History of Football

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Speaker 3 Hello, welcome to Dead Funny History. I'm Gret Jenner.
I'm a historian, and I want to tell you about something cool.

Speaker 1 Football, my favorite.

Speaker 3 We can trace ball games back thousands of years. Even though modern football has only been going since around the 1850s, in medieval Europe, it was less like this

Speaker 3 and more like this.

Speaker 3 One of the earliest references to ball games in Britain is from the 9th century.

Speaker 3 in a book called the Historia Britonum, which means the history of the Britons, written, we think, by a Welsh monk called Nennius. It describes boys playing ball.

Speaker 9 Hello, and welcome to this coverage of a game of ball that I can see going on outside of my monastic cell.

Speaker 9 It's one group of boys against another group of boys.

Speaker 3 Historians have referred to the medieval game by lots of names.

Speaker 10 Folk football.

Speaker 12 Mub football.

Speaker 3 They were big community games usually played in towns and villages on festival days, Sometimes Christmas Day.

Speaker 14 Hoo, ho, ho!

Speaker 14 Goal, goal, goal.

Speaker 3 But mostly on pancake day.

Speaker 11 Pancake Day?

Speaker 3 Yup, it's also called Shrove Tuesday. Now these games could sometimes stretch the length of a town and could involve hundreds of players.

Speaker 3 There's some people on the bench, and by pitch, I mean the whole high street.

Speaker 3 There were fewer rules.

Speaker 8 Oi, referee! He just picked up the ball!

Speaker 3 Yeah, you were allowed to carry the ball and throw it in the goal. Oi!

Speaker 8 Ref! He's just punched me!

Speaker 3 Yeah, that was mostly fine, too.

Speaker 15 Referee!

Speaker 16 Oh, and there wasn't a referee.

Speaker 15 What?

Speaker 3 So look at me, mate. I'm just a historian.
Now, this football could be really, really gruesome.

Speaker 3 In 1321, William de Spalding accidentally stabbed his friend during a game of football and had to ask the Pope John XXII, God's referee here on Earth, to let him off.

Speaker 3 It's a bit unusual getting the Pope to referee, although it might still prove more popular than VAR.

Speaker 15 And play is stopped as we consult a VAR.

Speaker 15 That's Vatican-approved review.

Speaker 17 And here comes His Holiness with the result.

Speaker 2 In nominee spiritual sanctity

Speaker 11 of sight

Speaker 11 of

Speaker 11 the body

Speaker 3 So everyone must have loved football, right?

Speaker 15 From

Speaker 3 in the 14th century King Edward III and King Richard II tried to ban footy telling people they should be learning archery instead. Much handier for wars, you see.

Speaker 3 It was sort of the medieval version of your dad telling you to stop playing football in the garden and do something useful, like wash his car.

Speaker 3 In the 1400s, football was banned by James I, King of Scots.

Speaker 18 Stop playing football!

Speaker 3 And James II?

Speaker 10 I said, stop playing football! James III, please, please stop playing football!

Speaker 3 And James IV. Please stop playing football.

Speaker 3 But football remained popular. Shakespeare's plays referenced the game and even Henry VIII had a pair of leather boots in his great wardrobe.
He wouldn't want to be marking him.

Speaker 3 Luckily, despite all these kings shouting, Stop having fun and come die in a field for me! The games kept coming like an overstuffed fixture list at Christmas.

Speaker 3 The Shrovetide game in Ashbourne, Derbyshire still happens today.

Speaker 3 And it has goalposts which are three miles apart.

Speaker 6 Imagine the tactics.

Speaker 10 So,

Speaker 20 what do you reckon, boss? Short passing?

Speaker 13 Slow build-up from the bag?

Speaker 16 The goal is three miles away. We go long.
Strong midfield, past the bus stop. See if we can catch the 16A to get past their defence.

Speaker 3 But everything changed changed in the 19th century with the coming of the Industrial Revolution.

Speaker 3 As working class people moved to cities to work in factories, there were fewer big, rowdy festival day games. Instead, posh students in elite public schools began playing football.

Speaker 10 Now it's our turn to play.

Speaker 18 What ho?

Speaker 3 Football was now seen as the perfect sport for the middle and upper classes to show how strong and masculine they were.

Speaker 12 So, if you posh guys are all that strong now, you could play against us commoners without worrying about getting here, right?

Speaker 10 Ah, well um uh uh well

Speaker 8 we'd simply love to. Yep, but um uh we've we've scheduled all our games for when you have work.

Speaker 10 What a shame!

Speaker 18 What ho?

Speaker 10 Chuff chuff!

Speaker 3 When posh people got into football, they also brought a bunch of rules with them.

Speaker 3 Gone was the free-for-all chaos of medieval matches, replaced by the chaos of lots of different rules from lots of different public schools.

Speaker 8 You know, rugby rules, Sheffield rules? The kind where we play with big balls, small balls, open pitch, closed pitch, no pitch, pitch next to a wall, big goals, small girls, no girls, touchdown girls.

Speaker 12 Ah, uh, never mind.

Speaker 3 So, how did we end up with everyone playing by the same rules?

Speaker 3 Well, in 1863, the Football Association, the FA, was founded in England, and an advert was put in a London newspaper inviting representatives from clubs and posh schools to meet and to discuss the adoption of a general code for the rules of football.

Speaker 3 Two of the main issues were around tackling and carrying the ball.

Speaker 6 And people had a lot of opinions.

Speaker 1 So, when a player has possession of the ball.

Speaker 20 Oh, but but but how does he have possession?

Speaker 13 Can he hold the ball with his hands?

Speaker 20 By his feet?

Speaker 19 Can he catch it? Rush with it? Can other players tackle him? Huck his shins, gouge out his eyes, tickle him.

Speaker 6 Oh, never mind.

Speaker 3 Some schools even left in protest, and eventually a new sport splintered off called rugby.

Speaker 6 Never heard of it.

Speaker 3 The FA's founding secretary got so frustrated with everyone arguing about these rules that in 1867 he very nearly got rid of the entire FA.

Speaker 21 If you lot can't play nicely together, then you're not playing at all.

Speaker 18 I will turn this football association round and nobody will get a vuvuzella.

Speaker 3 But at least as compensation, he got to have the best name ever, Ebenezer Cobb Morley.

Speaker 3 Ebenezer,

Speaker 13 tonight you will be visited by three

Speaker 13 ghosts who will show you the true meaning of football. Turns out it's having lots of rules.

Speaker 21 Oh, spirit, I shall keep properly codified football in my heart all year round.

Speaker 21 You boy, what day is it today?

Speaker 3 Today, Governor?

Speaker 10 Why, it's pancake day!

Speaker 22 The best day to play rulers 300-a-side football!

Speaker 14 No!

Speaker 21 This is the one thing I didn't want to happen!

Speaker 3 Going into the 20th century, nothing could stop football.

Speaker 6 Apart from World War I.

Speaker 3 Oh, and World War II.

Speaker 3 That aside, the game flourished and evolved into the sport we know today. Everyone has been encouraged to play and watch and love football.

Speaker 3 As long as you're a man.

Speaker 3 Although women and girls had probably been playing footy for ages, one of the first recorded women's matches was in Inverness in Scotland in 1888, with teams divided up by marital status.

Speaker 7 Welcome to the Inverness Derby with the married women versus all the single ladies. All the single ladies.
If they want to switch teams, they're going to have to put a ring on it.

Speaker 3 The British Ladies Football Club played their first game in 1895, captained by its founder, Nettie Honeyball. What a brilliant name for a footballer.

Speaker 3 That's like having a banker called Volta Moneybags or a sprinter called Usain Bolt. Oh, wait.

Speaker 22 Nettie said, I founded the association with a fixed resolve of proving to the world that women are not the ornamental and useless creatures men have pictured.

Speaker 22 My convictions are all on the side of emancipation, and I look forward to the time when ladies may sit in parliament.

Speaker 3 The women's game was incredibly popular, and when the lads went off to war in 1914, many women swapped domestic housework

Speaker 3 for factory jobs.

Speaker 3 Not only were women doing different jobs, they were also being paid more

Speaker 3 and they had more time off. And what do they do with their time off?

Speaker 14 Go! Footy!

Speaker 3 They often formed factory teams and one of the biggest teams was Dick Kerr Ladies. It was named after the tram manufacturing company where the women worked.

Speaker 3 They weren't all owned by some dodgy geezer named Dick Kerr.

Speaker 23 If you're looking for lady footballers, come on down to Dick Kerr's Ladies. I'm Dick Kerr and I've got ladies, ladies, ladies, lady goalkeepers, lady fullbacks.
That's Dick Kerr's Ladies.

Speaker 8 Round the back of the factory yard, Preston.

Speaker 3 The star of the team was Lily Parr, a footballing superstar, even though she didn't exactly live the healthiest lifestyle, being a big smoker.

Speaker 3 Imagine how good a player she'd have been if she'd had healthier habits.

Speaker 6 Lily, you've gone grey.

Speaker 23 Why don't you switch out cigarettes for orange slices?

Speaker 19 I feel invincible.

Speaker 3 Lily was only 14 when she started playing for Dick Kerr Ladies as their star striker. Her teammate, Joan Wally, said, She had a kick like a mule.

Speaker 22 She could nearly knock me out with a fourth shot.

Speaker 3 There was even a story that she once kicked a ball so hard it could have broken a male Goldie's arm.

Speaker 13 She kicks like a mule and breaks arms like a swan. Ow!

Speaker 3 In 1920, around 53,000 spectators came to see Lily and her team play. And not only did the team tour Britain, they even went to America and sometimes even played against men.

Speaker 3 Lily retired in her 40s and lived to an old age with a woman named Mary. A happy ending for Lily.

Speaker 3 But a less happy time for women's football in general.

Speaker 3 Yup, in 1921, when there were 150 women's teams in the UK, the FA banned women from playing football on any FA-affiliated grounds.

Speaker 3 But some women kept playing in open defiance of the ban, which was not lifted until 1970.

Speaker 11 1970!

Speaker 6 Yeah, I know.

Speaker 3 Just imagine all the brilliant women's footballers the world missed out on because the FA was scared of a little competition. Thankfully, the women's game is back big time.

Speaker 3 I hope Lily Parr would have been proud of the likes of Mary Earps and not tried to break her arm.

Speaker 19 But I love breaking goalie's arms.

Speaker 3 Stop that, Lily.

Speaker 3 Oh, and that's full time.

Speaker 3 So how much do you remember from today's speedy history lesson? Let's find out. Pencils are the ready.

Speaker 3 Question one. Medieval folk football sometimes involved the whole town, and it was usually played on which festival days

Speaker 23 christmas and pancake day

Speaker 3 question two which game that allows carrying the ball split from football in the late 1800s

Speaker 3 rugby and question three who was the dick kerr ladies star striker in the 1920s

Speaker 13 lily parr

Speaker 3 Well done, join us next time for another snappy history lesson.

Speaker 3 And if you're a grown-up and want to learn more more about the history of football, listen to our episode of You're Dead to Me with Professor Gene Williams. Thanks for listening.

Speaker 10 Bye!

Speaker 3 This was at BBC Studios audio production for Radio 4. Dead Funny History was written by Jack Bernhardt, Gabby Hutchinson Crouch, and Dr.
Emma Nagoose.

Speaker 3 The script consultant was Professor Gene Williams. It was hosted by me, Greg Jenner, and performed by Mally Ann Rees and John Luke Roberts.

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Tread confidently with new tires from Tire Rack.

Speaker 1 Whether you're looking for expert recommendations or know exactly what you want, Tire Rack makes it easy. Fast, free shipping, free road hazard protection, and convenient installation options.

Speaker 1 Go to tirerack.com to see tire test results, tire ratings, and consumer reviews. And be sure to check out all the special offers.
TireRack.com, the way tire buying should be.

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Speaker 2 Invested early, retired early.

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Read it carefully.

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