![Sample our Sports and Leisure journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5949/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Sports-Leisure.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Over the past two decades, academics have robustly debated the early history of the game of football. Initially, support polarized around two conflicting paradigms, the predominance of public school influence against the impact of a more working class subculture. However, in recent years, scholars have concluded that this simplistic account lacks the depth of research required to clarify the more subtle nuances involved in the topic. In short, the undertaking of more locally based studies has revealed the sport’s history to be a far more multifaceted narrative. These apparently disjointed yet crucial local events, moments and memories in the early history of the game thus provide a nuanced perspective to trace the roots of modern soccer. In this article there will be an attempt to locate the state of play and endeavour to examine briefly more recent contributions and potentially move forward what has, to some, become an esoteric exercise.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Both Ian Syson and Gavin Kitching have suggested that this title intimates the existence of a chimera or specific date for the beginning of the game.
2. Elias, What is Sociology? Chapter 2.
3. Jacob was born at Exmouth, Devon in 1807 and educated at Exeter Grammar School before going up to Worcester College, Oxford, where he later became a fellow. He began at Collegiate at the same time as Sandford.
4. A ‘blue’ is awarded at Cambridge and Oxford Universities for exceptional performance at particular sports.
5. Curry, ‘Football in the Capital’.
6. For a side by side comparison of the 1863 FA laws and 1863 Cambridge University rules, see Green, History of the FA, 36–8.
7. Curry and Dunning, ‘Nottinghamshire’.
8. The probability is that members were playing games between themselves from 1862, with the club only taking on a more organized form in 1864.
9. Curry, ‘Early Lincolnshire Football’.
10. Curry, ‘Stunted Growth’.
11. Joannou and Candlish, ‘The Early Development of a Football Hotbed’.
12. Hornby, Uppies and Downies.
13. Joannou and Candlish, ‘The Early Development of a Football Hotbed’.
14. Ibid.
15. Reproduced with kind permission of Paul Joannou and Alan Candlish (Joannou and Candlish, 'The Early Development of a Football Hotbed').
16. Roberts, The Same Old Game: 342.
17. Dunning, Sport Matters, 96.