The Development in England

Mob football, as it was dubbed has been played in England since the roman occupation between 43 and 410 AD.  Many variations of this game existed but common denominators such as a mob and a ball as with the title were forever present, the objective is that each team had to get the ball to the oppositions area by whatever means possible.

It is believed after the Norman conquering of the isles the mob game really took off and as early as 1314 Nicolas de Farndone (The Lord Mayor of the City of London) banned the game from the city streets due to the violence and crime that surrounded the events, a national ban was introduced in 1314 on April 30^th By King Edward II and further proclaimed by his successor in June 12^th 1342 by imaginatively named Edward the III.  The reason for this was that it distracted the young men from involvement in archery and other useful war skills, punishment for participation would be imprisonment.  A year later Scotland introduced the ‘Football Act’ and with it a fine of ‘Four Pence’, which I’m sure was a lot of money at the time, to discourage the people.

There are many references to the game in the medieval and renaissance eras from kings to great writers.  The infamous King Henry VIII owned a pair of boots, but also backed the continued banning of the game in 1548 as it was often the source of many riots and acts of crime.  The peoples love of playing the game though made this impossible so it continued without authority.

In 1608 William Shakespeare disapprovingly coined the word football in his play ‘King Lear’  “Nor tripped neither, you base football Player.”  And again in the ‘A Comedy of Errors’, penned this sonnet.

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.

 Beautiful you may agree. 

This mob game is still played to this day on shrove Tuesdays in many rural towns in England.

Football the game we know now however really started to take shape when the public school system introduced it into their individual programmes as the it was seen as beneficial to the youngsters for it’s fitness, team work and promotion of pro active and sporting behaviour.  Both Oxford and Cambridge Universities having been playing since the fourteenth century but it wasn’t until Eton in 1815 that the first written codes appeared where rules were pronounced and a real consistent game by game structure was introduced, this was however internal to the college itself and other codes started to appear thereafter such as Alderham school in 1825 which was largely based on previous versions but tweaked maybe to give the advantage to the home team on such occasions as an exhibition match between rival schools. 

At Rugby school in 1823 playing a game of football William Webb Ellis sat on a football, misshaped it, picked it up and ran with it to the opponent’s goal and became the defining moment in separation of Football and Rugby.

The Cambridge rules in 1848 saw for the first time a set of rules, which were uniformly agreed, by a set of schools in the south of England.  The Sheffield rules only a few years later saw a similar cartel in the north, these rules included free kicks, corner kicks, throw-ins and added inclusion of crossbars.

The pace of growth in football saw a real explosion in participation and watching of games occurred half way through the nineteenth century when the factory workers act of 1850 was passed, before this act the working classes and their children were expected to work 6 days a week for 12 hours a day. Leaving little time for any recreational activity, what the act provided after 1850 was a half-day working on Saturdays finishing at 2pm for the first time young men had the opportunity to enjoy free time in the afternoon and was the driving force behind the popular Saturday 3pm kick off time which lasted nearly 150 years before live television coverage demanded staggered match times. 

The introduction of the railways was also a key factor in this incredible growth in football’s market as teams from further away from each other now had the potential to play games on a regular basis and fans can come and watch.  This is how football became the sport played by and watched by the workingman.

In 1857 Sheffield Football Club was born, this is now considered the world oldest football club.

It wasn’t until October 26^th 1863, at the Freemasons Tavern (now arms), 13 teams from the London area sat the first set of 6 meetings trying to combine all the codes and rules that teams The Football Association (FA) was born.