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The History of Football
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This document includes details about how football started and it's journey to what it is today.
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Name- George AlexanderUnit 12- Assignment 1
Early British Football:
All modern forms of football have roots in the folk football of pre-industrial English society. This
generic form of football was for centuries a chaotic game played by mobs instead of teams. It was
essentially a public holiday event with Shrove Tuesday in particular a traditional day for games
across the country. It is generally thought that the games were free-for-alls with no holds barred and
extremely violent. As for kicking and handling of the ball, it is certain that both means of moving the
ball towards the goals were in use. Little is known about football until the nineteenth century and
the few surviving references are mostly about attempts at various times to ban it. The FIFA history
says, "there was scarcely any progress at all in the development of football for hundreds of years
but, although it was persistently forbidden, it was never completely suppressed".
More is known about folk football through the 18th and 19th centuries. It was essentially a game for
large numbers played over wide distances with goals that were as much as three miles apart. An
example of one of these games was at Whitehaven, the goals were a harbour wall and a wall outside
the town. Matches in Derby involved about a thousand players. In all of these examples, the aim of
the game was to drive a ball of varying size and shape, often a pig's bladder, to a goal. Generally, the
ball could be kicked, thrown or carried but it is believed there were some places at which only
kicking was allowed. Whatever rules may have been agreed beforehand, there is no doubt at all that
folk football was extremely violent, even when relatively well organised. One form of kicking that
was common was "shinning", the term for kicking another player's legs, and it was legal even if the
ball was hundreds of yards away.
Folk football was essentially rural, and matches tended to coincide with country fairs. Change was
brought about by industrialisation and the growth of towns as people moved away from the country.
The idea of a game taking several hours over huge areas ran counter to "the discipline, order and
organisation necessary for urban capitalism". In 1801, a survey of British sports by Joseph Strutt
described football as being "formerly much in vogue among the common people of England".
Although Strutt claimed that folk football was in disrepute and was "but little practised", there is no
doubt that many games continued well into the nineteenth century before codification took effect.
Industrial Revolution:
The industrial revolution started to grow in the 19th century. During this time life was hard because
the conditions that people had to work in were very cramped, the conditions were also unsanitary
, Name- George Alexander
during this time, this means that there wasn’t a lot of space to work in. The work that was done was
physically demanding. This was because the work that was mostly done was mining, weaving,
factory work and working on building sites.
People who worked during this time were not allowed much time off, they also didn’t have any extra
pay for people who used it for sport of extra activities. There were less sporting opportunities in
cities, this is because there wasn’t enough space to play sports in. The working class were the main
spectators in sports. The main sports they watched were boxing, rowing and wrestling. Most of the
sports at this time had gambling associated with them, blood sports were also introduced at this
time. For example, dogfighting was introduced.
There were also sports which only the rich people could afford to play. These sports included
hunting, horse riding and shooting. The people who could afford these sports mainly got their money
from trading or owning lots of land. These upper-class people had more leisure time, this meant that
they had more time to do sports which they enjoyed. Their leisure time also allowed them to try new
things such as dancing and stage plays.
Influence of Public Schools:
As the 19th century began, football became increasingly significant in the public schools because it
was well suited to the ideals of the "Muscular Christianity" cult. It was, like cricket, perceived to be a
"character-building" sport. The trailblazer was Rugby School where the boys began playing the game
around 1800, almost certainly inspired by the annual New Year's Eve game played by the people of
Rugby, Warwickshire, through the 18th century. The public schools wanted to toughen their pupils
so that they were fit to rule the British Empire. The policy was in response to widespread belief that
past empires had fallen because the ruling class became soft. At Rugby, pupils were encouraged to
adopt shinning as a means of toughening up and they renamed the practice "hacking". It became
something of an obsession, along with cold showers and punishing cross-country runs. Hacking was
an important issue when the "handling game" split from the "dribbling game" later in the century.
By the 1820s, other public schools began to come up with their own versions of football, rules of
which were verbally agreed and handed down over many years. Each school (e.g., Eton, Harrow and
Winchester) had its own variations. Albert Pell, a former Rugby pupil who went to Cambridge
University in 1839, began organising football matches there but, because of the different school
variations, a compromise set of rules had to be found. By 1843, a set of rules is believed to have
been in existence at Eton which allowed handling of the ball to control it, but not running with it in
the hand and not passing it by hand. The first known 11–a–side games took place at Eton where the
"dribbling game" was popular.
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