How Football Began: A Global History of How the World’s Football Codes Were Born

218 Pages·2018·7.3 MB·English

by  Tony Collins

‘The origins of football’s many codes and their complex relationship to
each other has been one of sporting history's great grey areas, dominated by
hearsay and invention. No longer. Tony Collins’ cool and illuminating How
Football Began brings range, precision and sources to bear on the matter. As
is often the case, the truths that emerge are infinitely more interesting than
the myths they dispel.’
David Goldblatt, Author of The Ball is Round: A Global
History of Football and The Game of Our Lives

HOW FOOTBALL BEGAN
This ambitious and fascinating history considers why, in the space of
sixty years between 1850 and 1910, football grew from a marginal and
unorganised activity to become the dominant winter entertainment for
millions of people around the world.
The book explores how the world’s football codes – soccer, rugby league,
rugby union, American, Australian, Canadian and Gaelic – developed as
part of the commercialised leisure industry in the nineteenth century.
Football, however and wherever it was played, was a product of the second
industrial revolution, the rise of the mass media, and the spirit of the age
of the masses.
Important reading for students of sports studies, history, sociology,
development and management, this book is also a valuable resource for
scholars and academics involved in the study of football in all its forms, as well
as an engrossing read for anyone interested in the early history of football.
Tony Collins is Emeritus Professor of History in the International Centre
for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University, UK. His previous
books include Rugby’s Great Split, Rugby League in Twentieth Century Britain,
A Social History of English Rugby Union and The Oval World – each of which
won the Lord Aberdare prize for sports history book of the year – as well as
his global history Sport in Capitalist Society.

HOW FOOTBALL BEGAN
A Global History of How the World’s
Football Codes Were Born
Tony Collins
First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2019 Tony Collins
The right of Tony Collins to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-03874-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-03875-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-17721-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
The cover of the paperback version of this book is based on the cover of
the 1867 Routledge Handbook of Football.
CONTENTS
List of plates ix
Introduction 1
1 The failure of the Football Association 4
2 Before the beginning: folk football 10
3 The gentleman’s game 17
4 Sheffield: football beyond the metropolis 24
5 The end of the universal game 31
6 From the classes to the masses 38
7 Glasgow: football capital of the nineteenth century 47
8 The coming of professionalism 53
9 Kicking against the pricks: women and football 65
10 Rugby football: a house divided 75
viii Contents
11 Melbourne: a city and its football 82
12 Australian Rules and the invention of football traditions 90
13 Ireland: creating Gaelic football 98
14 Football and nationalism in Ireland and beyond 109
15 American football: the old game in the new world 116
16 Canadian football: between scrum and snapback 127
17 Rugby league football: from people’s game to proletarian sport 139
18 The 1905–07 football crisis in North America 147
19 The 1905-07 football crisis in world rugby 154
20 Soccer: the modern game for the modern world 163
21 The global game 176
Bibliography 182
Index 200
PLATES
1 Folk football at Kingston-upon-Thames, Shrove Tuesday 1846
(Illustrated London News, 28 February 1846) 11
2 Sheffield F.C.’s rulebook, 1859 27
3 Soccer or Rugby? The 1872 England versus Scotland rugby
international (The Graphic, 24 February 1872) 35
4 The Goal: launched in 1873 as probably the first dedicated
football weekly 41
5 Football turned upside-down. Blackburn Olympic defeat Old
Etonians to win the FA Cup in 1883 (Illustrated Sporting and
Dramatic News, 7 April 1883) 59
6 Women footballers defy the FA ban: match programme for Stoke
versus Dick, Kerr’s in 1923 72
7 Rugby on the verge of split: cartoon satirising the RFU’s
suspension of Huddersfield (Yorkshire Owl, 15 November 1893) 80
8 Scrummaging in early Australian Rules football
(The Australasian Sketcher, 12 June 1875) 92
9 K erry GAA great Dick Fitzgerald’s 1913 handbook for Gaelic
footballers 106
10 Quarterback passing from the scrimmage during the 1889 Yale
versus Princeton match (Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 7
December 1889) 121
11 An 1892 guide to Canadian football (The Dominion Illustrated
Monthly, February 1892) 128
12 A 1909 Australian amateur view of the threat of professionalism
in rugby, with anti-Semitic overtones (Rugby Football League
Archive, Huddersfield) 158