1800-1870 Early rules

Football - The establishment of modern codes of football

Football continued to be played in England throughout the nineteenth century. For example, in 1838 a thirteen year old boy James Mills of Hamer Bottom near Rochdale "had his leg broken in three places while playing at football" His leg had to be amputated. In 1844 football was evidently still popular in london. An advertisement in the Guardian newspaper for 14 December states: "Wanted immediately a field for football in the neighbourhood of London Road or Oxford Street". In 1845 an interesting reference from Darwen, Lancashire shows how football was popular among English factory workers: "A stranger passing through it at noon time may see a number of young men and boys dressed in Fustian engaged in the favourite sport of football".

England was the first country in the world to develop codified football, coming about from a desire of its various public schools to compete against each other. Previously, each school had its own rules, which may have dated back to the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries.

The first attempts to come up with single codes probably began in the 1840s, with various meetings between school representatives attempting to come up with a set of rules with which all would be happy. The first attempt was The Cambridge Rules, created in 1848; others developed their own sets, most notably Sheffield F.C. (1855) and J.C. Thring (1862) These were moulded into one set in 1863 when the Football Association was formed; though some clubs continued to play under the Sheffield Rules until 1878, and others dissented to form Rugby Union instead.

The 1863 rules of the Football Association provides the first reference in the English Language to the verb to "pass" a ball.

C. W. Alcock became the first footballer ever to be ruled off side on 31 March 1866, confirming that players were probing ways of exploiting the new off side rule right from the start The offside rule was introduced in 1866 into the Football Association rules. It was almost identical to the one that had been part of the Cambridge Rules.

The early Sheffield Rules were particularly important as their offside system allowed poaching or sneaking and thus demonstrated the use of the forward pass: Players known as "kick throughs" were positioned permanently near the opponents goal to receive these balls. According to C.W. Alcock the Sheffield style gave birth to the modern passing game. The Sheffield Rules of 1862 later included both crossbars and half time and free kicks were introduced to their code in 1866

The oldest existing football trophy in the world the Youdan Cup (1867).
The English introduced football into France in 1863, founding their first club, as the following newspaper cutting 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.

1870 - 1888 The FA Cup and professionalism >