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How did football develop in England from a mob game?

Most historians believe that modern football evolved from mob games played by workers, which are believed to have initially been more like modern handball than football. The first clear reference to a game of football comes from Shouldham in Norfolk in 1321, where "the player kicked the ball... (and) a lay friend of his ran against him and wounded himself" (Carter, 2005, p. 159). Prior to this, most accounts of football games strongly indicate that hands, rather than feet, were the primary means by which the ball was moved around the pitch, although all the other conventions of the game - such as having a goalkeeper to defend the goal - appear to have been in place since at least the eleventh century. By the middle of the fourteenth century, football was so popular among the masses in London that a number of decrees had to be issued banning the game from areas where the noise was likely to offend the sensibilities of those not involved in the sport. The first use of the term football, or 'foteball' as it was then called, came in the early fifteenth century when Henry IV ruled that payment should not be required from those wishing to play the game. Arguably, this is the first example of government intervention in the running of the game.

Football faced its greatest challenge in England when, in June 1349, Edward III banned the game because he felt that it distracted the population from practising archery. With archery still central to warfare, the king believed that widespread playing of football would result in England's armies becoming less effective. There are many references to football still being played in the years following the ban, suggesting that most communities ignored the king's ruling and that enforcement of the ban was not particularly strict. Nevertheless, the game was viewed by many as being a game for ruffians, to the extent that Shakespeare's 'King Lear' includes a line comparing a base character to a rough football player. It's unclear when, and why, football became acceptable in English society again, but in 1618 James I ordered that Christians should play the game every Sunday after church, possible in order to prevent church worship being taken over by Puritans. Most historians accept that it was this proclamation that ensured football would come to be seen as a central part of English life.

Over the next two hundred years, a number of writers attempted to establish rules for football, but for the most part they were unsuccessful. By the early nineteenth century, many workers had abandoned the game as the English working day become increasingly tiring. Consequently, the game became the preserve of public schools, and it was in this environment that the modern rules were formulated. As schools began to arrange competitions between themselves, it became necessary for a single set of rules to be adopted, and after a bitter debate over the question of whether or not the ball should be permitted to be carried, the sport split into two camps, which would eventually become football and rugby. As rail transport became increasingly popular in England, games were arranged between schools that were a great distance from one another, although there were still some differences in the way the rules were interpreted, and the schools got around this problem by playing the first half of each game according to one set of rules, and the second half according to the other. In this way, the modern 'game of two halves' was developed.

As early as the fifteenth century, dedicated football clubs had been created in which players were paid up to 20p a year (if they were good enough). The first documented modern football club in Britain, however, was formed in Edinburgh, Scotland in the early 1820's, at a time when some games featured up to 40 players. The oldest still-running football club that can definitively prove its age is Sheffield F.C., while Notts County is the world's oldest still-running professional club. The nineteenth century saw increasing professionalism in the game, and the second half of the century saw the establishment of a number of teams that remain prominent in English football today: Nottingham Forest (1865); Sheffield Wednesday (1867); Manchester United (1878); Arsenal (1886); and Liverpool (1892). By 1900, the modern game was more or less in place, and the English Football Association (FA) was becoming an increasingly influential governing body. Many historians regard Barnes' game against Richmond in November 1832 as the first recorded modern game. Barnes won the game, and football has grown in popularity in England and the rest of the world ever since.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Carter, Michael (2005). 'The History of Football'. London: Senecca Press

Davies, E.A. (2000). 'Football in the Nineteenth Century'. London: Denverdale Books

Farnham, David (2008). 'Modern Football'. Manchester: Alan Shaw Publications

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