the shooter use the strength of his bowe within his owne tiller, he shal neuer be therwith grieued or made more feble."
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.
In 1625 Sir Robert Carey describes in his book Memoirs of Border Transactions a meeting for the purpose of playing football at Kelso in the Scottish borders that ended in "an incursion on England". He describes such football as being "contested with the utmost fury and very serious accidents have sometimes taken place in the struggles"!
Calcio Fiorentino
In the 16th century, the city of
Florence celebrated the period between Epiphany and
Lent by playing a game which today is known as "
calcio storico" in the Piazza della Novere or the Piazza Santa Croce. The young aristocrats of the city would dress up in fine silk costumes and embroil themselves in a violent form of football. For example,
calcio players could punch, shoulder charge, and kick opponents. Blows below the belt were allowed. The game is said to have originated as a military training exercise.
The most famous match took place on February 17, 1530. While 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 giuoco del Calcio Fiorentino. This is sometimes credited as the earliest known published rules of any football game. The game was not played between January 1739 and May 1930, when it was revived to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the match mentioned above.
Calcio is still played, mostly as a tourist attraction.
Official disapproval and attempts to ban football
Numerous attempts have been made to ban football games, particularly the most rowdy and disruptive forms. This was especially the case in England and in other parts of Europe, during the
Middle Ages and early modern period. Between 1324 and 1667, football was banned in England alone by more than 30 royal and local laws. The need to repeatedly proclaim such laws demonstrated the difficulty in enforcing bans on popular games.
King
Edward II was so troubled by the unruliness of football in
London that on April 13, 1314 he issued a proclamation banning it: "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."
The reasons for the ban by
Edward III, on June 12, 1349, were explicit: football and other recreations distracted the populace from practicing
archery, which was necessary for war.
By 1608, the local authorities in
Manchester were complaining that: "With the ffotebale...[there] hath beene greate disorder in our towne of Manchester we are told, and glasse windowes broken yearlye and spoyled by a companie of lewd and disordered persons ..." That same year, the word "football" was used disapprovingly by
William Shakespeare. Shakespeare's play
King Lear contains the line: "Nor tripped neither, you base football player" .
Shakespeare also mentions the game in
A Comedy of Errors :
- 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 ball between players.
However the game of
hurling played in
Ireland, was considered so violent that the
Galway City authorities would rather the people played football. In 1527 they stated "At no time to use ne occupy ye hurling of ye litill balle with the hookie sticks or staves, nor use no hand balle to play without the walls, but only the great foot balle."
King James' "Book of Sports", however, instructs christians to play at football every sunday afternoon after worship . This book was drawn up by Bishop Moreton, at the king’s direction, and is dated from Greenwich, May 24, 1618. It was at first ordered to be read merely in the parish churches of Lancashire. The book's aim was to relax the strictness of the Puritans in keeping the Sabbath-day as this was only serving to alienate people
Establishment of modern codes of football
English public schools
Whilst football continued to be played in various forms throughout Britain, the English public schools are widely credited with two key achievements in the creation of modern football . First, the evidence suggests that during the sixteenth century they were key in taking football away from its violent "mob" form and turning it into an organised team sport. Secondly in the nineteenth century former students/teachers were the first to write down formal rules of early modern football.
The earliest evidence that games resembling football were being played at English
public schools — mainly attended by boys from the upper, upper-middle and professional classes — comes from the
Vulgaria by William Horman in 1519. Horman had been headmaster at
Eton and
Winchester Colleges and his
Latin textbook includes a translation exercise with the phrase "We wyll playe with a ball full of wynde".
Richard Mulcaster , a former student at Eton College and later headmaster at Merchant Taylor's and St Paul's schools has been described as “the greatest sixteenth Century advocate of football” . Mulcaster's unique contribution is not only referring to "footeball" by its correct English name but also providing the earliest evidence of organised team football. Mulcaster confirms that his was a game closer to modern football by differentiating it from games involving other parts of the body, namely "the hand ball" and "the armeball". He referred to the many benefits of "footeball" in his personal publication of 1581 in English entitled ‘Positions Wherein Those Primitive Circumstances Be Examined, Which Are Necessarie for the Training up of Children’. He states that football had positive educational value and it promoted health and strength. Mulcaster's discussion on football was the first to refer to teams , positions , the benefits of a referee and a coach "". Mulcaster describes a game for small teams that is organised under the auspices of a referee : "Some smaller number with such overlooking, sorted into sides and standings, not meeting with their bodies so boisterously to trie their strength: nor shouldring or shuffing one an other so barbarously ... may use footeball for as much good to the body, by the chiefe use of the legges". As a result of his enthusiasm for the sport and his accurate description of the modern game Richard Mulcaster is considered the father of modern football.
Sir Henry Wotton attended Winchester college and became Provost of Eton makes reference to football in one of his poems:
"Where, for some sturdy foot-balle Swaine, Jone strokes a sillibub, or twaine" [Sir Henry Wotton, On a Bank as I sate a Fishing - A Description of Spring, quoted in P.Young , p 32].
There is evidence that sophisticated games resembling the modern codes were being played in other parts of Britain by the early 17th century. In 1633, David Wedderburn, a teacher from
Aberdeen, described one such match: "Let's pick sides. Those who are on the outside, come over here. Kick off, so that we can begin the match... Pass it here.". The significance of this quotation is that it shows that the evolution of kicking ball games was not confined to English public schools.
A more detailed description including the role of goals is given in Francis Willughby's Book of Sports, written in about 1660. In this he describes the use of goals: "All the plaiers being equally divided they stand at two gaoles, the ball lying just in the middle". Willughby had been a student at Cambridge university.
The next specific mention of football at public schools 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...". [R.Matthew De Collegio seu potius Collegiata Schola Wicchamica Wintoniensi trans. in A.K.Cook, About Winchester College p 21]
Nugae Etonenses by T. Frankland also mentions the "Football Fields" at Eton.
By the early 19th century, , 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 and, at the time, many children were part of the labour force. Feast day football on the public highway was at an end. Thus the public school boys, who were free from constant toil, became the inventors of organised football games with formal codes of rules. These gradually evolved into the modern football games that we know today.
Football 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 to suit the dimensions of their playing field. The rules varied widely between different schools and were changed over time with each new intake of pupils. Soon, two schools of thought about how football should be played emerged. Some schools favoured a game in which the ball could be carried , whilst others preferred a game where kicking and dribbling the ball was promoted . The division into these two camps was partly the result of circumstances in which the games were played. At Charterhouse and Westminster, both schools at the time on restricted sites in London, the boys were confined to playing their ball game within the cloisters making the rough and tumble of the handling game difficult.
William Webb Ellis, a pupil at
Rugby school, 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 in 1823. This act is popularly said to be the beginnings of Rugby football, but the evidence for this bold act does not stand up to close examination and most sports historians believe the story to be apocryphal. Nevertheless, by 1841 ,
running with the ball had become acceptable at Rugby, 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.
Evidence for the establishment of the football season at English public schools comes in "Bentley's miscellany" .
In a chapter entitled "Eton Scenes and Eton Men" the seasonal sports cycle is described thus:
"Tamer boys play at cricket in the Summer and Hockey in the Winter; but the manlier youths pull in the boats during the Summer and play at Football in the winter".
School football clubs were a central part of life at nineteenth century english public schools. In "Five years at an English University" , American Charles Bristed describes his time at Cambridge University in the 1840s. During a discussion on Eton college and Rugby School he states: "[A boy is] proud of the house he belongs to as a man of his college; though in cricket and football clubs, in regular "long boats" and aquatic sweepstakes, in running and leaping races, he competes with the whole school, yet he belongs to a football club in the autumn, which includes the twenty or thirty boys boarding in his own house and thus matches are made between houses as between colleges"
This quotation points to the establishment in English public schools of the "football season" which to this day begins without fail in Autumn. It also shows evidence of the first organised competitions between football teams not just within schools but between them. For competitions to take place between colleges it would clearly require some agreement over rules of the game. This necessity, combined with the availability of sufficient time and money to pursue the sport, was the the driving force that led to the creation of modern football rules by people who had studied or taught at English public schools and universities.
The boom in rail transport in Britain during the 1840s meant that people were able to travel further and with less inconvenience than they ever had before. Inter-school sporting competitions became possible. While local rules for athletics could be easily understood by visiting schools, it was nearly impossible for schools to play each other at football, as each school played by its own rules.
During this period, the Rugby school rules appear to have spread at least as far, perhaps further, than the other schools' games. For example, two clubs which claim to be the world's first and/or oldest football club, in the sense of one which is not part of a school or university, are both stongholds of rugby football: the Barnes Club, said to have been founded in 1839, and Guy's Hospital Football Club, reportedly founded in 1843. Neither date nor the variety of football played is well-documented, but such claims nevertheless allude to the popularity of rugby before other modern codes emerged.
In 1845, three boys at Rugby school were tasked with codifying the rules then being used at the school. These were the first set of written rules for any form of football. This further assisted the spread of the Rugby game.
Cambridge Rules
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 circa 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 not widely adopted.
Other developments in the 1850s
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.
Dublin University Football Club — founded at
Trinity College, Dublin in 1854 and later famous as a bastion of the Rugby School game — is arguably the world's oldest football club in any code.
By the late 1850s, many clubs had been formed throughout the English-speaking world, to play various codes of football.
Sheffield Football Club, founded by former Harrow School pupils Nathaniel Creswick and William Prest, in 1857, was later recognised as the world's oldest Association football club, in the sense of a club not attached to a school or university. However, the club initially played its own own code of football: the
Sheffield Rules. There were some similarities to the Cambridge Rules, but 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 could be permanently positioned near the opponents' goal. The code spread to a number of clubs in the area, and in 1867, the Sheffield Football Association was formed, to organise the Youdan Cup, the world's first football tournament. The Sheffield code existed until 1877 when, after strong letters from Stuart G. Smith and W. S. Bambridge were published in The Field, it was decided to unite the kicking game under one set of laws. The FA rules incorporated some elements from the Sheffield game.
In 1862 Englishman Mr Lindon created the first inflatable rubber bladders after Mrs. Lindon contracted a lung disease, apparently after blowing up too many pig's bladders. These balls enabled uniformity in the size of balls and the rubber bladders kept the ball hard and round. However when wet they became particularly heavy as they were made of leather on the outside. In 1872, the English Football Association officially stated in its rulebook that the ball "must be spherical with a circumference of 27 to 28 inches" . These standards are still followed today by FIFA.
Australian rules football
Tom Wills began to develop Australian football in
Melbourne during 1858. Wills had been educated in England, at Rugby School and had played
cricket for Cambridge University. The extent to which Wills was directly influenced by British and Irish football games is unknown, but there were similarities between some of them and his game. There were pronounced similarities between Wills's game and
Gaelic football . It appears that Australian football also has some similarities to the
Indigenous Australian game of
Marn Grook .
The
Melbourne Football Club was also founded in 1858 and is the oldest surviving Australian football club, but the rules it used during its first season are unknown. The club's rules of 1859 are the oldest surviving set of laws for Australian Rules. They were drawn up at the Parade Hotel, East Melbourne on 17 May, by Wills, W.J. Hammersley, J.B. Thompson and Thomas Smith . These men had similar backgrounds to Wills and their code also had pronounced similarities to the Sheffield rules, most notably in the absence of an
offside rule . A free kick was awarded for a
mark . However,
running while holding the ball was allowed and although it was not specified in the rules, an
oval ball was used. The club had a strong and long-standing association with the Melbourne Cricket Club and
cricket ovals — which vary in size and are much larger than the fields used in other forms of football — became the standard playing field. The 1859 rules did not include some elements which would soon become important to the game, such as the requirement to
bounce the ball while running.
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. By 1866, however, several other clubs in the
Colony of Victoria had agreed to play an updated version of the Melbourne FC rules, which were later known as "Victorian Rules" and/or "
Australasian Rules". The formal name of the code later became Australian rules football . Similar rules were adopted for games in other colonies, such as Tasmania in the 1860s and South Australia in the 1870s. Australian Football has a small but growing presence at amateur level in many countries, particularly since the 1990s, with greatest participation rates in Papua New Guinea, Nauru, New Zealand and South Africa. See
Australian football around the world.
Football Association
Main article: History of The Football Association
During the early 1860s, there were increasing attempts in England to unify and reconcile the various public school games. In 1862, J. C. Thring, who had been one of the driving forces behind the original Cambridge Rules, was a master at Uppingham School and he issued his own rules of what he called "The Simplest Game" . In early October 1863 another new revised version of the Cambridge Rules was drawn up by a seven member committee representing former pupils from Harrow, Shrewsbury, Eton, Rugby, Marlborough and Westminster.
On the evening of October 26, 1863, representatives of several football clubs in the Greater London area met at the Freemason's Tavern in Great Queen Street. This was the first meeting of The Football Association . It was the world's first official football body. Charterhouse was the only school which accepted invitations to attend. 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. In total, six meetings of the FA were held between October and December 1863. After the third meeting, a draft set of rules were published by the FA. However, at the beginning of the fourth meeting, attention was drawn to the Sheffield Rules and the recently-published Cambridge Rules of 1863. The Cambridge rules differed from the draft FA rules in two significant areas; namely
running with the ball and
hacking . The two contentious FA 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 ball 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 removed from the FA rules. Most of the delegates supported this suggestion but F. W. Campbell, the representative from Blackheath and the first FA treasurer, objected strongly. He said, "hacking is the true football". The motion was carried nonetheless and — at the final meeting — Steffan Willis and 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 .
These first FA rules still contained elements that are no longer part of Association football, but which are still recognisable in other games: for instance, a player could make a fair catch and claim a
mark, which entitled him to a free kick, and; if a player touched the ball behind the opponents' goal line, his side was entitled to a
free kick at goal, from 15 yards in front of the goal line.
Rugby football
- See the earlier section English public schools and the main article history of rugby union
In Britain, by 1870, there were about 75 clubs playing variations of the Rugby school game, including Blackheath . There were also "rugby" clubs in
Ireland,
Australia,
Canada and
New Zealand. However, there was no generally accepted set of rules for rugby until 1871, when 21 clubs from London came together to form the
Rugby Football Union . The first official RFU rules were adopted in June 1871. These rules allowed passing the ball. They also included the
try, where touching the ball over the line allowed an attempt at goal, though drop-goals from marks and general play, and penalty conversions were still the main form of contest.
North American football
As was the case in Britain, by the early 19th century,
North American schools and universities played their own local games, between sides made up of students. By the 1820s, a game known as Ballown was being played at the College of New Jersey and Old Division Football was being played at
Dartmouth College,
New Hampshire. In 1827, a
Harvard University student composed a humorous epic poem called
The Battle of the Delta, one of the first accounts of football in American universities.
The first documented football match in Canada was a game played at
University College,
University of Toronto on November 9, 1861. A football club was formed at the university soon afterwards, although its rules of play at this stage are unclear: it is not known whether they played a
kicking or
handling game, or both, and its members mostly played against each other.
The first "football club" in the
USA was the short-lived Oneida Football Club in
Boston, Massachusetts, founded in 1862. It has often been said that this club was the first to play soccer outside Britain. However, the rules that the Oneida club used are also unknown, and it was formed before the FA rules were formulated. The club may have invented the "Boston Game", a
running code which was being played several years later in Massachusetts.
In 1864, at
Trinity College, Toronto, F. Barlow Cumberland and Frederick A. Bethune devised rules based on the Rugby school game. However, the first game of "rugby" in Canada is generally said to have taken place in
Montreal, in 1865, when
British Army officers played local civilians. The game gradually gained a following, and the Montreal Football Club was formed in 1868, the first recorded football club in Canada.
The first match generally said to have occurred under English FA rules in the USA was a game between
Princeton and
Rutgers in 1869. This is also often considered to be the first US game of
college football, in the sense of a game between colleges .
Modern
American football grew out of a match between
McGill University of Montreal, and
Harvard University in 1874. At the time, Harvard students are reported to have played the "Boston Game" — a
running code — rather than the FA-based
kicking games favored by US universities. This made it easy for Harvard to adapt to the rugby-based game played by McGill and the two teams alternated between their respective sets of rules. Within a few years, however, Harvard had both adopted McGill's rugby rules and had persuaded other US university teams to do the same. In 1876, at the Massasoit Convention, it was agreed by these universities to adopt most of the
Rugby Football Union rules. However, a
touch-down only counted toward the score if neither side kicked a
field goal. The convention decided that, in the US game, 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.
Princeton, Rutgers and others continued to compete using soccer-based rules for a few years before switching to the rugby-based rules of Harvard and its competitors. US colleges did not generally return to soccer until the early twentieth century.
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 .
Over the years Canadian football absorbed some developments in American football, but also retained many unique characteristics. One of these was that Canadian football, for many years, did not officially distinguish itself from rugby. For example, the
Canadian Rugby Football Union, founded in 1884 was the forerunner of the Canadian Football League, rather than a rugby union body. American football was also frequently described as "rugby" in the 1880s.
Gaelic football
Main article: History of Gaelic football.In the mid-19th century, various traditional football games, referred to collectively as
caid, remained popular in Ireland, especially in
County Kerry. One observer, Father W. Ferris, described two main forms of
caid during this period: the "field game" in which the object was to put the ball through arch-like goals, formed from the boughs of two trees, and; the epic "cross-country game" which took up most of the daylight hours of a Sunday on which it was played, and was won by one team taking the ball across a parish boundary. "Wrestling", "holding" opposing players, and carrying the ball were all allowed.
By the 1870s, Rugby and Association football had started to become popular in Ireland.
Trinity College, Dublin was an early stronghold of Rugby . The rules of the English FA were being distributed widely. Traditional forms of
caid had begun to give way to a "rough-and-tumble game" which allowed tripping.
There was no serious attempt to unify and codify Irish varieties of football, until the establishment of the
Gaelic Athletic Association in 1884. The GAA sought to promote traditional Irish sports, such as
hurling 
