User talk:Grant65/Archive Football

Re: Your last edit to football.


 * Public schools were not purely for the upper classes. Rugby for example (this may be true for other schools) had a scheme to send local boys (known as foundationers) through a kind of grant scheme. Indeed William Webb Ellis himelf was a foundationer. Generally the public schools were for those that could afford to send their children, and in some cases this meant that in order to send their child to school a family lived in penury.


 * Nevertheless I think "upper classes" is techically more accurate than saying "privileged classes".
 * No 'upper classes' means the landed gentry, and although many landed gentry sent their sons to public school many did not, they were tutored at home. The intake in the public schools consisted many were were not upper class, and went into buisiness after school. (The upper classes do not involve themselves in 'trade') Mintguy (T) 18:24, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * "The apocryphal tale of William Webb Ellis handling the ball is dated 1823, but there is no certainty that this actually happened, or that handling was not allowed at Rugby School before that time." Well there are two problems with this. First apocryphal means there is no certainty that it happened, so the first part is a tautology, whilst the second part makes no sense. The rules in public schools were fluid (this is such a fundamental point to ALL football games before the FA). I draw you attention to which has an interesting analysis of the myth.


 * I don't have a problem with what you're saying, I merely moved the passage to a place where I thought it made more sense.
 * Sure but you also added the qualifications mentioned above.
 * "Apocryphal tale" was not my phrase. Considering the content of the link you provided, perhaps Webb Ellis deserves more respect.
 * No, it was mine, but you added the second and third clauses. I don't understand how you draw this conclusion about Webb Ellis. It certainly isn't the conclusion found on that site.


 * The Sheffield rules. The Cambridge rules and rules adopted by the FA in 1863 allowed charging (it's not explicit in the FA rules but it's not disallowed, the November draft ,which includign the hackign rule, was more explict on this issue), it is not particularly significant that the Sheffield Rules also had this. Indeed in modern association football you can still make a fair shoulder charge. We know for certain the by 1866 Sheffield had an offside rule. There may be evidence that I'm not aware of that they used an offside rule earlier. This needs more investigation, but I'm of the opinion that this aberration of the lack of offside is insignificant in the grand scheme of things, as these rules were only used in the Sheffield area and for a period of less than 9 years. In all, this paragraph needs to clarify the fact that by 1866 the only significant difference between Sheffield's rules and the FA rules was that the FA had a 3 man offside rule and that Sheffield had a one man rule. It should also say that by 1878 Sheffield were using FA rules.


 * Why should it say these things, unless one wants to demonstrate the obvious, that the FA game eventually ruled supreme in England? To me the hisorical significanace of the Sheffield Rules of 1857 is that they were different.
 * Different and followed by few and not for long, this is my point.


 * On the other side of the world, Australian Rules Football was first devised at Melbourne during 1858. I'm really unhappy with this phrase. There is no evidence that any game played before the May 1859 rules were drawn up, bore any resemblance to Aussie rules. Indeed the evidence suggests that it almost certainly didn't. The goals in the Richmond Paddock game were a mile apart. This sounds more like mob-football to me. As I pointed out on the talk:football page I'm of the opinion this doesn't mark any kind of watershed. The only real significance is that Tom Wills was involved. I would be interested if you could find out more information on a particular fact though. Wills wrote to Bells Life magazine in August 1858 suggesting the formation of football clubs. What precisely did he have to say?


 * No, the goals were a mile apart in the red herring game between Melbourne Grammar and Scotch College a week later. While no one knows what they did in the Richmond Paddock, Wills was clearly the driving force behind Australian Rules, wherever he got his ideas from. His letter to Bell's Life doesn't shed any light on his ideas about the rules. I'm not hung up on the wording here, as long as it makes clear that Wills started working on his game in 1858 and the first official rules were written in 1859.
 * I'm obviously confusing two matches here.


 * There were six meetings of the FA in all. Your changes make it sound like there were six meetings after the initial meeting. The Cambridge Rules suddenly appeared out of the blue at the fourth meeting (the minutes are in the History of the FA book and make interesting reading), thus "produced" seemed an appropriate verb to use.
 * I'm fine with that. As long as it's clear, which is what I was I aiming at.


 * There's no reference to a "touchdown" in the FA rules. See rule 7 below. Notice that rule 4 refers to knocking on and that there is no rule specifically banning touching the ball with the hands. BTW I've taken this from History of the Football Association (1951). The rules appear to have been incorrectly transcribed on a number of websites.


 * Regardless of the exact wording of the rules, the term "touch-down" was clearly in widespread use at the time (see e.g. ) in relation to this exact kind of play. The soccer historians use it and they had no reason to drag the term in from Rugby or American football. So why not use it? Grant65 17:44, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * The Cambridge rules say "touched-down", the FA rules do not. The rule says that the player has to touch the ball beyond the goal line in some way. It's not clear whether they mean hand or foot or either. I think either but perhaps I am wrong. The word touchdown implies, and conjoures up an image of American football or rugby which may not neccesarily be how it was. Mintguy (T) 18:24, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I've saved the 1863 FA Rules on my PC and deleted them here, as we weren't disagreeing on their content, merely their interpretation.

"Upper classes". I'm not convinced that in contemporary usage it means "landed gentry". I think you have to bear in mind non-British usage here; since the settler colonies had some large landowners but did not have a landed gentry per se, a term like "upper classes" would be understood in the US or Australia, in local terms, i.e. as meaning the haute bourgeoisie.

The first FA meetings. I don't think it's right for the the text to say: "The decision had to be made whether to favour a handling game or a kicking game." No such decision had to be made. They were coming up a compromise of different games, some "kicking" and some "handling", and the result was a game which was more kicking but still included elements of the handling game.

Webb Ellis. With the benefit of a few hours sleep, I think you're essentially right about this.

Charging. A "fair shoulder charge" is not the same as charging, which implies significant contact. As you say, this was not banned by the 1863 rules, which suggests to me that soccer was initially more of a contact sport. (In fact, a few years ago reckless charging and contact, without a clear intent to get the ball, was banned in Aussie Rules and anyone found guilty is suspended and fined.) I think it needs to be mentioned in the par on the Cambridge rules as well.

Sheffield's offside rule. If you can find out more about this and include it, that would be great. I think a full, succint and precise discussion of the Sheffield rules, and their demise, is important to the Football page.

Wills/1858. I think the fact that the Melbourne F.C. rules of 1859 appear to have been arrived at in one meeting, in the middle of the 1859 football season (probably March-September) suggests that either the others involved acceded to a code that Wills had already devised and/or they formalised rules that were already in use. Given Wills' central role, I think his efforts in 1858 need to be dealt with, if only because they are invariably mentioned in other accounts of the development of Aussie Rules.

Touch-down. As you say, this is a part of the Cambridge rules, so it should be mentioned there at least. I tend to think as well that the idea of "touching" with the foot is nonsense, as this suggests dribbling the ball over the end line. It seems to me that there was an unavoidable similarity, if only in this aspect of the early FA game, to rugby and American football.

In general, I'm uncomfortable about undertones on the page at present that the eventual form and rise of soccer were inevitable, when they weren't. If the FA had been formed at an earlier or later date, soccer may have been a quite different game. Grant65 04:21, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Handling does not imply no kicking, similarly - kicking does not imply no handling. These terms are describing whether or not you can run whilst carrying the ball. "Carrying" was favoured by Rugby school and a few others but not by the majority of clubs represented at the first FA meetings.

Dribbling the ball over the goal line - It seems to me this is precisely what the laws allow. Kick the ball over the line and touch once it is over that line or dribble the ball over the goal line and you got a free kick some yards out but you weren't allowed to kick directly at the goal. Once the clubs that favoured the rugby rules had left the association the FA decided to scrap this concept altogether. The 1869 revision says "When the ball is kicked behind the goal-line it must be kicked off by the side behind whose goal it went within six yards from the limit of their goal. The side who thus kick the ball is entitled to a fair kick-off in whatever way they please without any obstruction – the side opposite not being able to approach within six yards of the ball." – Note that you could kick the ball behind your own goal line to get such a free kick.
 * Looking at the 1863 rules again I realise that I misread the rule. The after touching the ball behind the opponents goal line the free kick MUST be at the goal. I was confused because as far as I was ware a direct free kick didn't become part of the game until much later. Mintguy (T) 12:01, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Charging - Obviously a fair shoulder charge as it is interpreted in the modern game is the result of the watering down of the rules regarding charging. Football was a very much more physical game in the early games. Charging from behind was frowned upon though and various revisions to the FA rules in the late 19th century refer to charging from behind. The 1905 revision is very clear on charging though. Rule 9 says Charging is permissible but it must not be violent or dangerous. - So my point is that though the Sheffield Rules allowed charging, it is not particularly significant because the FA rules also allowed charging.

I'm sorry but you are wrong. To imply that everybody who attended public school was upper class is frankly ludicrous. You cannot possibly say that William Webb Ellis, Thomas Hughes, A. A. Milne, Stanley Baldwin or even your Tom Wills (born of convict stock) were upper class. They were part of the emerging middle classes. I was using the term privileged classes to refer to those other than the working class. Perhaps the whole phrase should be changed.
 * I think it should be changed, for two reasons: (1) To most readers, around the world, the term "privileged class", is virtually indishinguishable from "upper class". (2) Although the public schools handed out some scholarships, they were intended mainly for sons of the aristocracy and the wealthy, and those classes would have made up an overwhelming majority of the students. Given the rate of illiteracy at the time, there would have been few, if any, genuinely working class boys among them. And no doubt there were were some ex-public school boys who did not do well after they left school, but the intention of sending them to public schools was to turn them into members of the elite, wasn't it? (BTW, being of "convict stock" was not unusual in Australia before the goldrushes of 1851. A majority of the white population probably were children or grandchildren, as in Wills' case, of convicts, although they certainly didn't advertise the fact. In the unusual conditions of the early 19th Century, convicts could do very well for themselves and Wills was a member of the local elite, the "squatter" class. Grant65 04:30, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

If the tone of the article is suggesting that Association Football in its current form was inevitable from the first meeting of the FA, then I agree this is wrong. The first draft of the FA laws including running with the ball and hacking, they were printed up and published as draft rules after the third meeting. At the fourth meeting, the Cambridge rules were brought to the table and a motion was proposed that the Cambridge rules (with no reference to carrying or hacking) be adopted with minor modification. Blackheath objected but the motion was carried by the majority. :Mintguy (T) 11:54, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

(I thought I'd posted this here as well, so I've copied it from the Aussie Rules talk page, with Mintguy's last post there as well.)


 * I just had another look at Blainey's A Game of Our Own (1990; there is a 2003 edition, which I haven't seen yet), and Rob Hess & Bob Stewart's More Than A Game (1998). The latter book provides a few more details: they say that "a rugby ball" was used in the experimental game on July 31, 1858; that people of various backgrounds were involved, and; that rules were supposed to have been formulated afterwards, although these have not survived.


 * Hess & Stewart barely mention the Melbourne Grammar v. Scotch College match on August 7. Blainey is a prolific promoter of that game (cynics might say because of his own background), but he doesn't discuss the rules either. (However, it is known that Wills did umpire that game.)


 * Re. the other drafters of the 1859 rules, Hess & Stewart say that, like Wills, Hammersley and Thompson were ex-Cambridge University, and Smith was Irish and had attended Trinity College in Dublin. (There are some similarities between the Cambridge rules and Aussie rules, see Football#The Establishment of Modern Codes of Football.) Hess & Stewart say Harrison was not involved. They also cite a letter to a Melbourne newspaper in 1864, suggesting that the English Football Association rules of 1863 had been by influenced by the Melbourne FC rules! Grant65 10:28, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * Grant. You've just reminded me of something with that last sentence. Some time ago I tried to find out about early proponents of Association football in Australia but I found virtually no information about this. I did find out that early bodies subscribing to the FA rules included the Southern British Football Association in New South Wales, the Anglo-Australian Football Association in Victoria and the British Football Associations of Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania. But I couldn't find any dates relating to the establishment and/or demise of these organisations. Mintguy (T) 10:56, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't know at the moment. If it's not on the web, I can't help until I get to the library again, which may be a while.

BTW: while looking up Thomas Smith of Melbourne FC, I discovered that a Dublin University (i.e. Trinity College) FC was founded in 1854, which makes it older than Sheffield FC.


 * If that is correct it is significant, but the point about Sheffield is that it wasn't connected to a University or School. Cambridge had already been esablished remember.

And another significant point is that DUFC also appears to have been playing a rugby-type game from an early stage (a new book by Trevor West (2003) Dublin University Football Club, 1854–2004: 150 years of Trinity Rugby may be useful on this point).

So there was significant expertise in the Rugby and Cambridge games among the authors of Melbourne's 1859 rules, but this still doesn't shed light on the mysterious origins of the offside rule (another striking similarity to Gaelic, i.e. the need to bounce the ball while running, did not appear in the rules until 1866).


 * It is possible, but pure speculation, that some returnees from Australia to Ireland (of which I believe there were not an insignificant number) may have had some influence on the Irish game.

Actually, the Rugby School game appears to have been spreading long before there was an RFU, if you consider the case of the short-lived Guy's Hospital club (founded 1843), and references to Rugby rules being played at Oxford. So maybe the Football page is not doing justice to the Rugby School game at the moment(?) Grant65 13:13, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you're right. The thing about writing articles for Wikipedia is all approach it from our own perspective, with our own prejudices. It's only with you coming on the scene and being prepared to argue the toss over the accuracy and wording that has re-ignited my interest in the subject. Mintguy (T)

The Trinity College team was founded by RH Scott a former pupil of Rugby. Mintguy (T) 15:51, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I've found various references to written rules for various public schools including Rugby (1845) and Eton (1847) (several sites even suggest Eton (1815) but I think that is a confusion arisen from Wellington's statement about the playing fields of Eton), and others with unspecified dates some even quote what these rules said - (example), but nowhere have I been able to find these rules listed as they were written. Mintguy (T) 15:58, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I found a bit on Aussie soccer history. You have to remember the distance between the various colonial capitals meant that separate development took place in each of the six colonies, and sometimes of a regional basis (e.g. the Newcastle & District and Illawarra championships, presumably among British coal miners in those areas.) New South Wales seems to have had the first game and association, just ahead of Victoria.
 * "It's fair to assume that people were kicking a round ball on the Australian goldfields in the 1850s. However that was also when rugby was catching on in the northern colonies and Australian Rules was invented in the south. Association football was formalised in England in 1863, but by the time the first recorded soccer match in Australia was played in Sydney in 1880 (between the Wanderers and the Ring's [I think this should be King's] School), the jig was up. Successive waves of European migrants brought on-field finesse to the traditionally roughhouse British form of soccer, but they also ingrained it as a minority sport in the Anglo Australian sporting culture. Even by the first interstate ["intercolonial", technically] match between Victoria and NSW in 1883, the southern media compared it unfavourably to Aussie Rules." (That page has lots of links which I haven't investigated. See also .)

New South Wales federation founded 1882 as South British Football Soccer Association. Victoria federation founded 1884 as Anglo-Australian Football Association. Queensland federation founded 1889 as Queensland British Football Association. Western Australian Soccer Football Association from 1896. South Australia Federation founded 1902 as South Australian British Football Association. Tasmanian Football Association probably 1912.,, and 

The first champion clubs in each competition appear to have been:
 * Victoria 1884 Richmond
 * Sydney (Badge Series) 1885 Caledonians
 * Sydney (Rainsford Trophy) 1885 Granville
 * Newcastle and District(NSW) 1886 Minmi Rangers
 * Illawarra (NSW) 1880s? ? ?
 * Queensland 1893 Rosebank
 * WA 1896 Fremantle Wanderers
 * SA 1903 South Adelaide
 * Tasmania 1912 St. George

(I'm not sure if any of these clubs still survive.) Grant65 04:26, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The oldest surviving club appears to be Balgownie Rangers (1883), the fifth actually formed. It now competes in the regional Illawarra Premier League.

There is also an interesting article on the development of soccer clubs in NSW, local rules and the style of play.

And a uni lecture outline.

By the way, how do I include the "talk" link?

Grant65 05:27, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Go to your preferences and change your sig. For you the sig will automatically put "" at the beginning and "" at the end. You put in the middle bit. I put "Mintguy]] (T)" in mine to get my talk page under (T), but most people who use this feature put "talk" or something else instead of T. [[User:Mintguy|Mintguy (T) 09:17, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. I can't find anything about the foundation of the Cambridge club, do you know anything about this? Should we assume that it was formed at the same time as the rules? Were there earlier university football clubs? Grant65 (Talk)]] 10:39, Mar 15, 2004 (UTC)

It's still not coming up properly. Grant65 (Talk) 10:47, Mar 15, 2004 (UTC)

Now? Grant65 (Talk) 11:09, Mar 15, 2004 (UTC)

One last try. Grant65 (Talk) 11:32, Mar 15, 2004 (UTC)

Lol... replace whatever you've got with this...


 * Grant65]][[User talk: Grant65|(Talk)

Thring and his pal de Winton formed a club with old Etonians at Cambridge in 1846, but they apparently played few games. More interest in the sport was achieved in 1848 as we know. Re: Other University teams... I don't know. I read somewhere that Oxford banned football and later on Rugby became the more popular sport there. Also remember that in the 19th century university education was open to very few. The third university in England was UCL which was only given its charter in 1836. BTW Guy's Hospital is a teaching hospital, so perhaps that counts as a university in this context. The club was formed by students. It think it's impossible to say what kind of game those students played if carrying the ball had only become accepted a few years before at Rugby. I'm of the opinion that the rules at these schools would have changed from day to day. Mintguy (T)

Thanks for the tech tip. I think one could argue that university clubs are "independent" in a way in which school teams are not, and the Melbourne University Football Club was in the Victorian Football League in 1908-15 (it performed poorly because of its limited "talent base"). However, clubs like Sheffield and Melbourne are obviously different and need to be recognised as such.

I don't see that the Guy's club was any different, in principle, to a team attached to a particular factory or other workplace, as some semi-professional clubs in various codes still are. While it would have been amateur, any club formed at that time would have been.

Also, the relationship between Rugby School and the Guy's club appears to be so definite that, regardless of the vagaries of the rules at the time, it is relevant to relate the club to the Rugby tradition. Grant65(Talk) 01:47, Mar 17, 2004 (UTC)

Don't forget that the people who drew up the Cambridge rules included old Rugbeians. The games people played and called rugby football were still uncodified and varied considerably. I recently remembered that I've got a book called The Code Wars about this subject, which has some useful info to add about the early rivalry of these games, but I don't really have to to add it at the moment, maybe the weekend. Some clubs played rugby and association rules on alternative weeks. It's interesting to see that after professionalism came into the association game a number of clubs that had formerly been usings rugby rules switched to the association game because they found the they got larger attendences for games where the quality of play was of ahigh standard; but there are also instances of the reverse happening when local interest for the rugby game was stronger than for association football. Mintguy (T) 11:36, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I take the point about clubs switching codes rapidly. (Individuals still do it: the cricketer Geoff Lawson claimed that as a teenager in southern new South Wales, he played Aussie Rules, Rugby League and Union every weekend!) By the same token don't forget that Cambridge rules were a new game altogether, a compromise between the rules of several schools, whereas only Rugby seems to be mentioned in connection with Guy's. BTW in realtion to the football (soccer)page; I did a fair bit of digging on the early US game and a lot of the dates, names and some historical details were wrong. See what you think of my changes. Grant65 (Talk) 03:31, Mar 18, 2004 (UTC)

I think the game between Louth and Meath in 1712 needs some re-wording; my impression is that no one knows what the rules were like, and the comparison with "unruly English games" may tread on Irish toes.

The description of the classes who attended public schools is better now, although it strikes me as a little wordy. What if it just said "upper and middle class"?

Overall though, I think Football is becoming an exemplary page. Grant65 (Talk) 04:16, Mar 18, 2004 (UTC)

Re: Louth-Meath, yeah I reworded that many times and am still not happy with it. I want to try to get across that the parish games played in Ireland were similar to the games played in England, i.e. unlimited players, without boundaries played through the streets and towns and very much rough-house type games. Davin (who wrote the GAA Gaelic Football rules) was apparently appalled by the level of violence that the uncoded form of football included. BTW My parents are Irish, there's no intended anti-Irish sentiment in my writings, I'm trying to be fair. You frquently get Irish people bragging that Irish football is older than "soccer", without really understanding what was going on with football at the time. I agree BTW about the article really looking up. I liked your most recent additions. Someone has suggested to me that it become a featured article, but it would be nice to get some good pictures in the article first. Mintguy (T)