Association Football This book presents a synthesis of the work on early football undertaken by the authors over the past two decades. It explores aspects of a fi gurational approach to sociology to examine the early development of football rules in the middle part of the nineteenth century. The book tests Eric Dunning’s ‘status rivalry hypothesis’ to contest what has become known as the revisionist view of football’s development, which stresses an infl uential sub-culture outside the public schools. Status rivalry restates the primacy of these latter institutions in the growth of football, without which the sport’s story would remain skewed and unbalanced for future generations. Graham Curry is a postgraduate of the University of Leicester. Eric Dunning is Emeritus Professor at the University of Leicester. Routledge Research in Sports History The Routledge Research in Sports History series presents leading research in the development and historical signifi cance of modern sport through a collection of historiographical, regional and thematic studies which span a variety of periods, sports and geographical areas. Showcasing ground-breaking, cross- disciplinary work from established and emerging sport historians, the series provides a crucial contribution to the wider study of sport and society. Available in this series: 1 Representing the Sporting Past in Museums and Halls of Fame Edited by Murray G. Phillips 2 Physical Culture and Sport in Soviet Society Propaganda, acculturation, and transformation in the 1920s and 1930s Susan Grant 3 A Contemporary History of Women’s Sport, Part One Sporting women, 1850–1960 Jean Williams 4 Making Sport History Disciplines, identities and the historiography of sport Edited by Pascal Delheye 5 A Social History of Tennis in Britain Robert Lake 6 Association Football A study in fi gurational sociology Graham Curry and Eric Dunning 7 Taekwondo From a martial art to a martial sport Udo Moenig Association Football A study in fi gurational sociology Graham Curry and Eric Dunning First published 2015 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2015 Graham Curry and Eric Dunning The right of Graham Curry and Eric Dunning to be identifi ed as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifi cation and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Curry, Graham. Association football : a study in fi gurational sociology / by Graham Curry and Eric Dunning. pages cm. – (Routledge Research in Sports History) 1. Rugby football–Social aspects. I. Dunning, Eric. II. Title. GV945.85.S65C87 2015 796.333–dc23 2014032742 ISBN: 978-1-138-82851-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-73836-9 (ebk) Typeset in Time New Roman by Out of House Publishing From Graham. For Judy, Dad and Mum. From Eric. For Norbert and all other fi gurational sociologists. This page intentionally left blank Contents List of tables viii Acknowledgements ix Introduction 1 1 The folk antecedents of modern football 12 2 Public school status rivalry and the early development of football: the cases of Eton and Rugby 27 3 The universities and codifi cation 62 4 The Sheffi eld footballing sub-culture and other early clubs 87 5 The emergence of the Football Association 120 6 The advent of professionalism 138 7 The origins of football debate 155 Conclusion 185 Index 193 Tables 1.1 Selected list of prohibitions by British state and local authorities of the folk antecedents of modern football 15 2.1 Selected list of public school rebellions, 1728–1832 33 2.2 Initial codifi cation dates of football rules at the major English public schools 40 2.3 Comparison of early football rules 49 3.1 Public schools and colleges attended by framers of Cambridge University compromise football rules, 1838–63 78 4.1 Sheffi eld v. London inter-association matches, 1866–77 106 4.2 Sheffi eld v. Glasgow inter-association matches, 1874–87 107 5.1 Early football matches between boys representing major public schools 122 5.2 Information on attendees at the inaugural meeting of the Football Association 125 7.1 Matches and challenges noted by John Goulstone 157 7.2 Matches and challenges noted by Adrian Harvey 162 7.3 Matches and challenges noted by Peter Swain (2008) 165 7.4 Matches noted by Peter Swain (2014) 171 Acknowledgements In particular, Judy Wright; Penny Hatfi eld, archivist at Eton College; Jon Smith, archivist at Trinity College, Cambridge; and Dominic Malcolm at Loughborough University. John Little, President of Cambridge University AFC; Rita Gibbs, archivist at Harrow School; David Barber at the Football Association; James Lawson, archivist at Shrewsbury School; Catherine Smith, archivist at Charterhouse School; Suzanne Foster, archivist at Winchester School; all the staff at the Denman Library, Retford; all the staff at the Local Studies section of Sheffi eld Library; Faye Leerink at Routledge; Emma Hart at Out of House Publishing; Malcolm Bailey, Fiona Colbert, Judith Curthoys, Rusty Maclean, Andy Mitchell, Kevin Neill, Geoffrey Norton, Graham Phythian, Neil Rhind, Eddie Smith and Neil Ward. This page intentionally left blank Introduction In Barbarians, Gentlemen and Players: A Sociological Study of the Development of Rugby Football , which was published in 1979, Eric Dunning and Kenneth Sheard open their introduction by suggesting that the subject of their book is ‘the development of Rugby football’ (Dunning and Sheard, 1979 : 1; 2005 : 1). The present study is, to an extent, intended as a supplement to that text, and can, accordingly, be described as a study of the development of Association Football – or ‘soccer’, to refer to it by its popular name. We shall explain the meaning and history of that term later. It is enough, for present purposes, to say that the current text is based largely on Graham Curry’s PhD thesis, which was supervised by Eric Dunning and successfully submitted to the University of Leicester in 2001 (Curry, 2001 ). The central aim of that thesis and, accordingly, of the present book, was, and remains, to trace the history and development of the Association form of football in the Middle Ages and early modern periods but, above all, in mid-Victorian Britain. More particularly, it is a study of the game between 1823 – the year of the ‘Webb Ellis myth’ in which a Rugby School pupil of that name is said to have picked up the ball against the then-existing rules of the game and run with it, thus supposedly ‘inventing’ the distinctive Rugby game – and 1885, the year in which professionalism was legalised in English football. We shall use Norbert Elias’s ‘fi gurational approach’ to sociology in this connection on account of its equally theoretical and empirical character which facilitates access to all aspects of the game. Additionally, this approach enables us to treat the subject as a long-term social process which illustrates that the modern form of football can be traced directly to the ‘folk’ or ‘mob’ forms of medieval England, through the public schools and universities and ultimately into the wider society. Within that context, we aim to test Eric Dunning’s ‘status rivalry hypoth- esis’, fi rst put forward in his 1961 MA thesis and which revolves around the timing of the issue of written football rules for the fi rst time at the public schools of Rugby and Eton. We realise, of course, that this runs counter to the recent work of John Goulstone ( 2001 ) and Adrian Harvey ( 2005 ) and their supporters, who have sought to stress the infl uence of participants in a public house-related form of the game based around gambling, whilst at the same 2 Introduction time minimising that of the boys in the major public schools on the game’s early development. They are certainly right to have placed a limited amount of stress on the infl uence of the former in this connection. However, we dis- pute the degree to which the people involved seriously infl uenced the early development of football. Our contention is that a considerably greater infl u- ence was exerted on football’s early development by Etonians, undergraduates at Trinity College, Cambridge – many of whom were Old Etonians – together with the sporting journalist John Dyer Cartwright, the Old Harrovian Charles W. Alcock, and important individuals such as Nathaniel Creswick, one of the founders of the Sheffi eld Football Club. As Norbert Elias would have put it, counter to the Webb Ellis myth – for that is what it was, a myth – the game was ‘men-made’ rather than ‘man-made’ and, whilst, as Goulstone and Harvey have rightly stressed, football based around public houses played a part of some importance in the early development of the game, the pupils and undergraduates at the leading public schools and universities were arguably of considerably greater signifi cance in this respect. We have attempted to remain positive in our rebuttals of the revisionists and have tried to offer a new hypothesis to the debate. Our championing of sporting elites in various places in England is, we think, original, and may help future researchers in their understanding of why football began in cer- tain social locations rather than others.