Rugby League season has just finished for the year (a big congratulations to the South Sydney Rabbitohs!) and thus ends Australia’s football season.
So it seems appropriate to uncover the medieval roots of football. I used to be of the belief that football could only apply to soccer because it is the only ball game where the foot is exclusively used to propel the ball.
But it would seem that in medieval times players made no such distinction:
The first documented case of football was recorded by William FitzStephenin the year 1170. While he was visiting London he noticed that “after dinner all the youths of the city goes out into the fields for the very popular game of ball.” He also noted that every trade had its own football team.
It is thought that some of these popular games derived from the Roman game “harpastum,” even though the Romans were long gone from these lands (in 410)…
…The name “football” was referring to the game being played on foot and not because it was played by using your feet. Actually, all parts of the body were allowed to be used to propel the ball. The game was simply called “ball” or “gameball.”
Quite so
Football games took place between trade guilds, towns and often took place from town to town, through the streets and involving up to 300 people at a time!
Indeed, so violent was medieval football that the Lord Mayor of London actually banned the sport in 1314, claiming ‘there is great noise in the city caused by hustling over large footballs in the fields of the public’.
The extent of its popularity and rambunctiousness is reflected in the fact there were more than 30 royal and local laws which attempted to ban football between 1314 and 1667. However, by the end of the 14th century, the term ‘football’ was well established in England, with Chaucer even referencing it in his Canterbury Tales.
It was by no means solely confined to the lower orders either, as the Great Wardrobe of Henry VIII in 1526 recorded ‘one leather pair (of shoes) for football’, and decrees around 1555 were required to ban football at the colleges of Cambridge and Oxford University.
Not surprisingly fields were eventually given over to playing the game were preferable to the rolling melee of mob football.
Despite the ‘domestication’ of football (soccer, AFL, rugby league, rugby union, celtic football, gridiron etc, etc) the idea of the free-for-all mob football still resonates today – in fact two game designers have successfully completed a Kickstarter campaign for a medieval fantasy roll playing game called Guild Ball.
Which may or may not look like this:
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