The Culture Dish
About where the modern game, Association Football, Soccer, the game we know, started there is no question. It was England and the crucial dates of inception are 1862, with the invention of the India-rubber bladder, the core of the football as we know it to this day, and 1863, when forty-three men took part in London in a series of five meetings, the first of which was at the Freemasons' Tavern, on Great Queen's St. between Holborn and Drury Lane.
Quite how extraordinarily young those forty-three men were, is barely credible. With football today controlled by the old, the conservative, the self-interested, in 1863 the pioneers of football were of an altogether different ilk. They ranged in age from 16. Just two were in their early forties. One was in his early thirties and nineteen were teenagers. None would have a financial stake in the game. Their interest was strictly amateur; strictly for love. All were distinctly middle- or even upper-class and it would be their like, young men, often of the same background, who, initially at least, would begin the spread the pathogen that in time would infect all.
All the clubs were in London or near-London so amongst the young men there was an understandably strong bias towards Southern England. Of the thirty that were English just four were born north of the Trent. Eleven had been born overseas, two in France and the others were children of Empire with seven born in India; ironically, as it is one of the few countries where even today football is not the dominant sport. Four were Scottish by background, the eldest a mere 22, the youngest just 17, two of them born north of the border. One was similarly Swiss. Ten of them would die abroad, the contagion within. They came from a rump of thirteen clubs and schools in and around London, their ideas for a game where feet were mainly to be used having been rejected by those who favoured the use of hands and what would become Rugby football. They came together to found the Football Association (FA) and formulate a set of thirteen rules that footballers everywhere can in the main still recognise as their own.
Of the Scots founders of the FA three were school-boys. The exception was Lorne Campbell. He had been born in Worcester and would die in Switzerland. However, in 1863 aged 22 he was member of the Blackheath club and would serve as a civil servant in the Indian Office and Exchequer. It was all apparently very English, but he was of a Highland background, descended from the Lairds of Inverawe and related to the Dukes of Argyll. Youngest of all at 17 was Lewis McIver, a born Highlander, the son of the factor to the Duke of Sutherland and brought up deep in Sutherland itself, at Eddrachillis on the Helmsdale River. He would do well in life. Soon he would also join the Indian Office. Later he would be called to the Bar and elected a Liberal MP, twice over, becoming the member for Edinburgh West, be satirised in words (and drawing) as “The Member for Scotland”, read into that what you wish, and be knighted. He attended the Football Association’s second meeting as the representative of Kensington School. Its representative at the first meeting had been William John Mackintosh, a future career soldier. Son of a Scottish merchant in India he had been born in Calcutta and was sent home to be educated, initially in Elgin at the Academy. Also educated in part in Scotland was William Henry Gordon, one of three representatives from Blackheath Proprietary School. 18 years old, he had been born in Edinburgh and, later also a lawyer would emigrate like so many of our countrymen to Canada.
Of those original thirteen rules perhaps three are most pertinent to this story. One is that the game should be played on ground that should be no more than 200 yards (180m) long and again no more than a 100 yards (90m) wide. No minimum was specified but the pitch was thus defined originally as long and narrow, with a de facto ratio of 2:1. The second is that the goal would be 8 yards (7.2m) wide. No height was specified. How could it be! There was neither bar nor tape to delimit it. And finally the third was that the ball, just as it still is today in rugby, would at all times be played backwards.
This final rule would last just three years. In 1866 the forward pass, the fundamental distinction between the Rugby and Association football codes, was introduced, adopted and adapted from others that existed alongside that from “London” in Cambridge and Sheffield. However, the forward pass was not without, firstly, a quid pro quo to deter the “cheating” goal-hanger and, secondly, a proviso. The former was offside, with the FA deciding on three players being required between the attacking player and the goal for it not to be triggered. Note the use of the term “player” because at that point there was no specification of the number in a team. Nor was there the concept of a permanent goalkeeper. Both these regulations would not be introduced until 1870-71 and even then the idea of a goalkeeper restricted to his own area was unknown. It would not be until 1912 that his roaming, for it was then only him not her, was restricted. Until then handling and carrying the ball could be anywhere in the keeper’s own half of the field of play. Which leaves the proviso. Retained from the replaced rugby-like rules, it was that there could no offside from a backward pass but note too that the refinement of the moment of offside being when the ball is played forward and not when it is received was not added until 1873.
It is understandable that with neither a specified goalkeeper nor number per side tactical planning would be limited. Under the rules as they were, given the inclinations inherited from other forms of the game, attacking play was therefore understandably de rigeur with defence an after-thought. However, attack per se would still have its limitations. The long-pass would be wasteful, nullified by the three-man offside rule, which, even with the inclusion after 1870 of a designated goalkeeper of sorts, only required what meagre defence there was to have pushed up to be activated. Other means of getting the ball forward were required and close-controlled dribbling on a relatively long and narrow pitch was under the then rules not only seemingly the most effective but, on the basis of the panache expected and the individuality inherited from the playing ethos of the public and private school, also the most favoured.
Thus footballing style was set or at least seemed to be. In fact this was just a first attempt, which would last little more than a decade before it would be superseded. And the change would come not from the country of the game's birth but that of Campbell, Mackintosh, McIver and Gordon.