Attempts to ban football games

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Numerous attempts have been made throughout history to ban various kinds of football games, particularly the most rowdy and disruptive forms. These attempts were most common in Medieval and early modern Europe, especially in England, where a multitude of forms of folk or mob football were popular, among and between villages and urban districts.

Between 1314 and 1667, football was officially banned in England alone by more than 30 royal and local laws. 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 (grosses pelotes de pee} 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, and after the great loss of life that had occurred during the Black Death, England needed as many archers as possible.

Football featured in similar attempts by monarchs to ban recreational sport across Europe. In France it was banned by Phillippe V in 1319, and again by Charles V in 1369. In England, the outlawing of sport was attempted by Richard II in 1389 and Henry IV in 1401. In Scotland, football was banned by James I in 1424 and by James II in 1457. Despite evidence that Henry VIII of England played the game — in 1526, he ordered the first known pair of football boots — in 1540 Henry also attempted a ban. All of these attempts failed to curb the people's desire to play the game.

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 using that unlawful exercise of playing with the ffotebale in ye streets of the said towne, breaking many men's windows and glasse at their pleasure and other great inormyties.[1]

That same year, the modern spelling of the word "football" is first recorded, when it was used disapprovingly by William Shakespeare. Shakespeare's play King Lear (which was first published in 1608) contains the line: "Nor tripped neither, you base football player" (Act I Scene 4). Shakespeare also mentions the game in A Comedy of Errors (Act II Scene 1):

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.)

In the period following the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell had some success in suppressing football games, although they 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 the Duke of Albemarle's servants.

During the 18th century, football was used as a political weapon by the lower classes. In 1740, "a match of futtball was cried at Kettering, of 500 men a side, but the design was to Pull Down Lady Betey Jesmaine's Mill's." And when a landowner enclosed the communal lands of peasants, they could retaliate by playing football on the enclosed lands. In 1764, 2,000 acres (800 hectares) of land was enclosed at West Haddon, Northamptonshire. A game of football was called and after the kick off the mob set about tearing down and burning the fences amounting to £1,500 worth of damage. Dragoons drafted to halt the match were helpless.

Even in England's early modern era, efforts were made to ban football at a local level, and force it off the streets. In 1827, the annual Alnwick Shrove Tuesday game proceeded only after the Duke of Northumberland provided a field for the game to be played on. (The Duke also presented the ball before the match — a ritual that continues to this day.) In 1835, the British Highways Act banned the playing of football on public highways, with a maximum penalty of forty shillings. The very popular English women's football matches began in 1895 and were banned from FA grounds in 1921, stifling the game there for the following 40 years.