Rules and
regulations
Establishment of modern codes
English public schools
Main article:
English public school football games
While football continued to be
played in various forms throughout Britain, its public schools (known as
private schools in other countries) are widely credited with four key
achievements in the creation of modern football codes. First of all, the
evidence suggests that they were important in taking football away from its
"mob" form and turning it into an organised team sport. Second, many early
descriptions of football and references to it were recorded by people who
had studied at these schools. Third, it was teachers, students and former
students from these schools who first codified football games, to enable
matches to be played between schools. Finally, it was at English public
schools that the division between "kicking" and "running" (or "carrying")
games first became clear.
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 and
Winchester colleges and his Latin textbook includes a translation exercise
with the phrase "We wyll playe with a ball full of wynde".[citation needed]
Richard Mulcaster, a student at Eton College in the early 16th century
and later headmaster at other English schools, has been described as "the
greatest sixteenth Century advocate of football".[16] Among his
contributions are the earliest evidence of organised team football.
Mulcaster's writings refer to teams ("sides" and "parties"), positions
("standings"), a referee ("judge over the parties") and a coach "(trayning
maister)". Mulcaster's "footeball" had evolved from the disordered and
violent forms of traditional football:
[s]ome 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.
—[citation needed]
In 1633,
David Wedderburn, a teacher from Aberdeen, mentioned elements of modern
football games in a short Latin textbook called "Vocabula." Wedderburn
refers to what has been translated into modern English as "keeping goal" and
makes an allusion to passing the ball ("strike it here"). There is a
reference to "get hold of the ball", suggesting that some handling was
allowed. It is clear that the tackles allowed included the charging and
holding of opposing players ("drive that man back").[citation needed]
A more detailed description of football is given in Francis Willughby's
Book of Games, written in about 1660.[17] Willughby, who had studied at
Sutton Coldfield School, is the first to describe goals and a distinct
playing field: "a close that has a gate at either end. The gates are called
Goals." His book includes a diagram illustrating a football field. He also
mentions 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 must not strike [an opponent's leg] higher than the
ball".[citation needed]
English public schools were the first to
codify football games (in particular Eton (1815)[18] and Aldenham
(1825)[18]) They also devised the first offside rules, during the late 18th
century.[19] In the earliest manifestations of these rules, players were
"off their side" if they simply stood between the ball and the goal which
was their objective. Players were not allowed to pass the ball forward,
either by foot or by hand. They could only dribble with their feet, or
advance the ball in a scrum or similar formation. However, offside laws
began to diverge and develop differently at the each school, as is shown by
the rules of football from Winchester, Rugby, Harrow and Cheltenham, during
in the period of 1810–1850.[19]
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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 played on the streets was in decline. Public
school boys, who enjoyed some freedom from work, became the inventors of
organised football games with formal codes of rules.
Football was
adopted by a number of public schools as a way of encouraging
competitiveness and keeping youths fit. Each school drafted its own
rules, which varied widely between different schools and were changed
over time with each new intake of pupils. Two schools of thought
developed regarding rules. Some schools favoured a game in which the
ball could be carried (as at Rugby, Marlborough and Cheltenham), while
others preferred a game where kicking and dribbling the ball was
promoted (as at Eton, Harrow, Westminster and Charterhouse). The
division into these two camps was partly the result of circumstances in
which the games were played. For example, Charterhouse and Westminster
at the time had restricted playing areas; the boys were confined to
playing their ball game within the school cloisters, making it difficult
for them to adopt rough and tumble running games.[citation needed]
Rugby SchoolWilliam Webb Ellis, a pupil at Rugby School, is said
to have "with a fine disregard for the rules of football, as played in
his time [emphasis added], first took the ball in his arms and ran with
it, thus creating the distinctive feature of the rugby game." in 1823.
This act is usually said to be the beginning of Rugby football, but
there is little evidence that it occurred, and most sports historians
believe the story to be apocryphal. The act of 'taking the ball in is
arms' is often misinterpreted as 'picking the ball up' as it is widely
believed that Webb Ellis' 'crime' was handling the ball, as in modern
soccer, however handling the ball as the time was often permitted and in
some cases compulsory,[20] the rule for which Webb Ellis showed
disregard was running forward with it as the rules of his time only
allowed a player to retreat backwards or kick forwards.
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. However, it
was difficult for schools to play each other at football, as each school
played by its own rules. The solution to this problem was usually that
the match be divided into two halves, one half played by the rules of
the host "home" school, and the other half by the visiting "away"
school.
Apart from Rugby football, the public school codes have
barely been played beyond the confines of each school's playing fields.
However, many of them are still played at the schools which created
them.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 ..."[13] That same year,
the word "football" was used disapprovingly by William Shakespeare.
Shakespeare's play King Lear 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.
King James I of England's Book of
Sports (1618) however, instructs Christians to play at football every
Sunday afternoon after worship.[14] The book's aim appears to be an
attempt to offset the strictness of the Puritans regarding the keeping
of the Sabbath.[15]
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