British public school football games
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During the early modern era students, former students and teachers at British public schools developed many unique codes of football. The most well-known of these is Rugby football. British public school football also influenced directly the rules of Association Football.
British private schools ("Public schools" in the United Kingdom) are widely credited with three key achievements in the creation of modern codes of football. First, the evidence suggests that—during the 16th century—they transformed the violent and chaotic - but popular - "mob football" into organised team sports that were beneficial to schoolboys. Secondly, many early references to football in literature (e.g. poetry) were recorded by people who had studied at these schools, showing they were familiar with the game. Finally, in the 19th century, former English public school students were the first to write down formal codes of rules in order to enable matches to be played between different schools. These versions of football rules were the basis of both the Cambridge Rules and subsequent rules of the English Football Association.
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[edit] History
[edit] Pre-19th century
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 (1485/6–1494/5) and Winchester College. 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 Taylors' School (1561) and St Paul's School (1596) has been described as "the greatest sixteenth Century advocate of football".[1] He tells us that towards the end of the sixteenth century football in England had grown to "greatnes... [and was] much used ... in all places". 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 his "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’.[2] 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 ("sides" and "parties"), positions ("standings"), the benefits of a referee ("judge over the parties") and a coach "(trayning maister)". Although it is not explicitly mentioned, passing of the ball is strongly implied by the reference to different positions on the field. Mulcaster describes a game for small teams that is organised under the auspices of a referee (and is therefore clear evidence that his game had evolved from disordered and violent "mob" football): "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 early modern football.
There is evidence that team kicking games were being played in schools in other parts of Britain by the mid 17th century. In 1633 (cited in other references as 1636) David Wedderburn, a teacher from Aberdeen, mentioned elements of football games in a short Latin textbook called the "Vocabula". Wedderburn was representing a dialogue between boys discussing a ball game:
- Let’s pick sides. You have first choice.
- Those who are on our side, come over here. How many are there in the other team?
- Kick off, so that we can begin the match. Pass it here.
- You keep goal. Get hold of the ball before he does, if you can manage it.
- Go on, intercept him. Charge him.
- Pass the ball back. Well done! You’re slacking.
- To score a goal. This is the second, this the third goal.
- Keep him out, otherwise the other side wins.
- If you’re not careful, he’ll score in a minute.
- If we don’t play better, we’re done for.
- Hi! You’re the winners. Hurrah! He’s a very good player.
- If it has been for him we should have won.
- Come on, help me. We still have a better side?"
Wedderburn's Latin book is the first account to refer to things which, in 1970s English, have been translated as "keeping goal" and the "passing" (backwards) of a ball. There is a reference to "get hold of the ball before [another player] does", suggesting that handling of the ball was allowed. It is clear that the tackles allowed included the "charging" and holding of opposing players ("Keep him out"). This game, therefore, differed considerably from the modern game and, contrary to reports elsewhere, there is no reference to game rules, marking players, forward passing or the english word "football". This quotation, which has been documented in football history literature since the early twentieth century, confirms that organised kicking ball games in the seventeenth century were not confined to English Schools.
A more detailed description of football is given in Francis Willughby's Book of Sports[3], written in about 1660. This account is particularly noteworthy as he refers to football by its correct name and is the first to describe the following: goals and a pitch ("a close that has a gate at either end. The gates are called Goals"), tactics ("leaving some of their best players to guard the goal"), scoring ("they that can strike the ball through their opponents' goal first win") and the way teams were selected ("the players being equally divided according to their strength and nimbleness"). He is the first to describe a law of football: "They often break one another's shins when two meet and strike both together against the ball, and therefore there is a law that they must not strike higher than the ball". His account of the ball itself is also very informative: "They blow a strong bladder and tie the neck of it as fast as they can, and then put it into the skin of a bull's cod and sew it fast in". He adds: "The harder the ball is blown, the better it flies. They used to put quicksilver into it sometimes to keep it from lying still". His book includes the first (basic) diagram illustrating a football pitch. Willughby's link with the public school system was that he had studied at sutton coldfield school, was a student at Cambridge university and frequented the Bodleian library at Oxford 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 (Macmillan, 1917) p 21] This is strongly supportive of the fact that by seventeenth century football and other ball games in English public schools had been tamed. Nugae Etonenses (1766) by T. Frankland also mentions the "Football Fields" at Eton.
[edit] 19th Century Developments
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 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 Soccer and rugby games that we know today.
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.
[edit] Rugby Football
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 (some sources say 1842), 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.
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 (or code) for any form of football[1]. This further assisted the spread of the Rugby game.
During the early nineteenth century 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.
The first inter-school match was played between Cheltenham College and Rugby school, surprisingly the victors being Cheltenham College, still a prolific rugby school.
[edit] Association Football
Football had come to be adopted by a number of public schools as a way of encouraging esprit de corp, 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, a number of schools of thought about how football should be played emerged. Some schools favoured a game in which the ball could be carried (as at Rugby, Marlborough and Cheltenham). Others preferred a game where dribbling the ball was promoted (in particular Eton College and Harrow. This kind of dribbling foot ball with a tight off-side rule is still played today as the Eton field game. A third group including Westminster and Charterhouse pursued a game that excludeds handling the ball [4]. There is some evidence that this also became a passing game which importantly allowed the forward pass known as "passing on". The division into these camps was partly the result of circumstances in which the games were played. At Charterhouse and Westminster, both schools at the time played 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. Most of the founding members of Football Association in 1863 were former schoolboys at these public schools. This led to a conflict in the way that Association Football should be played. Some committee members favoured the rules of Charterhouse and Westminster School and pushed for a passing game, in particular rules that allowed forward passing ("passing on"). Other schools (in particular Eton College and Harrow) favoured a dribbling game with a tight off-side rule (such that all players must remain behind the ball). By 1867 the Football Association had chosen in favour of the Charterhouse and Westminster game and adopted an off-side rule that permitted forward passing [Marples, Morris. A History of Football, Secker and Warburg, London 1954, page 150]. The modern forward-passing soccer game was thus born, as a direct consequence of Charterhouse and Westminster Football.
[edit] Public School Achievements in the Development of Modern Football Games
- Developing the Offside rule
Each of the English public school games had its own offside rule. Many of these completely prevented forward passing. The 1847 rules of Eton College, however, were probably the first to resemble the modern game, stating:
"A player is considered 'sneaking' when only three or less than three of the opposite side are before him and the ball behind him, and in such a case, he may not kick the ball."
This is noteworthy as it allowed players to receive a forward pass if more than three opponents were between them and the opponents' goal line [5].
- Dribbling football and Passing Football
The introduction of rules that allowed both dribbling and forward passing of the ball. These key elements of modern Association Football were taken from various versions of public school football. Dribbling was a key part of the Eton game and passing, in particular forward passing ("passing on") was a part of the Charterhouse game. These features of the modern game had been integrated into the Football Association rules by 1867 and were the consequence of English public school games [Marples, Morris. A History of Football, Secker and Warburg, London 1954, page 150].
- Kicking off the game from the centre spot.
This was a key feature of the football codes of Harrow and Rugby.
- Crossbar to the goal mouth
The cross bar to the football goal was a feature of the Eton game and was noteworthy as the ball had to pass under the bar (instead of over it, as in Rugby football)
- Team size
Eleven or fifteen players per side was a feature of football at Eton and Winchester
- The football season.
Evidence for the establishment of the football season at English public schools comes in "Bentley's miscellany" (1844) [6]. 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". See also the quotation below which confirms that the football season began in Autumn. This is noteworthy because traditionally football had beeen played in England during Shrovetide.
- The first evidence of organised football being played between clubs.
School football clubs (and other sports) were a central part of life at nineteenth century english public schools. In "Five years at an English University" (1852), American Charles Bristed describes his time at Cambridge University in the 1840s. During a discussion on Eton and Rugby School (drawn upon letters from former students there) 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" [7] Significantly this 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. This quotation also points to the establishment in English public schools of the "football season" which to this day begins without fail in Autumn.
- The wearing of team colours or strips.
The tradition of wearing distinctive team strips (i.e. uniforms) was also commenced by public school teams. For example, the original photograph of Winchester football in about 1840 is entitled: "A 'Hot' at Foot Ball. The commoners have red and college boys blue jerseys".
[edit] References
- ^ Rugby chronology. Museum of Rugby. Retrieved on April 24, 2006.
