{"id":3699,"date":"2021-07-17T19:04:04","date_gmt":"2021-07-17T18:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=3699"},"modified":"2021-07-24T21:33:46","modified_gmt":"2021-07-24T20:33:46","slug":"the-first-rules-the-lost-rouge-and-the-making-of-the-modern-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=3699","title":{"rendered":"The First Rules, the Lost Rouge and the Making of The Modern Game"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color:#fff;display:inline-block;font-family:Roboto,sans-serif;color:#a7a7a7;font-size:11px;width:100%;max-width:594px;\"><div style=\"padding:0;margin:0;text-align:left;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.co.uk\/detail\/79050482\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;\" rel=\"noopener\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div><div style=\"overflow:hidden;position:relative;height:0;padding:66.16161% 0 0 0;width:100%;\"><iframe src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/79050482?et=dKM4M1qST8Ras8kt0ueCDw&amp;tld=co.uk&amp;sig=rCvxGqfo0zNPEzfQK4JnYQ6L6CK_sD4QvvANyTZuoq0=&amp;caption=true&amp;ver=1\" scrolling=\"no\" style=\"display:inline-block;position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;margin:0;\" width=\"594\" height=\"393\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>As promised in the preview of our league game at Sheffield United last season, here are some summer ramblings on the early laws of the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By way of disclosure, there is not much Arsenal in this as it covers the three decades before the club was founded. Still, I hope it will give a sense of how football got to where it was when Dial Square played its first game in December 1886 and why that game was at least a rudimentary approximation of the modern game and not more like rugby or Aussie rules or American football, with all of which it shares a common root.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That common root was a mob game in which one team propelled a ball towards a goal by any bodily means possible, and the other used any physical means available to stop them. It was no-holds-barred and brutal. By the first half of the nineteenth century, it had become more organised as a game \u2014 Victorians were great organisers and rule givers \u2014 but there were still many local variants and all looked like a very violent game of rugby. Not for the faint of heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By the 1850s, the existential divide was whether football was primarily a game played with the hands or the feet (it was all still football because it was played on foot). The acid test was not whether a player could handle the ball at all but whether he could run with it in hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Sheffield rules<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 1858, the world\u2019s first football club, Sheffield FC, codified a set of rules that both pushed the game decisively in the direction of kicking, dribbling and passing \u2014 football \u2014 as opposed to running with the ball and scrimmaging \u2014 rugby \u2014 and which, more importantly, stuck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There had been some earlier attempts by the old boys of English public schools who had wound up at some educational institution in East Anglia to unify the rules they had played by as schoolboys. They were all short-lived (the attempts, not the schoolboys). Each generation came up with new ones.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It would not be until five years after the first Sheffield rules were published that a lasting set of Cambridge rules would appear. By then, the Sheffield rules had been widely adopted across the north of England and the Midlands, where football was taking root as the people&#8217;s game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Cambridge rules significance is that they would provide the basis of the laws of the game published by the fledgling Football Association founded the same year, 1863. For the next decade and a half, the two codes would haltingly converge, with the FA progressively adopting Sheffield innovations such as corner kicks, free kicks for fouls and the indirect free kick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By 1877, the codes had become all but identical. That year, after one final flare-up over what to do after a ball went into touch (should it be kicked in or thrown in?), the Sheffield Football Association formally adopted the FA\u2019s laws and dropped its own. In the process, football had taken a form we recognise in the modern game. What became rugby football and the far-flung global variants had gone their separate ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Time travel<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If we were to time travel to the mid-19th century to watch a match under Sheffield rules, one of the first things that would strike us is how much handling there still was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Under Sheffield rules, any player could hit or push the ball with their hand and make a \u2018fair catch\u2019 of a ball kicked high, just as in rugby or American football today. The catcher then got a free-kick, although he could not score from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As an indication of how contentious handling the ball was and the innate understanding that it was the critical distinction between football and rugby, \u2019knocking or pushing on the ball\u2019 was outlawed in the initial draft of the first Sheffield rules. Yet, it made its way back into the final version, which just disbarred \u2018holding\u201d the ball save for a fair catch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Perversely, the first draft of the FA\u2019s first rules, published in 1863, permitted similar handling. However, it was cut from the final draft after a fierce argument that led to Blackheath withdrawing from the FA and going off to be a famous rugby club. Blackheath also objected to the FA\u2019s softness in outlawing tripping and hauling opponents to the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Within a couple of years, the Sheffield rules also banned any ball-handling apart from fair catches. In 1866, the fair catch was temporarily abolished, leading to heading &#8212; another Sheffield innovation. It was restored in 1868, but the following year restricted to players within 3 yards of goal and eventually to the defender nearest the goal (1875). The following year, only a designated defender could catch the ball, and thus the goalkeeper was invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Before goalkeepers, the standard formation was a pack of five to eight attackers attempting to dribble, and increasingly, pass through the opposition. One would be a goal hanger as there was no offside until 1862, and after that, there just needed to be one opponent level or closer to the goal line. The FA had a stricter offside rule requiring three defenders. A full-back or two would cover the goal hanger. A half back rounded out the eleven. Another Sheffield innovation was to standardise eleven-men teams when Sheffield FC declared it would only play 11 v 11 games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Kick-ins<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A second thing we might notice is the scramble for the ball when it went into touch. The first team to put a hand on the ball got to take the throw-in (now you know how the touchline got its name). Similar to a modern rugby line-out, the ball had to be thrown in one-handed at right angles to the touchline but had to bounce at least six yards in before it could be played.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Awarding the throw-in against the team that kicked the ball out came in 1867. The following year, the throw became a kick and could be made in any direction. It reverted to a throw but kept the in-any-direction \u2014 the compromise that settled the row that threatened to scuttle the universal adoption of the FA laws in 1877.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Narrow goals<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A third thing we might notice is the odd shape of the goals \u2014 only half as wide as today\u2019s goals but a foot higher, dimensions formalised in 1862. A further four yards from each \u2018goal stick\u2019 (yet to be rebranded as posts; the first mention of a goal post is in the 1867 rules, which also still refer to the crossbar as a tape) was what looked like a corner flag, except it would be another six years before corner kicks were invented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Which brings us to football\u2019s lost rouge.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Old Etonians in the bar \u2014 a group that appears to keep a low profile in rightful deference to our egalitarian tenor \u2014 will recognise the rouge from their college\u2019s eponymous Field Game. A rouge was scored when a player from the attacking team did not score a goal but touched the ball down behind the goal-line, somewhat similar to a try in rugby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the Field Game, the ball could cross the line at any distance from the goal. Under Sheffield rules, it had to do so between the two rouge flags positioned 4 yards on either side of the goal. Australian \u2018holics will recognise the precursors of the behind posts in Aussie rules, which in South Australia are apparently still painted red.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After a rouge was scored, the two teams lined up in front of the goal like an unjoined rugby scrum. The defenders, who started out 2 yards in front of their goal, had to dribble the ball through the opposed attacking pack into open play. If the opposition was strong, the defence could be pushed back in the scrummage through their own goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The short-lived 1866 amendment to the Sheffield rules banning all handling led to a rouge no longer requiring a touchdown. The ball just had to be kicked between the rouge flags below the height of the top of the goalposts. Rouges were used as a tiebreaker if the score in goals was level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sheffield abolished the rouge in 1868 as the FA was steadfast in its refusal to adopt it. It also adopted the FA\u2019s standard of an eight yard-wide goal that year, even though the height remained at nine feet for another seven years, the crossbar not being lowered to eight feet until 1875.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Defensive corners<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1868 also saw another innovation that the FA would adopt, corner kicks. Under Sheffield rules, if a ball went over the bar, it resulted in a \u2018kick out\u2019 by the defending team from up to 10 yards out (25 yards out up to 1861) regardless of who last touched the ball. Otherwise, what today would be given as a corner kick would result in a free kick for the attacking side from the the corner flag, but what would now be given as a goal kick would be a free kick from the corner by the defending side. Defensive corners disappeared in the 1877 unification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At this point, we are still eleven years off our club\u2019s founding, but the game had become recognisably football. Yet there were still two umpires on the pitch, signalling with handkerchiefs, much as American football officials still drop \u2018flags\u2019. A whistle would first be used in 1878. The umpires would not become linesmen, and the referee move onto the field of play until the by-then Royal Arsenal had been playing for three years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The same year (1891), penalties were introduced, although pitches did not have penalty areas until 1902, by when we had been in the Football League for eight years. Goalkeepers were not restricted to handling the ball in their newly designated penalty areas until 1912. Previously they could handle the ball anywhere in their own half.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The change to that law was reputedly made to deal with Leigh Roose, a physically imposing Welshman who kept goal for Woolwich Arsenal for 13 games in the 1911-12 season. Roose would bounce the ball out from the goal to the half way line to launch attacks, unceremoniously barging over any opponent in his way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But that\u2019s a story for another day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Embed from Getty Images As promised in the preview of our league game at Sheffield United last season, here are some summer ramblings on the early laws of the game. By way of disclosure, there is not much Arsenal in this as it covers the three decades before the club was founded. Still, I hope [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3699"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3699"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3706,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3699\/revisions\/3706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}