Football

Football

Football refers to a number of sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball 

with the foot to score a goal. Unqualified, the word football is understood to refer 

to whichever form of football is the most popular in the regional context in which the 

word appears: association football (also known as soccer) in the United Kingdom; gridiron 

football (specifically American football or Canadian football) in the United States and 

Canada; Australian rules football or rugby league in different areas of Australia; Gaelic 

football in Ireland; and rugby football (specifically rugby union) in New Zealand.

These different variations of football are known as football codes.

Various forms of football can be identified in history, often as popular peasant games.

 Contemporary codes of football can be traced back to the codification of these games at

 English public schools in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The expanse of the British

 Empire allowed these rules of football to spread to areas of British influence outside of the

 directly controlled Empire, though by the end of the nineteenth century, distinct regional

 codes were already developing: Gaelic football, for example, deliberately incorporated the rules

 of local traditional football games in order to maintain their heritage. In 1888, The Football

 League was founded in England, becoming the first of many professional football competitions. 

During the twentieth century, several of the various kinds of football grew to become some of 

the most popular team sports in the world.

Football Association

The first football international, Scotland versus England. Once kept by the Rugby Football Union as an early example of rugby football.

Main article: The Football Association

During the early 1860s, there were increasing attempts in England to unify and reconcile the various public school games. In 1862, J. C. Thring, who had been one of the driving forces behind the original Cambridge Rules, was a master at Uppingham School and he issued his own rules of what he called "The Simplest Game" (these are also known as the Uppingham Rules). In early October 1863 another new revised version of the Cambridge Rules was drawn up by a seven member committee representing former pupils from Harrow, Shrewsbury, Eton, Rugby, Marlborough and Westminster.

At the Freemasons' Tavern, Great Queen Street, London on the evening of October 26, 1863, representatives of several football clubs in the London Metropolitan area met for the inaugural meeting of The Football Association (FA). The aim of the Association was to establish a single unifying code and regulate the playing of the game among its members. Following the first meeting, the public schools were invited to join the association. All of them declined, except Charterhouse and Uppingham. In total, six meetings of the FA were held between October and December 1863. After the third meeting, a draft set of rules were published. However, at the beginning of the fourth meeting, attention was drawn to the recently published Cambridge Rules of 1863. The Cambridge rules differed from the draft FA rules in two significant areas; namely running with (carrying) the ball and hacking (kicking opposing players in the shins). The two contentious FA rules were as follows:

IX. A player shall be entitled to run with the ball towards his adversaries' goal if he makes a fair catch, or catches the ball on the first bound; but in case of a fair catch, if he makes his mark he shall not run. X. If any player shall run with the ball towards his adversaries' goal, any player on the opposite side shall be at liberty to charge, hold, trip or hack him, or to wrest the ball from him, but no player shall be held and hacked at the same time.

At the fifth meeting it was proposed that these two rules be removed. Most of the delegates supported this, but F. M. Campbell, the representative from Blackheath and the first FA treasurer, objected. He said: "hacking is the true football". However, the motion to ban running with the ball in hand and hacking was carried and Blackheath withdrew from the FA. After the final meeting on 8 December, the FA published the "Laws of Football", the first comprehensive set of rules for the game later known as Association Football. The term "soccer", in use since the late 19th century, derives from an Oxford University abbreviation of "Association".

The first FA rules still contained elements that are no longer part of association football, but which are still recognisable in other games (such as Australian football and rugby football): for instance, a player could make a fair catch and claim a mark, which entitled him to a free kick; and if a player touched the ball behind the opponents' goal line, his side was entitled to a free kick at goal, from 15 yards (13.5 metres) in front of the goal line.