NFL vs. AFL - The beginning of the Super Bowl era

In 1966, the success of the rival AFL, the spectre of the NFL's losing more stars to the AFL, and concern over a costly "bidding war" for players precipitated by the NFL's Giants' signing of Pete Gogolak, who was under contract to the AFL's Buffalo Bills, led the two leagues to discuss a merger. Pivotal to this was approval by Congress of a law (PL 89-800) that would waive jeopardy to anti-trust statutes for the merged leagues. The major point of the testimony given by the leagues to obtain the law was that if the merger were permitted, "Professional football operations will be preserved in the 23 cities and 25 stadiums where such operations are presently being conducted." The merger was announced on June 8, 1966, and became fully effective in 1970.After expanding to enfranchise the New Orleans Saints in 1967, the NFL split its 16 teams into two conferences with two divisions each: the Capitol and Century Divisions in the Eastern Conference, and the Coastal and Central Divisions in the Western Conference. The playoff format was expanded from a single championship game to a four-team tournament, with the four divisional champions participating. The two division winners in each conference met in the "Conference Championships," with the winners advancing to the NFL Championship Game. Again, the home team for each playoff game was determined by a yearly divisional or conference rotation.The AFL on the other hand, raised its total franchise number to nine in 1966 with the Miami Dolphins, joining the Eastern Division and a tenth team, the Cincinnati Bengals in 1968. The league kept using the one-game-playoff format except when division tie-breakers were needed. With the addition of the Bengals to the Western Division in 1969, the AFL adopted a four-team playoff to determine its champion.
Following the NFL and AFL Championship Games for the 1966 through 1969 seasons, the NFL champion played the AFL champion in Super Bowls I through IV, the only true inter-league championship games in the history of professional football. The first two of these games were known as the AFL-NFL World Championship Game, as the title Super Bowl was not chosen until 1968. Thus the third AFL-NFL matchup was dubbed "Super Bowl III" and the first two matches were retronamed as Super Bowls I and II. The first two games were convincingly won by the NFL's Packers, the last two by the AFL's New York Jets and Kansas City Chiefs, leaving the leagues even at 2-2 in "World Championship" competition when they subsequently merged.
All participants in those four AFL-NFL championship games were either AFL champions or NFL champions in the record books, no matter the outcome of the Super Bowl. Three of the four league champions who lost one of the first four Super Bowls would eventually win at least one. The exception, as of 2007, is the Minnesota Vikings.

1970 – present: The Super Bowl era

Post Merger

After the 1969 season and Super Bowl IV, the AFL and NFL fully merged and underwent a re-alignment for the 1970 season. Three of the pre-merger NFL teams were transferred to the AFC (Browns, Colts, and Steelers) to level the conferences (AFC and NFC) at 13 teams each; each conference split into three divisions. Since there was now only one league, the Super Bowl became a league championship and the winner is the NFL champion.
With only six division winners in the newly merged league, the NFL designed an eight-team playoff tournament, with four clubs from each conference qualifying. Along with the three division winners in each conference, two wild card teams (one from each conference), the second-place finishers with the best records in each conference, were added to the tournament. The first round was named the "Divisional Playoffs", with the winners advancing to the "Conference Championships" (AFC & NFC). Two weeks later, the AFC and NFC champions met in the Super Bowl, now the league's championship game. Thus, Super Bowl V in January 1971 was the first Super Bowl played for the NFL title.With the introduction of the wild card, a rule was instituted to prohibit two teams from the same division (champion and wild card) from meeting in the first-round (Divisional Playoffs). This rule would remain in effect through the 1989 season. More significantly, the home teams in the playoffs were still decided by a yearly divisional rotation, not on regular-season records (excluding the wild-card teams, who would always play on the road). This lack of "home-field advantage" was most evident in the 1972 playoffs, when the undefeated Miami Dolphins played the AFC Championship Game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, who had recorded three losses during the regular season, at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh.Beginning in 1972, tie games were included in the computing of each team's winning percentage. Each tie was now counted as half of a win and half of a loss, rather than omitted from the computation.

1933 – 1966: NFL Championship Game

Starting in 1933, the NFL decided its champion through a single postseason playoff game, called the NFL Championship Game. During this period, the league divided its teams into two groups, through 1949 as divisions and from 1950 onward as conferences.Divisions (1933–1949): Eastern and Western Conferences (1950–1952): American and National conferences (1953–1966): Eastern and Western Conferences and Divisions (1966–1969): Eastern (Capitol and Century) and Western (Central and Coastal) The home team for the NFL Championship Game was determined by a yearly rotation between the conferences (or divisions), not by regular-season records. If there was a tie for first place within the conference, an extra playoff game determined which team would play in the NFL Championship Game. (This occurred nine times in these 34 seasons: 1941, 1943, 1947, 1950 (both conferences), 1952, 1957, 1958, and 1965.)This last occurred during the 1965 season, when the Green Bay Packers and Baltimore Colts tied for first place in the Western Conference at 10-3-1. Green Bay had won both its games with Baltimore during the regular season, but because no tie-breaker system was in place, a conference playoff game was held on December 26 (the scheduled date for the NFL championship game). The Cleveland Browns, the Eastern champion at 11-3-0, did not play this week. The playoff pushed the championship game to January 2, 1966, the first time the NFL champion was crowned in January. Green Bay won both post-season games at home, beating the injury-riddled Colts (with third-string QB Tom Matte) in overtime by a field goal, and taking the title 23-12 on a very muddy field (in Jim Brown's final NFL game).For the 1960 through 1969 seasons, to compete with the rival American Football League's championship games, the NFL staged an additional postseason game called the "Playoff Bowl" (aka the "Bert Bell Benefit Bowl" or the "Runner-up Bowl"). These games matched the second-place teams from the two conferences; the CBS television network advertised them as "playoff games for third place in the NFL." All ten of these consolation games were played in the Orange Bowl in Miami in January, the week after the NFL championship game. The NFL now classifies these contests as exhibition games and does not include the records, participants, or results in the official league playoff statistics. The Playoff Bowl was discontinued after the AFL-NFL merger; the final edition was played in January 1970.Starting with the 1934 game the winning team received the Ed Thorp Memorial Trophy. The trophy was named after Ed Thorp, a noted referee, rules expert, sporting goods dealer. Thorp died in 1934 and a large, traveling trophy was made that year, passed along from champion to champion each season with each championship team's name inscribed on it. Teams would also receive a replica trophy. The trophy was last awarded to the Minnesota Vikings in 1969. The actual trophy however is now missing.

1946 – 1949: AAFC Championship Game

The All-America Football Conference was created in June of 1944 to compete against the NFL. Even though the league outdrew the NFL in attendance, the continuing dominance of the Cleveland Browns led to the league's downfall.For its four seasons, the league was divided into two divisions: Eastern and Western (1946–1948) and a single division in 1949. The site of the championship game just as in the NFL was determined by divisional rotation except for 1949 when the remaining teams with the best record hosted the game.The Browns behind the guiding of Otto Graham won all four of the league championship games. A playoff game was played in 1948 to break a tie between the Baltimore Colts and Buffalo Bills (AAFC) and in 1949 to set up a championship game between the Browns and the San Francisco 49ers.In 1948, the Browns became the first professional football team to complete an entire season undefeated and untied — 24 years before the 1972 Miami Dolphins of the NFL would accomplish the task, but this feat is not recognized by NFL record books. Unlike the AFL statistics which are treated as NFL statistics, records of the AAFC and its teams (most of which folded) are not recognized. However, individual AAFC player statistics are included in Pro Football Hall of Fame records, and the defunct conference is memorialized in the Hall.

1960 – 1966: AFL Championship Game

With its creation in 1960, the AFL determined its champion via a single playoff game between the winners of its two divisions, the Eastern and Western. The AFL Championship games featured classics such as the 1962 double-overtime championship game between the Dallas Texans and the defending champion Houston Oilers. At the time it was the longest professional football championship game ever played. Also in 1963, an Eastern Division playoff was needed to determine the division winner between the Boston Patriots and Buffalo Bills.

United States

The first soccer club in the United States was the Oneida Football Club of Boston, Massachusetts, founded in 1862. It is often said that this was the first club to play association football outside Britain. However, the Oneidas were formed before the English Football Association (FA); it is not known what rules they used[1] and the club wound up within the space of a few years. According to Encyclopædia Britannica, the club is often credited with inventing the "Boston Game", which both allowed players to kick a round ball along the ground, and to pick it up and run with it.
The first U.S. match known to have been inspired by FA rules was a game between Princeton and Rutgers in 1869, although the game included features such as extremely physical tackling and teams of 20 each. Other colleges emulated this development, but all of these were converted to rugby-oriented rules from soccer-oriented rules by the mid-1870s on, and they would soon become famous as early bastions of American football. (For more details see: History of American football.)Early soccer leagues in the U.S. mostly used the name football leagues: for example, the American Football Association (founded in 1884), the American Amateur Football Association (1893), the American League of Professional Football (1894), the National Association Foot Ball League (1895), and the Southern New England Football League (1914). However, the word "soccer" was beginning to catch on, and the St Louis Soccer League was a significant regional competition between 1907 and 1939. What is now the United States Soccer Federation was originally the U.S. Football Association, formed in 1913 by the merger of the American Football Association and the American Amateur Football Association. The governing body of the sport in the U.S. did not have the word soccer in its name until 1945, when it became the U.S. Soccer Football Association. It did not drop the word football from its name until 1974, when it became the U.S. Soccer Federation.Two further soccer leagues were started in the 1967, the United Soccer Association and the National Professional Soccer League. These merged to form the North American Soccer League in 1968, which survived until 1984. The NASL also ran an indoor league in the later years. ndoor soccer was a great success in the 1980's to the 90's, in part due to the input of the North American Soccer League. When the NASL folded, other leagues, including the Major Indoor Soccer League filled in to meet the demand. A new MISL exists today with eight teams slated for the 2007-2008 season.[10] However, it is unrelated to the original MISL.

History of National Football League Championship

Throughout its history, the National Football League and other leagues have used several different formats to determine their league champion, including a period of interleague match-ups determining a true world champion.The NFL first determined champions through end-of-season standings, but switched over to a playoff system in 1933. The rival All-America Football Conference and American Football League, which have since merged with the NFL (some AAFC teams in 1950 and all ten AFL teams in 1970 respectively), began using the playoff system since the creation of their respective leagues.From 1966–1969 prior to the AFL-NFL merger, the NFL and the AFL held a "world championship" game. The game was first called the AFL-NFL World Championship Game later renamed the Super Bowl. The Green Bay Packers won the most of these World Championship Games with two victories.Since 1970, the modern era NFL has become the only major professional football league in the United States, and its current league championship game is called the Super Bowl. The Dallas Cowboys, Pittsburgh Steelers, and San Francisco 49ers have all won five Super Bowls. However, all three franchises trail the Packers in the number of overall NFL league titles, twelve. The current defending champion of the NFL is the New York Giants who won Super Bowl XLII over the New England Patriots its inception in 1920, the NFL had no playoff system or championship game. The champion was the team with the best record during the season, determined by winning percentage, with ties omitted. This sometimes led to very odd results, as teams played anywhere from eight to twenty league games in a season, and not all teams played the same number of games.There were at least two controversial championships during this era. The first was in the 1921 NFL season, between the Buffalo All-Americans and the Chicago Staleys. Buffalo had insisted that the last matchup between the two was an exhibition match not to be counted toward the standings; however, Chicago owner George Halas, as well as league management, insisted the game be counted in its standings (the league, at the time, did not recognize exhibition matches). The result was that although the two teams were effectively tied in the standings, the disputed game, having been played later, was given more weight and thus ended up being considered a de facto championship game. (Chicago also had one less tie game.) The second disputed title was the 1925 NFL Championship controversy between the Pottsville Maroons and the Chicago Cardinals. The Maroons had been controversially suspended by the league at the end of the 1925 NFL season for an unauthorized game against a non-NFL team, allowing the Cardinals to throw together two fairly easy matches (one against a team comprised partly of high school players, also against league rules) to pass Pottsville in the standings. The league awarded the Cardinals the title, one of only two in the team's history, in a decision that continues to be disputed to this day, with Cardinals owners opposing any change in the record and the two current Pennsylvania teams in favor. No action has been taken by the league itself to address the issue, although a self-made championship trophy from the Maroons sits in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
In the 1932 season, the Chicago Bears and the Portsmouth Spartans tied with the best regular-season winning percentages (although the Green Bay Packers had four more wins).
To determine the champion, the league voted to hold the first official playoff game in Chicago at Wrigley Field. Because of severe winter conditions before the game, and fear of low turnout, the game was held indoors at Chicago Stadium which forced some temporary rule changes.
The game was played on a modified 80-yard dirt field, and Chicago won 9-0, winning the league championship. The playoff game proved so popular that the league reorganized into two divisions for the 1933 season, with the winners advancing to a scheduled championship game.
A number of new rule changes were instituted, many inspired by the 1932 indoor championship game: the goal posts were moved forward to the goal line, every play started from between the hash marks, and forward passes could originate from anywhere behind the line of scrimmage (instead of five yards behind).

Football spreads around the world

Continental Europe

The oldest club in continental Europe could be the Swiss club Lausanne Football and Cricket Club, founded 1860. Football was introduced in the Danish club Kjøbenhavns Boldklub (KB) by English residents[5] and in the Swiss club FC St. Gallen in 1879. This makes KB and St. Gallen the oldest still existing football clubs on Continental Europe. The Danish Football Association was founded in 1889. Italian football was played in regional groups from its foundation in 1898 until 1929 when the Serie A was organized into a national league by the Italian Football Federation. La Liga, Spain's national league, had its first season in 1928, with its participants based off of the previous winners of the Copa del Rey, which began in 1902. The modern German national league, the Bundesliga was late in foundation, especially for European countries, given it wasn't founded until 1963. The German Football Association was founded as early as 1900 with the first German football champions being Leipzig in 1903. However, prior to the formation of the Bundesliga, German football was played at an amateur level in a large number of regional leagues.

South America

The first recorded football match in Argentina was played already in 1867 by English railway workers. The first football team in South America, Gimnasia y Esgrima de La Plata (now in professionalism) was created in Argentina, in 1887. The Argentine professional leagues (previously, football was an amateur sport) were founded in 1931 by the Argentine Football Association, which itself was founded by a Scottish schoolteacher Alexander Watson Hutton in 1893[6]. The first ever championship to take place in Argentina was the AAF Championship of 1891[7] making Argentina's the oldest football league outside mainland Britain[8].
In the 1870s an expatriate named John Miller who worked on the railway construction project in São Paulo together with some 3000 other immigrant families from the British Isles in the last decades of the 19th century. Mr. Miller decided to send his young boy Charles William Miller to England for his education. In 1884 Charles aged 10 was sent to Bannisters school in Southampton. Charles was a natural footballer who quickly picked up the arts of the game. The football association was being formed at the time. Eton, Rugby, Charterhouse and other colleges all had developed their own rules to the game. As an accomplished winger and striker Charles held school honours that were to gain him entry first into the Southampton Club team and then into the County team of Hampshire.
In 1892 a couple of years before his return to Brazil, Charles was invited to play a game for the Corinthians, a team formed of players invited from public schools and universities.
On his return Charles brought some football equipment and a rules book with him. He then went on to develop the new rules of the game amongst the community in São Paulo. In 1888, six years before his return, the first sports club was founded in the city, São Paulo Athletic Club. São Paulo Athletic Club won the first three years championships. Miller's skills were far and above his colleagues at this stage. He was given the honour of contributing his name to a move involving a deft flick of the ball with the heel "Chaleira".
Charles Miller kept a strong bond with English football throughout his life. Teams from Southampton and Corinthians Club came over to Brazil and played against São Paulo Athletic Club and other teams in São Paulo. One on occasion in 1910 a new local team was about to be formed after a tour of the Corinthians team to Brazil and Charles was asked to suggest a name for the team. He suggested they should call themselves after Corinthians.
In 1988 when São Paulo Athletic Club celebrated its centenary and the English Corinthians Team came across again to play them at Morumbi Stadium. The end of the tour was against the local professional Corinthians Paulista team with Sócrates and Rivelino amongst its players. This game was played at Paecambu Stadium in São Paulo and true to Corinthian principles of good clean football the score was 1 to 0 in favour of the locals when as agreed Socrates changed shirts to play alongside the English amateurs. This did not affect the score unfortunately although a largely packed stadium was cheering on for a drawn result.
The Brazilian Football Confederation was founded in 1914, and the current format for the Campeonato Brasileiro was established in 1971.

The first International

harles Alcock, who was elected to secretary of the FA at the age of 28, devised the Idea of an international competition, inaugurating an annual England-Scotland. His put advertisements in papers in Glasgow, informing people of an international between the two countries. After the appeal, a team of Scottish players was put together and captained by Robert Smith, one of the three brothers who helped found Queens Park FC. His team was composed entirely of Scots, living in England.[3]. The first international (which took place on the 30/11/1872, Glasgow, Scotland) ended in a goalless draw between the two sides and thus, one of the most bitterly disputed fixtures in footballing history was born. The 2nd game between the two sides, on the 8/3/1873, ended 4-2 in favour of England, the Scots then went on to win the next game 2-1. The fourth game ended in a 2-2 draw after which the Scots enjoyed a 3 game winning streak (every recorded result between these two sides can be found using the official FIFA website). Current head to head statistics between the two sides stand as...

From amateurism to professionalism

When football was gaining popularity during the 1870s and 1880s professionals were banned in England and Scotland. Then in the 1880s, soon after Wanderers disbanded, in the north of England, teams started hiring players known as 'professors of football', who were often professionals from Scotland. This was the first time professionalism got into football. The clubs in working class areas, especially in Northern England and Scotland wanted professional football in order to afford playing football besides working. Several clubs were accused of employing professionals. In 1885 the FA legalized professional football, but with a national wage limit. The northern clubs made of lower class paid players started to gain momentum over the amateur 'Gentleman Southerners'. The first northern club to reach the FA Cup final was Blackburn Rovers in 1882, where they lost to Old Etonians, who were the last amateur team to win the trophy.Early English women's teams, such as the Dick, Kerr's Ladies from Preston, were so popular that their matches raised money for charities. The first recorded women's football match, on 23 March 1895, was held in England between a northern and southern team. The fundraising matches continued, in spite of objections. A maximum wage was placed on players, players challenged this and came close to strike action in 1909, but it was not to be for another fifty years before the maximum wage was abolished. In 1921, women were banned from playing on FA league grounds. FA history states that this ban "effectively destroyed the game" in England for the next 40 years.[4] Hakoah Vienna was probably the first non-British club to pay their players during the 1920s[citation needed].In 1934 the Swedish club Malmö FF was relegated from the top division after it had been discovered that they paid their players, something that was not allowed in Swedish football at the time.

Foundations of a competition

The laws laid down by the FA had an immediate effect, with Sheffield and Nottingham (now Notts County) joining playing an annual fixture on the FA code among others. Over the next two years Chesterfield and Stoke joined the code, which meant that the codified form was no longer an exclusive sport of public schools. By this time teams had settled into 11 players each, and the game was played with round balls. It previously stated that all players in front of the ball were offside, eliminating passing of the ball forwards, much like in rugby today. The rule was relaxed. A Sheffield against London game in 1866 had allowed the FA to observe how the rules were affecting the game; subsequently handling of the ball was abolished except for one player on each team, the goalkeeper. A red tape was added between the two goalposts to indicate the top of the goal, and a national competition was proposed.

The first FA Cup

On July 20, 1871, C. W. Alcock, a gentleman from Sunderland and a former pupil of Harrow School proposed that "a Challenge Cup should be established in connection with the [Football] Association",[1] the idea that gave birth to the competition. At the first FA Cup in 1872, Wanderers and Royal Engineers met in the final in front of 2,000 paying spectators. Despite the Royal Engineers being the heavy favourites, one of their players sustained a broken collar bone early on and since substitutions had not yet been introduced, the Engineers played a man down for the rest of the match which they eventually lost 1-0.
The FA Cup was a success and within a few years all of the clubs in England wanted to take part. To do so they had to accept the FA code, which led to the quick spread of a universal set of rules. These rules are the basis of which all association football rules today stem from.
Later competitions saw the 'Gentleman' or Southerners dominate with Old Etonians, Wanderers, Royal Engineers and Oxford University who amongst them took 19 titles. Queens Park withdrew in the semi-finals of the 1873 cup (which due to the format being played that year meant that all the challengers to Wanderers' trophy played a competition for the right to throw down the gauntlet and play the holders, hence the full name FA Challenge Cup) because they had trouble raising travel expenses to pay for the constant trips to England, this directly led to the formation of the Scottish FA. However despite this, Queens Park continued to participate in the FA Cup, reaching the final twice, before the Scottish FA banned Scottish clubs from entering in 1887.In 1872, Alcock purchased the Football Association Cup for £20. That year, fifteen clubs entered the competition. Queen's Park reached the semi finals without playing due to withdrawals, but then after a goalless draw with Wanderers, were forced to withdraw as before the advent of penalties and extra time, they could not afford to come back to London for the replay. Wanderers won the cup outright in 1878 after what remains to this day one of only two hat tricks of wins ever. However they returned the cup to the FA in order for the competition to continue, on the condition that no other club could win the cup outright ever again.
The first leagueIn 1888, William McGregor a gentleman from Perthshire and a director of Aston Villa F.C was the main force between meetings held in London and Manchester involving 12 football clubs, with an eye to a league competition. These 12 clubs would later become the Football League's 12 founder members. The meetings were held in London on 22 March 1888, the main concern was that an early exit in the knockout format of the FA cup could leave clubs with no matches for almost a year, not only could they suffer heavy financial losses, but fans didn't often stick around for that long without a game, when other teams were playing. Matters were finalised on the 17 April in Manchester.McGregor had voted against the name The Football League, as he was concerned that it would be associated with the Irish Land League[2]. But this name still won by a majority vote and was selected. The competition guaranteed fixtures and members for all of its member clubs. The clubs were split equally among North and Midlands teams and Southern teams, who were still strictly amateur.A rival English league called the Football Alliance operated from 1889 to 1892. In 1892 it was decided to formally merge the two leagues, and so the Football League Second Division was formed, consisting mostly of Football Alliance clubs. The existing League clubs, plus three of the strongest Alliance clubs, comprised the Football League First Division.

History of association football

The history of association football, which is usually known simply as football, can be traced to traditional football games played in Europe in ancient times. However, the modern game has its roots in the formation of the The Football Association (FA) in England in 1863. Several clubs met in London, to create a universal code, that would allow clubs to play each other without dispute. At the time, football clubs all played by their own, individual codes of rules, and game-day rules had to be agreed upon before they could play one another.
The impact of the FA code was not immediate, as sport was still very much an amateur activity. The first professional clubs were formed after working class people took up the sport, and entrepreneurs saw an opportunity to make money from spectators coming to see star players. Once professionalism took hold, the popularity of the game became immense and was soon spread throughout the world by British expatriates.

The Football Association

Main article: History of The Football Association. During the early 1860s, there were increasing attempts in England to unify and reconcile the various football games that were played in the public school of England. In 1862, J. C. Thring, who had been one of the driving forces behind the original Cambridge Rules, was a master at Uppingham School and he issued his own rules of what he called "The Simplest Game" (these are also known as the Uppingham Rules). In early October 1863, another new revised version of the Cambridge Rules was drawn up by a seven member committee representing former pupils from Harrow, Shrewsbury, Eton, Rugby, Marlborough and Westminster.Ebenezer Cobb Morley, a solicitor from Hull, wrote to Bell's Life newspaper in 1863, proposing a governing body for football. Morley was to become the FA's first secretary (1863-6) and its second president (1867-74), but is particularly remembered as it was he who drafted the first Laws of the Game at his home in Barnes, London, that are today played the world over. For this, he is considered not just the father of the Football Association, but of Association Football (soccer) itself.On the evening of October 26, 1863, representatives of several football clubs in the Greater London area met at the Freemason's Tavern on Long Acre in Covent Garden. This was the first meeting of The Football Association (FA). It was the world's first official football body and for this reason is not preceded with the word English. Charterhouse was the only school which accepted invitations to attend. The first meeting resulted in the issuing of a request for representatives of the public schools to join the association. With the exception of Thring at Uppingham, most schools declined. In total, six meetings of the FA were held between October and December 1863. Committee member J. F. Alcock, said: "The Cambridge Rules appear to be the most desirable for the Association to adopt."After the third meeting, a draft set of rules were published by the FA. However, at the beginning of the fourth meeting, attention was drawn to the recently-published Cambridge Rules of 1863. The Cambridge rules differed from the draft FA rules in two significant areas; namely running with (carrying) the ball and hacking (kicking opposing players in the shins). The two contentious FA rules were as follows:IX. A player shall be entitled to run with the ball towards his adversaries' goal if he makes a fair catch, or catches the ball on the first bound; but in case of a fair catch, if he makes his mark he shall not run. X. If any player shall run with the ball towards his adversaries' goal, any player on the opposite side shall be at liberty to charge, hold, trip or hack him, or to wrest the ball from him, but no player shall be held and hacked at the same time. At the fifth meeting a motion was proposed that these two rules be removed from the FA rules. Most of the delegates supported this suggestion but F. W. Campbell, the representative from Blackheath and the first FA treasurer, objected strongly. He said, "hacking is the true football". The motion was carried nonetheless and — at the final meeting — Campbell withdrew his club from the FA. After the final meeting on 8 December the FA published the "Laws of Football", the first comprehensive set of rules for the game later known as association football. The game also came to be called "soccer" as a shortening of "Association" around the same time as Rugby football, colloquially referred to as "rugger", was developing as the main carrying of the ball version of English football, and "soccer" remains a common descriptor in countries with other prominent football codes today.These first FA rules still contained elements that are no longer part of Association football, but which are still recognisable in other games (Rugby Union, Australian rules football): for instance, a player could make a fair catch and claim a mark, which entitled him to a free kick, and; if a player touched the ball behind the opponents' goal line, his side was entitled to a free kick at goal, from 15 yards in front of the goal line.The laws of the game agreed on by the FA members stipulated a maximum length and breadth for the pitch, the procedure for kicking off, and definition of terms, including goal, throw in, offside. Passing the ball by hand was still permitted provided the ball was caught "fairly or on the first bounce". Despite the specifications of footwear having no "tough nails, iron plates and gutta percha" there were no specific rule on number of players, penalties, foul play or the shape of the ball, captains of the participating teams were expected to agree on these things prior to the match.

Is rugby really any better behaved than football?

With the RBS Six Nations Championship about to get under way, those of us who live in southwest London get ready for another orgy of footy-bashing, that familiar custom beloved of the rugby fans who mull around Richmond and Twickenham in the hours after the final whistle singing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, nicking all the local dinner tables — not to mention the local women — and sneering at the round-ball version of football.
This is not to say that rugby does not have a certain beauty, at least when the ball is not incessantly kicked into touch. Indeed, one of the most uplifting highlights of last year’s World Cup — hair on the backs of necks stuff, this — was the match between Wales and Fiji. This was sport at its most compelling, with bravura virtuosity, courage, brinkmanship and, at the death, a sizeable upset. But if I can praise the beauty of rugby, why is it so rare to find a rugby fan who can praise football? Perhaps the most irritating aspect is the moral superiority that is claimed by rugby spectators, as if anyone who describes himself as a football fan must, by definition, have a set of knuckle-dusters in his inside pocket along with a compulsion to assault anyone wearing a different coloured scarf. This is the main reason why rival rugby fans take such pains to parade their camaraderie: “Oh, your team deserved to win.” “Surely not, you were so much better.” I’d rather they just had a mass brawl. Of course, it is football players themselves — “overpaid, soft, monosyllabic, thuggish and cowardly” — who get most of the flak from rugby fans. They are condemned as morally bankrupt wide-boys who fail to live up to their (unwanted and unasked for) status as role models by indulging in group sex and two-footed lunges.There is a certain hypocrisy here. Rugby is a far more violent game than football — and the drunken off-field sexual antics of the players are not that different to those of footballers — yet the sport gets far less opprobrium. Two-footed tackles in football were described by one newspaper as one of the moral outrages of the age. What about the punching, kicking, eye-gouging, hair-pulling and stamping that goes on in rugby without anyone seeming to notice? Or is it that they don’t care? And talking of tackle, what about the fact that scrum etiquette seems to encourage the crushing of a chap’s manhood to within an inch of infertility? What’s more, the idea that rugby players are role models is laughable. When Glenn Hoddle offered some mild insights in a book while he was the England football team’s head coach, the world reacted as if it was the most heinous literary crime since the publication of Mein Kampf. But what do the rugby boys do? They rush into print after the World Cup and stick so many knives into the back of Brian Ashton that the head coach still carries the pitiful look of Captain Bligh from the mutiny on the Bounty. Could it be that rugby players get away with bad behaviour on and off the field because of class warfare? Or is it just that those who play and follow rugby do not get so het up about such behaviour from their heroes? Some might say that football can learn from rugby, that bad tackles and binge-drinking should pass without comment, but why should thuggery be unpunished or even unremarked-upon? Perhaps this critique is simply based on jealousy. It is true that, along with dozens of other men in southwest London, I have had a potential girlfriend or two stolen away by a second team player from London Scottish. Women seem to like rugby players’ legs, although quite why tree trunks for limbs are considered sexy is a question for my next phone call to the Samaritans. None of this is to deny that rugby is a jolly good sport; indeed, it is a great sport. It is just that I don’t feel it is as great as football. Don’t take my word for it; take the word of the rest of the planet. Football is the national sport in so many countries that it is impossible to list them in a column of this length. Rugby is the national sport of a handful of former Commonwealth nations. Yet it can provide beauty and drama and wonderful memories. I am thoroughly looking forward to today’s match in Twickenham. I just wish rugby fans wouldn’t sneer at us football fans so much.