The International Journal of the History of Sport

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The Power Game: Continued Reflections on the

Early Development of Modern Football

Graham Curry & Eric Dunning

To cite this article: Graham Curry & Eric Dunning (2016) The Power Game: Continued
Reflections on the Early Development of Modern Football, The International Journal of the
History of Sport, 33:3, 239-250, DOI: 10.1080/09523367.2016.1179634

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09523367.2016.1179634

Published online: 06 May 2016.

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Download by: [University of Nebraska, Lincoln] Date: 27 May 2016, At: 09:03
 The International Journal of the History of Sport, 2016
VOL, 33, NO. 3, 239250
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09523367.2016.1179634

The Power Game: Continued Reflections on the Early

Development of Modern Football
Graham Currya and Eric Dunningb
a
Physical Education Department, Tuxford Academy, Nottinghamshire, UK; bDepartment of Sociology,
University of Leicester, Leicester, UK
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ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

In this paper the authors seek to continue the debate on the Received 13 August 2015
development of modern football. They note the support offered by Accepted 2 April 2016
Tony Collins to the long-standing reservations of Graham Curry and
Eric Dunning regarding the weaknesses of the revisionist case, which KEYWORDS
Football; public schools;
has sought to lessen the influence of public schoolboys on the games Sheffield; Eton; Rugby
early years. The authors do, however, offer some correctives to Collinss
thoughts, particularly in terms of the complex Sheffield footballing
subculture. Curry and Dunning support the need for more research
based on local studies and attempt to gather together current
thinking in this area.

The debate over the early development of football1 began in 2001 with the publication of
Eric Dunnings article, Something of a Curates Egg: Comments on Adrian Harveys An
Epoch in the Annals of National Sport, as a response to Adrian Harveys An Epoch in
the Annals of National Sport: Football in Sheffield and the Creation of Modern Soccer
and Rugby.2 This discussion represented the split between, on the one hand, what has been
termed the orthodox view of footballs development and, on the other, the revisionist
stance. In short, the former, promoted by Graham Curry and Dunning,3 stresses the power
of pupils at the major public schools, whilst the latter, endorsed by John Goulstone, Harvey
and, latterly Peter Swain, places emphasis on a working-class footballing subculture based
mainly on gambling and linked to public houses. Whilst there has been much disagreement,
the debate has led to the unearthing of an increasing amount of undiscovered data on the
game. Views have been expressed in a lively fashion and the latest contribution has been
written by Tony Collins and appears to represent an interesting twist. Indeed, much of
what Collins has said is largely in agreement with our comments on the lack of revisionist
evidence and the misinterpretation of the data, suggesting that an increasing number of
football historians are continuing to question revisionist perspectives. We would temper this
by accepting that Collins is perhaps still somewhat in disagreement as much with ourselves
as he is with the revisionists. However, let us begin by noting the areas where Collins has
supported our interpretations.

CONTACT Graham Curry gcurry4156@sky.com

2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 240 G. Curry and E. Dunning

Curry and Dunning Vindicated

In the following section we will attempt to note areas of Collinss article which appear to
vindicate many of our previously stated views on the early development of modern football.
We will begin by addressing the lack of qualitative data presented in the revisionists case.

Paucity of Evidence
Collins notes that revisionist attempts to quantify the extent of the football culture that they
claim existed in the first decades of Victorian Britain have also proven to be problematic.4
We would support this statement and remind students of the debate that in The Problem
with Revisionism: How New Data on the Origins of Modern Football Have Led to Hasty
Conclusions we stressed this very fact, that the evidence presented by Goulstone, Harvey
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and, more recently, Swain is extremely sparse.5

Changes of Emphasis: Shifting the Axis

Unfortunately for the revisionists, particularly Swain, their championing of the evidence has
involved significant changes of emphasis Collins says shifting the axis6 in the face of
challenges to the sparse nature of their data. Originally, Harvey noted a thriving, organized,
football subculture outside the public schools based on gambling and public houses. This
proved to be a substantial exaggeration in that Harvey discovered only 28 such matches in
37years. Subsequently, Swain revealed a long list of prosecutions for playing football on the
Sabbath or infringing the Highways Act, illustrating the extent to which football was being
played in the wider community.7 Finally, in his pursuit of quantity rather than quality in
terms of data and in his anxiety to disprove assertions about a lack of meaningful activity,
Swain has revealed a lengthy list of games played as kickabouts by participants of minimal
influence.8 All three studies prove that the game was thriving more than conventional
football histories would have had us believe and that a strong element of cultural continuity
existed before modern footballs expansion from around 1860. The evidence presented by
Swain, however, because it merely identifies a long list of casual kickabouts, does not reflect
a level of influence in the subsequent organization of the game when compared to events in
the major public schools and at Cambridge University. Swains evidence might have been
better suited to a separate article related to the notion of cultural continuity rather than
being used as inconclusive padding for the revisionist hypothesis. As we argued in The
Problem with Revisionism, the interpretation of the proffered data by the revisionists fails
in its efforts to produce a convincing argument that the influence of the people involved
ever approached that of ex-public schoolboys and this, as well as a failure to understand and
accept the concept of power, leads one to believe that the revisionists have misunderstood
the crux of the argument.

Assumption of Further Evidence

In admonishing Swain for his assumption of the existence of undiscovered evidence, Collins
echoes Currys (2014) chastising of Harvey for his rather baleful wish that the possible
numbers of matches reflecting the revisionist position is anyones guess.9 Our guess would
be very few.
 The International Journal of the History of Sport 241

Lack of Qualitative Data

Although Collins correctly highlights the absurdity of linking Swains data on single event
football activity and modern soccer, we would prefer to characterize this as a symbol of
the minimal power that participants in such episodes would have exerted on the football
figuration. As Rob Lewis has suggested, Swains unbelievably inconsequential data are
nothing more than ad hoc arrangements by a publican seeking to increase his takings by
instigating a pub football match with some scanty organisation and likens these matches
to pig races, greasy pole climbing or ploughmen wrestling for a new smock.10 Let us now
move on to events in Sheffield.

Sheffield: The Football Association (FA), Rouges and Rules

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Collinss article appears to us to re-emphasize a good deal of our already well-documented

thoughts on the writings of the football revisionists. However, we feel bound to add one
or two correctives to his reflections on football in Sheffield in particular, as that area of
development is one of the most complex both in terms of narrative and analysis.
It seems fair to say that the influence of footballers in Sheffield on the national body
was substantially less than Goulstone and Harvey have suggested. Despite the latter
having contended that the football culture in Sheffield during the 1850s and 1860s was
largely responsible for creating the game we now call soccer,11 interaction between the
two bodies often appeared to indicate Sheffields subordinate position in relation to the
London association. This was particularly evident when, in the first FA minutes recording
the attendance of a Sheffield representative, Sheffield FCs secretary, William Chesterman
attempted but failed to amend four FA laws two concerning use of the rouge (a differential
scoring method designed to prevent goalless draws), one regarding offside and another
related to restricting the use of hands. All of Chestermans motions were defeated, but the
next three proposals, all put forward by C.W. Alcock representing the Wanderers Football
Club, were comfortably carried.12 It is surely also a reflection of Sheffields attitude that it
was they who joined the FA and not the other way around.
We are in agreement with Collins when he notes that public school influence in Sheffield
football was clearly evident with the inclusion of the rouge, a practice, at that time, peculiar to
the Eton Field Game. In fact, we have mentioned this in previous writings and are somewhat
surprised that others have not highlighted this obvious connection.13 However, we recognize
that because this information runs contrary to any argument emphasizing the lack of public
school presence within football in Sheffield, revisionist writers in particular appear to us to
have been especially reluctant to accentuate its presence and use. Additionally, although one
of the founders of Sheffield FC, Nathaniel Creswick, became jocular about public school
playing practices at the 50th anniversary dinner of Sheffield FC in 1907, there is no doubt
that footballers in the city had written to certain schools at that time and would, at the very
least, have been familiar with games at those institutions.14 More likely, in a figurational
sense, footballers in Sheffield are best seen as part of a chain of interdependencies existing at
that point and, more particularly, as an important part of the English football figuration. In
other words, footballers in the city would have been subjected to a multitude of influences
and it comes as no surprise that, having written to the public schools for their rules, they
were influenced by them. The adoption of the rouge is surely an indication of this.
 242 G. Curry and E. Dunning

Rules analysis is also a complex topic. The similarities which Collins identifies between
the Rugby School and Sheffield rules are interesting and beyond dispute. However, we think
it is important to be aware of the more general trends of disagreement between what were,
increasingly, two camps of footballers. Firstly, handling per se should not necessarily be seen
as the issue rather it was the amount of handling and, additionally carrying, as opposed
to the amount of kicking which is more central to the debate. Although the split at the fifth
meeting of the FA in 1863 ostensibly took place over hacking, the real difference was the
amount of handling and carrying involved. This is because we believe that hacking was not
as central to football at this stage as handling and carrying and its exclusion by the Rugby
Football Union in 1871 seems to indicate that the practice may not have been as important
to rugby participants as one might have imagined. In what was an increasingly civilized,
in Eliass sense, society, hackings eventual exclusion comes as no surprise to figurational
sociologists like us.
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In the past, Collins has written about the similarities between football forms at this
time. The evidence points to this being correct. However, and this we think is the crux,
we would suggest that there was a clearly defined difference between two well delineated
varieties of the game the handling and carrying type and that which stressed more use
of the feet which has, over time, grown more pronounced. This was not pre-conceived
or even inevitable; rather, the eventual creation of Association and Rugby Football was an
unintended consequence of a myriad of human actions. Yet handling remains a difficult
issue and elements of it were part of most if not all football games in mid-Victorian England.
What is certain is that football did not refer exclusively to a non-handling, kicking game.
Indeed, Association Football today still retains two examples, the throw in and the use of
hands by the goalkeeper in their own penalty area. One might also note that soccer has
continued to minimize handling over a long period of time. A good example of this is
the recent restriction on goalkeepers picking up a back pass or throw in, a law which was
introduced in 1992.15
To emphasize the position of Sheffields early footballers in relation to the use of hands, the
following points made by a correspondent to the Nottingham and Midland Counties Daily
Express discussing Sheffields stance in terms of rules is revealing. Part of it read as follows:
Striking the ball with the hand is prohibited ... The consequence ... is that dribbling is brought
to perfection. Carrying the ball is also prohibited, and, in point of fact, it is the aim of the
Sheffield clubs, as much as possible, to play the game of football, and the use of hands in any
way (except to obtain a free kick from a catch) is discouraged.16
Interestingly, although the writer repeatedly, and rightly, notes the reluctance of Sheffields
players to employ their hands, he nevertheless draws attention to the fact that, despite their
continued opposition to the practice, Sheffields game still included a modicum of handling
in the form of a fair catch.

Sheffield and Rugby

Let us first offer a degree of support for Harvey and Swain by admitting responsibility for
the claim that the first Sheffield rules can be described as markedly anti-Rugby in form. It
was Curry who wrote in 2007, with some justification, that this was his interpretation of
those initial laws. However, we do have some sympathy for Collins as, inexplicably, Harvey
and Swain quote but do not reference Curry as having been the author of this significant
 The International Journal of the History of Sport 243

comment.17 Indeed, Sheffield footballers were neither enamoured with unnecessary violence
nor happy with too much handling of the ball, as the following comparison between their
rules of 1858 and those of Rugby School in 1845 demonstrates. Four Sheffield rules did,
indeed, run contrary to Rugby playing practices:
(5)[P]ushing with the Hands is allowed but no Hacking (or tripping up) is fair under
any circumstances whatsoever.
(6)Holding the Ball, excepting the case of a free kick is altogether disallowed.
(7)No player may be held or pulled over.
(8)It is not lawful to take the Ball off the ground (except in touch) for any purpose
whatever.
Hacking is mentioned four times in the Rugby School rules of 1845 though each time the
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laws involved simply placing limitations on the act itself, the framers plainly believing that
the reader should be acquainted with the fact that hacking was an integral part of the game.
Use of hands is legitimized frequently, but it is, of course, possible to argue that handling
the ball was relatively common in all football games in the mid-nineteenth century, even
in Sheffields laws. However, the clear distinction between the two forms lies in Rugbys
Rule VIII which states, Running in is allowed to any player on his side, provided he does
not take the ball off the ground, or take it through touch. Carrying could, therefore, be
said to be the key.
Whilst there are indeed instances of Sheffield footballers being involved in rugby-like
games, they were decidedly of the opinion that the rugby form was inferior to the kicking
game because it accentuated physical force over skill. Basically they were not impressed by
it. Let us provide some evidence to support this hypothesis.
The most important comment, mainly because it was made at a relatively early point
in the modern games history, is that of the Sheffield FC secretary at the time, William
Chesterman. The following stinging rebuke of certain rugby playing practices was delivered
in a letter from Chesterman to the FA which was read out at the fifth meeting of that
organization on 1 December 1863. Reacting to Laws 9 and 10 of the first FA rules it read
as follows:
Nos. 9 and 10 (Running with ball and, amongst other robust, rugby-like actions, hacking) are,
I think, directly opposed to football, the latter especially being more like wrestling.I cannot
see any science in taking a run-kick at a player at the risk of laming [causing someone to walk
with a pronounced limp] him for life.
Further evidence comes from the 1870s when the people and newspaper columnists of
Sheffield expressed their reservations about the rival football code of rugby. Their objections
ranged from the recognition of dangerous aspects of the game for working adults to the
complicated nature of its many rules. The following three reports are examples of how
local journalists viewed the game when compared to the Sheffield rules. The first provides
an account of a game between Sheffield Garrick and Manchester Free Wanderers. It read
as follows:
The Manchester club played Rugby rules and it was arranged that each clubs rules should be
played on its opponents ground, so that a novelty was provided for all lovers of football in
Sheffield, the Rugby rules being played here for the first time. In about a weeks time three
distinct sets of rules have been exhibited in the town viz. The Sheffield Association, the Football
Association (London) and Rugby. With the merits or demerits of the two former codes our
 244 G. Curry and E. Dunning

football readers are doubtless cognisant, the two rules providing against the use of hands, and
making it foot-ball in the literal sense of the word. Penalties are also imposed for foul play such
as charging behind, hacking, tripping etc. and everything done to promote skill and judgment
in preference to brute force. In the rules played on Saturday, however, a marked contrast to this
is shown, as the heaviest and roughest side will invariably have the advantage ... Several cases of
deliberate hacking, or, in other words, kicking at an opponents shins as he is running with the
ball, did not convince either us or the spectators of the superiority of the Rugby over Association
rules. They are quite suitable for schoolboys, who are proverbially impervious to accident, but
we should have thought that adults would prefer a game with more skill and less roughing.18
The second formed part of a report on the match between Sheffield Football Club and
Hull, contested under rugby rules. It read as follows:
That the game is dangerous enough the spectators of Saturday can amply testify, as, when a
player obtains possession of the ball, the opponents who tackle him stand not upon the order
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of grassing him, but bring him down with a run at once. Manufacturers of jerseys should
support these rules, as whole ones are rather the exception than the rule after the match. The
attendance on Saturday would reach about 1800, and for a short time the spectators were
evidently amused with the scrimmages etc., but after a time little enthusiasm was aroused,
and when rain began to fall many left the scene of the action who would doubtless have stood
their ground had the association rules been in force. Many people are apt to ridicule what they
dont understand, but we imagine the association rules are in no danger of being set aside in
favour of Rugby. Although it appears such a rough and tumble affair, there are no less than
50 rules for the guidance of players.19
The final piece was part of general comment prefaced by a good deal of praise for the
local football association in setting up a challenge cup competition. Though not mentioning
the rugby game specifically, the reporter clearly noted his disdain, writing:
Chiefly through the instrumentality of its indefatigable officers, Sheffield now holds without
doubt the premier position among towns, although Nottingham, as in cricket, would prove a
very formidable antagonist. Still, at the Association game, we make bold to state that no other
town or city in the kingdom could vanquish twice successively a team of bona fide Sheffielders,
the opposing team to be likewise bona fide citizens of the place they profess to represent. Hull,
York, Bradford, Huddersfield and other Yorkshire towns have players possessing no mean
qualifications; but the rules played in these towns are not, as is well known, anything akin
to those adhered to by our own townsmen.The rough and tumble horseplay in which many
Yorkshiremen profess to find so much healthy exercise and invigoration is scarcely worthy
the name of football when compared with the Association game. The presence of danger in a
pastime assuredly gives excitement, but where a participant may be wilfully lamed, and the laws
of the game still remain inviolate, it is not too much to suggest that all good citizens, having the
well being of their fellow men at heart, should cease to patronise [sic] such relics of barbarism.20

Sheffield: Penistone and Thurlstone

The vast majority of Collinss article is well written and thought provoking. However, he
is badly informed regarding the thriving footballing subculture of the South Yorkshire
villages of Penistone and Thurlstone, which lie approximately 15 miles north of Sheffield,
towards Barnsley. When questioning Goulstones assertion that a geographic component
of cultural continuity may have existed which influenced the development of the game in
and around Sheffield, Collins notes that No team from Penistone appears to have played
football in Sheffield during the period of the Sheffield FA.21 As an isolated fact, this may
 The International Journal of the History of Sport 245

be true. However, Collins is surprisingly unaware of the incredibly significant part that
individuals from that area played in Sheffield footballs story.
Penistone and Thurlstone produced three extremely important personalities who were
strong influences on Sheffield football. They were John Marsh, John Dransfield, and John
Charles Shaw. Marsh became one of the founders of the Wednesday Football Club
forerunners of the present-day Sheffield Wednesday when it began life on 4 September
1867. He was elected as secretary and captain at the first meeting and remained a prominent
member for some years. He captained the Sheffield Association team in the encounters with
London in 1871 and Glasgow in 1874, leading them through perhaps their most successful
era. Returning to his native village in 1874, he took charge of the Crystal Palace Inn that had
formerly been run by his mother, Elizabeth, though he also persevered with his previous
trade as an engraver. He continued to play football and became secretary and captain of
the local club, which usually played under the title, Thurlstone Crystal Palace. However,
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on Saturday 26 February 1876, he suffered a fall during a match against Fir Vale, resulting
in a broken arm which never fully mended. Despite travelling to London to have the break
re-bound, he appears to have slipped into depression because of his injury and died on
21 April 1880, aged 37. Marshs connections to his native village may provide a clue to the
origins of Sheffields playing preferences and early rules in that such a prominent participant
would almost certainly have made the citys footballers aware of the style and intricacies
involved in the game in Penistone and Thurlstone.
Goulstone, in his pamphlet entitled Footballs Secret History,22 notes a great deal of
football-related activity around Penistone and Thurlstone and mentions a William Marsh
possibly a relation of Johns as an organizer of a match in 1844 which had links to
the Horns Tavern in the former village. The Sheffield Trades Directory of 1852 listed the
inn as being in the charge of Abel Marsh, probably another relative. Significantly for the
development of the game in Sheffield, a reference for 1845 notes more Thurlstone men as
issuing a challenge to the same number from Southouse or Hepworth for a match in which
they were insistent they would play a game of foot-ball, and not hand-ball.23 Did the men
of Thurlstone know the difference between the already diverging forms when they stressed
that they wanted to play foot-ball and not hand-ball in a forthcoming match? Should we
accept this remark as an indication that the game of football had already split into kicking
and handling forms, or was this simply a description of two distinct folk forms played with
a ball? We have previously argued that the term football dates in England from at least
1314 when it was used to refer to a class of loosely regulated folk-games which included
handling and throwing as well as kicking.24 However, despite this hypothesis being an
isolated example of the games divergence, the possibility remains that, by 1845, in the eyes
of the Thurlstone men at least, there was already a clear distinction between those two
varieties with the preferred playing style of the area being a predominantly kicking game.
John Dransfield wrote A History of the Parish of Penistone, in which he hinted at the rich
past of the game in the area in and around Penistone and Thurlstone. He quoted the diary of
reminiscences by Captain Adam Eyre of the Parliamentary Army in the English Civil War,
who noted that as early as April 1648 the game was being played there when Eyre and his
friend Captain Rich went to Bordhill to see a match played at football between Peniston
[sic] and Thurlston [sic].25 Dransfield also devoted a separate section in the book to Sheffield
Football Club of which he claimed to have been a member in the 18601861 season when
he resided in the city. However, the Sheffield club records for the years from 1857 to 1873,
 246 G. Curry and E. Dunning

which were meticulously kept, make only one mention of Dransfield, noting that he was a
member on 30 October 1865 but that he had left the city some years before 1867.
John Charles Shaw was born in Penistone in 1830 and, whilst being initially a member
of Sheffield FC he joined on 11 November 1858 is more renowned for being, along with
Thomas Vickers, one of the founders of Hallam Football Club, who played Sheffield in the
first inter-club match on 26 December 1860 at Hallams Sandygate ground. Shaw worked
in Dransfields fathers law firm as a clerk and was seemingly friendly with his employers
son. In a letter written in 1928 which is part of the records of Sheffield Football Club, the
aforementioned Dransfield, confirmed the links between the city and players from Penistone
and Thurlstone. He said, John Charles Shaw, a Penistone man ... was in my fathers office
at Penistone and regularly played football with other youths in one of my fathers fields
opposite the office ... They played with the old small ball.26 It is unclear what Dransfield
means by the old small ball, though he must have thought this significant.
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Dransfield, Shaw, and Marsh were all natives of that area and would have brought their
form of the game to the city, the latter two being even more influential than Dransfield. They
would almost certainly have made a contribution to the development of Sheffield football,
but would probably not have been as influential as such high status gentlemen such as
Creswick from Sheffield Collegiate School. The input of the men from Penistone/Thurlstone
confirmed rather than suggested a kicking game in the minds of Sheffield men. Clearly we
are not in possession of their personal conversations, but the positions of responsibility held
by, in particular, Shaw and Marsh within Sheffield football would at the least imply that
they would have been in a position to make others aware of their inclinations. In short, this
process can be identified as another possible avenue of football rules diffusion.

Concluding Remarks
At this point in the debate we would wish to make several further points. As has been
suggested in our title, in many ways the origins of football is an unfortunate name for this
debate. It creates the impression that writers are necessarily seeking a single starting point, an
origin myth with which to be able to isolate an exact date and, possibly, individual. We can
only speak for ourselves when we say that we are being wrongly represented if other writers
feel that we are seeking a false chimera, a specific point when football began.27 Rather we are
simply attempting to establish that there is evidence about the history and development of
football which, if properly interpreted, begins to allow one to form hypotheses regarding the
growth of the game and its eventual appearance in its modern form. Furthermore, despite
the general quality of Collinss article, there remains a feeling that, in rejecting both the
orthodox and the revisionist positions, he tells us much more about what early football was
not, but very little about what early football was.
The Sheffield footballing subculture was very important. However, our advice would be
to exercise prudence, restraint and, above all, detachment when dealing with this part of the
narrative and, without totally buckling under the weight of Londoncentricity, at least remain
objective when assessing Sheffields contribution. However, in failing to note or understand
the importance of the Penistone/Thurlstone axis of football influence, Collins is in danger of
misleading readers in their quest to interpret events in South Yorkshire and further afield.
An additional distortion of the debate has been the insistence, as Collins notes, by certain
academics and opinion formers in the print media to put working-class men at the heart
 The International Journal of the History of Sport 247

of the story of soccer.28 We feel that this calculated skewing of the evidence has unbalanced
recent deliberations, showing a distinct lack of detachment and producing a process full of
preconceived aims and objectives which has created, unsurprisingly, predictable outcomes.
Had these hasty assumptions not been challenged, then the vast majority of the football
history community would probably have been content to embrace the revisionist findings
with open arms.
It is becoming increasingly clear that footballs development was the direct result of
a multiple chain of interdependencies and human interactions.29 Indeed, one might say
that no key opens all doors in terms of the growth of the game often varying in each
city or region. Yet despite having accepted this, the most important key was the former
public schoolboy. Accordingly, it seems possible at this point to categorize the various
areas on which there have been detailed studies as regards which section of society was
the most influential in footballs growth in particular areas of the country. We classify
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these in Table 1.
It is our opinion, that prior to around 1830, football in England was already diverging,
unintentionally, into pre-Rugby (principally handling and carrying) and pre-Association
(principally kicking and dribbling) varieties. Indeed, it may be possible to speculate that
these types underlie the whole spectrum of folk-games such as camp-ball, bottle kicking
and hurling which appeared to exist under the blanket term of football. Yet, in issuing

Table 1. Major influences on the development of modern football in selected cities and regions in
England.
Area or city Major influence
Londona Mixed involvement. Only two of the attendees at the inaugural meeting of the FA had been
educated at a major public school. It is, however, important to be aware of the presence and
influence of a former public schoolboy in the shape of Old Harrovian, C.W. Alcock, who was the
most powerful man in the first three decades of the FAs existence
Sheffieldb A local sporting elite consisting primarily of ex-Sheffield Collegiate School pupils was important
Significance of nearby footballing enclave of Penistone/Thurlstone
Influence from the major public schools. Use of the rouge is evidence of this
Manchesterc Association form initiated and organized by lower middle class. Late development as an Association
Football centre. Early football in the city heavily influenced by an ex-Rugby School presence with
Manchester characterized as an important centre for the rugby code
Some public school influence at early club, Hulme Athenaeum, from Birley family who had attended
Winchester College
Lincolnshired Most clubs played games based on public school forms but there was significant input from local
Grammar Schools, showing evidence of a local sporting elite
North-easte Substantial support for the public school hypothesis. Paul Joannou and Alan Candlish cite the three
most important factors in the popularizing of the game in that region as being, firstly, diffusion
from Sheffield, secondly, cricket clubs using football as a winter activity and Thirdly, and probably
the biggest influence, was from the old boys of the countrys public schools and universitiesf
Nottinghamg Extremely strong public school presence, especially at Notts. County. Those who founded
Nottingham Forest were similar to the Sheffield model of a sporting elite educated locally
a
Curry and Dunning, Association Football, Chapter Five.
b
Ibid., Chapter Four.
c
Gary James and Dave Day, The Emergence of an Association Football Culture in Manchester 18401884, Sport in History 34,
no. 1 (2014), 4974; Gary James, Manchesters Footballing Pioneers, 18631904: A Collective Biography, The International
Journal of the History of Sport 32, no. 9 (2015), 11431159.
d
Ian Nannestad, From Sabbath Breakers to Respectable Sportsmen: The Development of Football in Lincolnshire circa 1855
to circa 1881 (MA thesis, De Montfort University, Leicester, 2003).
e
Paul Joannou and Alan Candlish, Pioneers of the North (Derby: Breedon Books, 2009).
f
Joannou and Candlish, Pioneers, 38.
g
Graham Curry and Eric Dunning, The Origins of Football Debate and the Early Development of the Game in
Nottinghamshire, Soccer and Society DOI:10.1080/14660970.2015.1067801; Darrin Foss, Notts. County FC and the Birth of
Modern Football (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013).
 248 G. Curry and E. Dunning

a challenge to play foot-ball not hand-ball, was there an accepted distinction between
the two forms in the minds of the Thurlstone men? Or, were they simply describing two
distinct folk-games played in and around their geographical area? Used in isolation, the
word foot-ball could mean a game played solely with the feet, one primarily utilizing the
feet or even one played on foot instead of on horseback. However, in employing the term
in conjunction with what might have been construed as an opposite, that is, hand-ball, one
is bound to consider the possibility that the people involved were attempting to distinguish
between the foot and the hand and their application in particular games.
One might think that, because of the relative ease in using the hand to control an object
as opposed to the difficulty presented by using ones foot, there would have been more of the
former than the latter. This turned out not to be the case because, as the game passed through
the public schools, diffused there by a wide cross section of boys familiar with a plethora of
different games, the vast majority of them preferred a kicking rather than a handling variety
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and, as it developed further in the universities, particularly Cambridge, this preference

was expressed quite clearly in the compromise rules devised in that institution. However,
and this we regard as our most central point, from the university phase onwards, perhaps
through until the 1870s, Old Etonians were the principal driving force. Old Etonians, the
representation of power and influence in all important aspects of mid-Victorian English
society, had fashioned the increasingly significant leisure activity of football to their
preference, including less violent acts and fewer instances of handling.30
We believe that a direct connection does exist between pre-industrial football and the
modern forms practised today. Indeed, it is relatively straightforward to illustrate this link.
Armed with ideas from their local village forms, the public schoolboys from, in particular,
Eton College who went on to attend Trinity College, Cambridge, were largely responsible
for the codification of the game at that university. Their successors were the people who
shaped the 1863 Cambridge laws which the FA employed as the template for their second
anti-rugby draft of the same year. This draft was part of the rapidly increasing bifurcation
between, on the one hand the kicking and dribbling form and, on the other, the handling
and carrying variety. Though one might not characterize this divergence as inexorable, it
did represent a fissure which has proved impossible to repair.

Notes
1.We have deliberately desisted from using a title including the phrase origins of football
debate and explain this further in our concluding remarks. Probably the earliest mention of
an origins debate comes in Matthew Taylors excellent summation in 2008. Matthew Taylor,
The Association Game: A History of British Football (Harlow: Pearson, 2008), 20. However,
John Goulstone hints at a chimera in his The Working-Class Origins of Modern Football,
The International Journal of the History of Sport 17, no. 1 (2000), 13543.
2.Eric Dunning, Something of a Curates Egg: Comments on Adrian Harveys An Epoch in the
Annals of National Sport, The International Journal of the History of Sport 18, no. 4 (2001),
8894; and Adrian Harvey, An Epoch in the Annals of National Sport: Football in Sheffield
and the Creation of Modern Soccer and Rugby, The International Journal of the History of
Sport 18, no. 4 (2001), 5387.
3.Tony Collins feels that Eric Dunnings writing has echoed Geoffrey Green presumably
Greens History of the Football Association (London: Naldrett Press, 1953). This is only
partially accurate. In conversation, Dunning considered Morris Marples A History of Football
(London: Secker and Warburg, 1954) to have been more significant.
 The International Journal of the History of Sport 249

4.Tony Collins, Early Football and the Emergence of Modern Soccer, c. 18401880, The
International Journal of the History of Sport 32, no. 9 (2015), 8.
5.Graham Curry and Eric Dunning, The Problem with Revisionism: How New Data on the
Origins of Modern Football Have Led to Hasty Conclusions, Soccer & Society 14, no. 4
(2013), 42945. We thank Tony Collins for his acknowledgement of this previously published
assertion.
6.Collins, Early Football, 8.
7.Peter Swain, The Origins of Football Debate: The Grander Design and the Involvement of
the Lower Classes, 18181840, Sport in History 34, no. 4 (2014), 51943.
8.Peter Swain, The Origins of Football Debate: The Continuing Demise of the Dominant
Paradigm, 18521856, The International Journal of the History of Sport 31, no. 17 (2014),
221229.
9.Graham Curry, The Origins of Football Debate: Comments on Adrian Harveys Historiography,
The International Journal of the History of Sport 31, no. 17 (2014), 3; and Adrian Harvey,
The Emergence of Football in the Nineteenth Century: The Historiographic Debate, The
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International Journal of the History of Sport 30, no. 18 (2013), 21612.

10.Robert W. Lewis, Innovation Not Invention: A Reply to Peter Swain Regarding the
Professionalisation of Association Football in England and its Diffusion, Sport in History 14,
no. 1 (2010), 477; and Curry and Dunning, The Problem with Revisionism, 4423.
11.Harvey, An Epoch in the Annals of National Sport, 53.
12.Football Association minutes, 12 February 1867.
13.Graham Curry, Playing for Money: James J. Lang and Emergent Soccer Professionalism in
Sheffield, Soccer and Society 5, no. 3 (2004), 337, 33655; and Graham Curry, Peter Goodman,
and Steve Hutton, Sheffield Football Club: Celebrating 150 Years of the Worlds Oldest Football
Club (Manchester: At Heart Publications, 2007), 1314.
14.Report of the 50th anniversary dinner of Sheffield FC in the Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 5
November 1907.
15.Theback-pass rulerefers to two sections of Law 12 of theLaws of the Game of Association
Football. These clauses prohibit thegoalkeeperfrom handling the ball when a teammate has
deliberately kicked the ball to him or directly from a teammates throw-in.
16.Nottingham and Midland Counties Daily Express, 2 February 1867. Italics and parentheses
as in the original.
17.Adrian Harvey and Peter Swain, On Bosworth Field or the Playing Fields of Eton and Rugby?
Who Really Invented Modern Football?, The International Journal of the History of Sport
29, no. 10 (2012), 1429.
18.Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 11 March 1872.
19.Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 6 March 1876.
20.Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 2 January 1877.
21.Collins, Early Football, 7.
22.John Goulstone, Footballs Secret History (Upminster: 3-2 Books, 2001).
23.Bells Life in London, 2 February 1845. Hepworth, is just six miles from Thurlstone. However,
the location of Southouse remains a mystery. It may have been the name of a dwelling in
Hepworth.
24.Graham Curry and Eric Dunning, Association Football: A Study in Figurational Sociology
(London: Routledge, 2015), 13.
25.Henry James Moorhouse, The Journal or Diary of Captain Adam Eyre, 1877.
26.Underlining as in the original.
27.Gavin Kitching, Old Football and the New Codes: Some Thoughts on the Origins of
Football Debate and Suggestions for Further Research, The International Journal of the
History of Sport 28, no. 13 (2011), 1739; Ian Syson, The Chimera of Origins: Association
Football in Australia before 1880, The International Journal of the History of Sport 30, no. 5
(2013), 45368; and Geoffrey Blainey, A Game of Our Own: The Origins of Australian Football
(Melbourne: Information Australia, 1990), 202.
28.Collins, Early Football, 2.
 250 G. Curry and E. Dunning

29.We have previously argued that footballs development should be seen as being influenced by
multiple interdependencies in Curry and Dunning, The Problem with Revisionism, 42945.
30.This process might be compared to events in North America where men from the prestigious
Harvard University moulded football to their liking in the United States. In so doing they
rejected the soccer-like variety espoused by the players of the first inter-collegiate football
game between Princeton and Rutgers, imposing their own Harvard game, which, influenced
by the Rugby form, championed more use of the hands. See Andrei Markovits and Steven L.
Hellerman, Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2001), 7172. Markovits and Hellerman are instructive in this regard but do not
specifically suggest Harvards wielding of social power and prestige in the development of
American Football.

Disclosure statement
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors
Graham Curry gained an MA in the Sociology of Sport at the University of Leicester and successfully
completed his PhD there in 2001. Since then, he has written widely on football.
Eric Dunningwas a pioneer in the sociology of sport and is the author of a number of books
and articles on sport and the figurational sociology of Norbert Elias.