by ROBERT SIDAWAY

THE BEGINNINGS

What is football? It is said to be the madness of the English, for in the beginning the game was developed exclusively by the English. England was the cradle of the modern game, and in 1863, when the Football Association was formed, the basics for the game that was to spread world-wide were born. It must be made clear that when we talk of ‘the basics of the game’ we mean the modern game. There are solid indications that football, in one form or another, was played over two thousand years ago among the Chinese of the Han Dynasty. It was played as part of their military training, to encourage comradeship and discipline. The most striking feature of this game was the fact that the severed head of an enemy warrior was used as the ball!

A less grisly version of the game, which dates back to the early sixteenth century, can still be seen today. This is an annual re-enactment of two games of calcio, played on summer feast days in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence between two teams of twenty-seven colourfully dressed players in Renaissance costumes. However, in general the early history of the game was hard and bloody, and every civilized culture since the Han Dynasty has left relics in word, painting and sculpture of ‘a football game’. Normans, Romans, royalists, peasants, heathens and knaves, sailors and armies, all indulged in and then spread the game of football throughout the world.

‘A bloody and murthering practice rather than a felowly sport or pastime’ is the manner in which football was described by the puritans in early eighteenth-century England. Football then was played to undefined rules by any number of people, and one game could stretch for any length of time, in fields, parks or main highways. Matches could become very violent: four centuries earlier, Edward II had banned football in London on pain of imprisonment because of the ‘great noise in the city caused by hustling over large balls, from which many evils may arise’. Travelling further back in time to AD 217, one discovers that on Shrove Tuesday at Ashbourne in Derbyshire a ferocious game was played by two teams – two halves of the same town – across the countryside. In fact, it is still played today. This type of game was common across England and was normally played on high days and holidays. A Frenchman visiting England in the mid-eighteenth century who saw such a ‘sporting pastime’ on a public holiday remarked that ‘if the Englishmen call this “playing” it would be impossible to say what they would call “‘fighting’’.’

As in England, so across the world nations were playing their own versions of football. Egyptians, Assyrians and Greeks, all had sown the seed for the modern game. In ancient Mexico the skill of heading and kicking balls through silk screens or rings set high in a wall was much appreciated, whilst the delicate skill and acrobatic artistry of a gentle game in Burma, still played today, where teams of men kicked a wicker-work ball about without it ever stopping or touching the ground, is breathtaking to watch.

Kemari is an ancient form of Japanese football. It was introduced into Japan around the fifth century, when Buddhism found its way into the country and Japanese culture was flowering. It was at first played exclusively at court and by the aristocracy, gradually gaining popularity with the masses. Before kemari begins there is the eda-mari ceremony, and a game of komari. Eda-mari is a ball attached to a branch from an evergreen which is offered before the Deity. The elder receiving this offering walks slowly and gracefully to mari-tsubo, the playing field, takes the ball from the branch and then produces it magically from under the sleeve of his ceremonial costume. This creates great excitement amongst the spectators, and the elder has to perfect this trick over many years!

Following the ceremony, eight players enter the field to play komari. The field is divided into eight parts, called hakkyo or ‘eight boundaries’. The best player takes the No. 1 position and kicks the ball below shoulder height to each player. The ball is then kicked in a clockwise direction.

When komari is over, the traditional kemari begins. Nobody wins or loses: the game is played in deep friendship, the players united in mental attitude to enjoy the game and entertain the crowd. Each player tries to beat the other by swift passing and bouncing the ball to great heights. It’s an amazing sight to see players congratulating each other over the fifteen to twenty minutes’ playing time. The players wear uniforms signifying rank and splashed with rich colours, fine examples of Japanese costume and culture.

The basic belief of the game is that the higher the football bounces, the nearer to their god they become.

Kings, puritans, dictators, all tried to stamp out a pastime that nobody invented. Wherever combatants were trying to force a round object through other combatants’ territory to reach a specific target, the game that would eventually develop into modern football was flowering. It continued to flower, and by the start of the 1800s was on the threshold of the modern game we know today.

At this time in England, the rough-and-tumble game played by the working class was being encouraged as a spectator sport by the gentry. They did not actually play themselves and give the game the aristocratic backing that cricket was enjoying, but they did turn out to watch and enjoy the spirit of a game played by the lower classes. At this time, private education for the privileged was developing very quickly; the public school came into being and establishments such as Eton, Harrow, Charterhouse, Rugby and Winchester were fast developing varying footballing games for scholars thirsting for some form of organized sporting pastime. The most famous version of such a footballing game is the Eton Wall Game, still played each year on St Andrew’s Day. Twenty players form each side on a pitch 120 yards long by 6 yards wide, with the goals at each end being a tree and a garden door. In this century, only two goals have ever been scored!

While at public school, it was fine for a boy to play a game with rules, a great improvement on the football being played by apprentices and peasants, but what happened when a young man left school and entered university or started a profession in a city and wished to continue playing his version of football? Problems were bound to, and did, exist until 1848, when fourteen representatives of the public schools, led by Eton, Harrow and Winchester, presented themselves at Cambridge to develop a universal set of rules acceptable to all establishments. In consequence, the so-called “Cambridge Rules’ came about, which were to be adapted and changed twice by 1860.

Competition was now a possibility for schools and universities alike. Scholars and students were able to play a game established on a common foundation. The now legendary inter-school and inter-university matches commenced and played to rules such as: ‘a goal to be awarded when the ball is kicked between two flag posts and under the string’; “Catching the ball to be allowed as long as it is directly from the foot and the catcher must not run with it but kick it immediately’; ‘Throw-ins to be taken with only one hand’. Even an offside rule was introduced.

At this time, when the scholastic brains of the south were busy shaping the game, a collection of cricketers and friends from the Collingswood School were setting up a football club in Sheffield. They developed rules that were very similar to, though a little rougher than, the Cambridge Rules. One important and sensible rule stated that every playing member of the club should have two caps, one red and one blue, to distinguish the teams: whilst playing among themselves. By 1860 there were fifteen football clubs in Sheffield.

For the next three years, the so-called law-makers were hammering out rules and regulations far too regularly. They were published, withdrawn, revised, renegotiated and re-published to the confusion of clubs springing up throughout the country. Players must have wondered what version of the game they were to play from match to match! However, down to earth commonsense prevailed. At Uppingham School in Rutland, where they had already introduced a crossbar rather than tapes, the renowned Victorian educationalist, J. C. Thring, penned a set of rules entitled ‘The Simplest Game’. Here were straightforward rules – no kicking at the ball in the air, no player allowed in front of the ball and most important, no violence whatsoever. New thoughts developed at Cambridge again. In 1862, in a match between Cambridge Old Harrovians and Cambridge Old Etonians, it was ruled that there should be eleven players on each side, a neutral referee and two umpires (one from each side), a three-man offside rule and goalposts 20ft high by 12ft across. Thring’s rules, and the new Cambridge rules, worked quite well and were to form the main part of the thinking of the Football Association which was only a few months away from being formed.

WINNERS AND LOSERS (II)

COMING OF AGE