There was a mention in a newspaper last month that it was the anniversary of Sheffield FC, the oldest football club in the world. Not Sheffield United or Wednesday, but Sheffield FC.
It made me realise how different the world of football and its laws could have been if events had taken another turn in those early days. The thing about Sheffield FC was that they drew up their own set of laws for the game, forming their own Sheffield FA, some years before the FA was formed in that famous meeting in a London pub in 1863.
The members at Sheffield were reluctant to acquiesce to these southerners but there was a significant difference between the two Football Associations. Although on formation only a few London clubs were members of the Football Association, agreeing to play to their
Laws of Association Football, it was quickly joined by many other county football associations that had been formed throughout the country, themselves made up of a number of clubs.
Sheffield FA on the other hand had only a few clubs in membership from its surrounding area. As the two associations sought to agree on one set of laws, this would seem to be no contest but Sheffield punched above its weight. For example, in the FA agreed set of laws, they allowed ‘hacking’ which meant kicking the opponents shins. Sheffield argued that their players were for the most part working men and couldn’t afford to take time off if injured by this tactic, unlike those taking part in the game in the south. The FA conceded and eventually one set of laws
was accepted and Sheffield FA agreed to be part of the FA.
The two associations had one aspiration in
common: they were both very keen to stay with the amateur ideals of the game. However, in other parts of the north, particularly Lancashire, the professional game was taking shape. At first it consisted of a player being giving a job in a factory of the firm which sponsored the local club. Then clubs began to make payments direct for ‘broken time’, as players were working and had to take time off to play and train. The FA, still trying to cling to the amateur dream, decreed that in these circumstances players could only be paid for one day a week and at this time Accrington Stanley became the first club to be banned from the FA Cup for making illegal payments.
This brought about another challenge to the authority of the Football Association from the north of the country. The Football League had been formed and, with the exception of three in the midlands, all were clubs in Lancashire, which at that time of course was the centre of the industrial revolution. The League was very much in favour of the professional game and incensed by the
intransigence of the Football Association, they called a meeting to form the
British Football Association.
Imagine what this would have meant. There would have been two FAs in the country, one for amateurs and one for professionals who at that time were mainly in the north of the country. It would have been almost identical to what happened in rugby, which split into rugby union and rugby league, and no doubt like rugby, two sets of laws would have emerged. As it was, the FA decided to agree to the legality of paying players and so became the one authority in the country for all football. It joined with Scottish, Welsh and Irish FAs for the formation of the International FA Board to oversee the laws, later to be joined by FIFA. This means that the laws of football today are universal but for the good sense of someone at the FA back in the early days of the game, it could have been so different.
Dick Sawdon Smith
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© R Sawdon Smith 2008