Oldest football clubs

The history of the formation of the oldest football clubs is of interest to sport historians in tracing the origins of the modern codes of football from casual pastime to early organised competition and mainstream sport. Many early clubs did not use the word "football" in their name. Although the terms "football club" and "FC" are now strongly associated with association football (aka soccer in some countries), early rugby clubs also referred to themselves, or continue to refer to themselves, as simply a "football club", or as a "rugby football club". Similarly, most Australian rules football teams also refer to themselves as football clubs, as do many American football teams (especially in their legal names). The title of the world's oldest football club, or the oldest club in a particular country, is often disputed, or is claimed by several different clubs, across several different codes of football. The oldest football clubs with a well-documented, continuous history are Durham School Football Club, 1850, but there is evidence of a Scottish club dating from 1839,^[2] and the Dublin University Football Club, a rugby club founded in 1854 at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. The Football Association and FIFA, the English and international governing bodies of association football, both officially recognise Sheffield F.C. to be the world's oldest association football club.^[3]

Defunct clubs

It is possible that football organisations existed in London as early as the fifteenth century. For example, the records of the Brewers' Company of London between 1421 and 1423 mention the hiring out of their hall "by the "football players" for "20 pence", under the heading "Trades and Fraternities".^[4] The listing of football players as a "fraternity" or a group of players meeting socially under this identity is the earliest allusion to what might be considered a football club.^[5] Other early sporting bodies dedicated to playing football include "The Gymnastic Society" of London which met regularly during the second half of the eighteenth century to pursue two sports: football and wrestling^[6] The club played its matches – for example between London-based natives of Cumberland and Westmoreland – at the Kennington Common from well before 1789 until about 1800.

The Foot-Ball Club (active 1824–41) of Edinburgh, Scotland, is the first documented club dedicated to football, and the first to describe itself as a football club.^[7] The only surviving club rules forbade tripping, but allowed pushing and holding and the picking up of the ball.^[8] Other documents describe a game involving 39 players and "such kicking of shins and such tumbling".

Other early clubs include the Great Leicestershire Cricket and Football Club present in 1840.^[9] In 1841 two clubs are documented in a contemporary challenge to play "foot-ball" in Lancashire: "The Body-Guard club" (Rochdale) and the "Fear-noughts Club"^[10] A club for playing "cricket, quoits and football" was established in Newcastle on Tyne in or before 1848.^[11] The Surrey Football Club was established in 1849 and published the first non-school football list of rules (which were probably based upon the eighteenth century Gymnastic Society cited above^[12])

In Germany "Dresden English Football Club" was founded on 18 March 1874 and was the first football club in Germany, probably the first in continental Europe and thus the first outside Britain. That year, over 70 members participated, primarily Englishmen working in Dresden, watched by hundreds of spectators.

The first association football of South America was the Buenos Aires Football Club, established on May 9, 1867 by a group of English immigrants. The club would then switch to rugby union code, being dissolved at the end of the 1880s.^[13]

Continuous clubs

It is claimed that the Barnes Club (later Barnes Rugby Football Club), from Barnes in London, was formed in 1839 and is the oldest club to have played football for its entire history.^[14] However, this has not been conclusively documented. It is also argued, and supported by the Guinness Book of Records, that Guy's Hospital Football Club, founded by staff at Guy's Hospital in London in 1843, is the oldest club. While a rugby club still exists at Guy's Hospital, the connection between the present club and the one formed in 1843 is poorly-documented.^[15]

Another of the oldest football clubs with a well-documented, continuous history is the Dublin University Football Club, founded in 1854 at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. The club plays rugby union.

Sheffield Football Club, in Sheffield, England is the oldest documented stand-alone club, that is, the oldest club not associated with an institution such as a school, hospital or university. It was founded in 1857.^[16] It initially played a code of its own devising. The club joined the English Football Association (FA) in 1863 and is recognised by both the FA and FIFA as the world's oldest club now playing association football. The club's rules influenced the FA including handball, free kicks, corners and throw ins; it did not adopt the Association's code in full until 1877.

Liverpool Football Club (not to be confused with Liverpool AFC of the English Premier League), later known as Liverpool St Helens F.C. were formed in 1857, who claim to be the oldest open rugby club in the world. The club adopted the Rugby Union rules in 1872, never playing association rules.

Cambridge University Association Football Club has been described by the university as the oldest club now playing association football.^[17][18] Other sources take the foundation date back earlier. For example : "Salopians formed a club of their own in the late 1830s/early 1840s but that was presumably absorbed by the Cambridge University Football Club that they were so influential in creating in 1846".^[19] According to Charles Astor Bristed, in the early 1840s at Cambridge, there were games played between clubs from different colleges and houses.^[20] Cambridge rules dates from 1848 and football is documented as being played on the original club ground, Parkers Piece, as early as 1838.^[21] The earliest existing evidence of the Cambridge University Football Club comes from "The Laws of the University Football Club" dated 1856, and held at Shrewsbury School.^[18]

German side 1860 Munich (formed in 1848) was reestablished as a gymnastic and fitness club in the year indicated by its name, but did not play football until 1899.

English club Notts County, formed in 1862, is the world's oldest fully professional association football club.^[22]

The first football club in France was established in Paris in 1863 by English expatriates, as the following excerpt from a contemporary newspaper shows: "A number of English gentlemen living in Paris have lately organised a football club... The football contests take place in the Bois de Boulogne, by permission of the authorities and surprise the French amazingly.^[23]

A second Buenos Aires Football Club was established in 1886 in Argentina to play rugby union, being also a founding member of the Argentine Union. The BAFC merged to Buenos Aires Cricket Club in 1951 and has continued playing rugby up to present.^[24]

The claim of oldest continuous football club in North America is still a matter of much debate. Oneida Football Club was founded in 1862, and played the "Boston game", the rules of which have been lost. The modern club, Oneida FC were refounded in 2011 and play rugby league football.

In terms of gridiron football the Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League can trace their roots back to the Hamilton Football Club (nicknamed the "Tigers") which formed in 1869, then later merged with the Hamilton Wildcats in 1950 to form the current franchise. Their rivals to the north, the Toronto Argonauts, were founded four years later in 1873 and boast a mostly unchanged franchise history. It should be noted, however, that both clubs began as rugby football clubs and only later adapted to the gridiron-style of play which would become known as Canadian football. The oldest continuous rugby club in North America which still plays rugby is the McGill University Rugby Football Club which was established in 1863, although their first recorded game was not until 1865.^[25] The oldest independent (non-university) rugby club is the Westmount Rugby Club of Montreal, which formed in 1876.^[26]

Though football variants have been played in the United States since the 1820s, gridiron-based variants of the game did not distinguish themselves from existing codes until 1871, when Harvard University began playing a variation known as the "Boston Game." This allowed a player to pick up the ball and run with it if he were chased and it quickly spread, with innovations added by Yale University student Walter Camp. The oldest existing non-university semiprofessional football club is the Watertown Red & Black, which was founded in 1896. The Arizona Cardinals, formed in Chicago in 1899, are the oldest club currently in the National Football League, although they relocated to St. Louis in 1960 and then to Arizona in 1988. The Green Bay Packers, founded in 1919, are the oldest NFL club still in their original city.

Timeline, 1854–80

See also

• Sports clubs by year of establishment

Notes

References

External links

• University of Manchester, "Local studies in the History of Sport England" (Bibliography)