Origins
Different forms of football have existed for centuries.
(For more on the development of football sports, see football.
) In Britain, football games may have been played as early as the time of Roman occupation in the 1st century bce.
During the 14th and 15th centuries ce, Shrove Tuesday football matches became annual traditions in local communities, and many of these games continued well into the 19th century.
These localized versions of folk football (a violent sport distinctive for its large teams and lack of rules) gradually found favour within the English public (independent) schools, where they were modified and adapted into one of two forms: a dribbling game, played primarily with the feet, that was promoted at Eton and Harrow, and a handling game favoured by Rugby, Marlborough, and Cheltenham.
Game playing, particularly football, was encouraged at Rugby School by influential headmaster Thomas Arnold (1828–42), and many boys educated at this time were instrumental in the expansion of the game.
Rugby football soon became one of the most significant sports in the promotion of English and, later, British imperial manliness.
The game's virtues were promoted by books such as Thomas Hughes's Tom Brown's School Days (1857).
The cult of manliness that resulted centred on the public schools and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, where boys were sent to learn how to become young gentlemen.
Part of the schoolboy's training was a commitment to arduous physical activity, and, by the late 19th century, rugby and cricket had become the leading sports that developed the "civilized" manly behaviour of the elite.
It was believed that rugby football instilled in the "muscular Christian" gentleman the values of unselfishness, fearlessness, teamwork, and self-control.
Graduates of these public schools and of Oxford and Cambridge formed the first football clubs, which led to the institutionalization of rugby.
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Once they had left school, many young men wanted to continue playing the game of their youth, and the early annual matches between alumni and current senior students were not enough to satisfy these players.
Football clubs were formed in the mid-19th century, with one of the very first rugby clubs appearing at Blackheath in 1858.
Rugby enthusiasm also spread rapidly to Ireland and Scotland, with a club founded at the University of Dublin in 1854 and the formation by the Old Boys of Edinburgh of the Edinburgh Academicals Rugby Football Club in 1858.
In 1863 the tradition of club matches began in England with Blackheath playing Richmond.
Representatives of several leading football clubs met in 1863 to try to devise a common set of rules for football.
Disputes arose over handling the ball and "hacking," the term given to the tactics of tripping an opponent and kicking his shins.
Both handling and hacking were allowed under rugby's rules but disallowed in other forms of football.Led by F.W.
Campbell of Blackheath, the rugby men refused to budge over hacking, calling those against the practice "unmanly.
" Though Campbell's group was in the minority, it refused to agree to the rules established for the new Football Association (FA) even though many elements of rugby rules were included in early compromises.
Ultimately, rugby was left outside the FA.
Despite the initial reluctance to abandon hacking, rugby clubs began to abolish the practice during the late 1860s.
Blackheath banned it in 1865, and Richmond supported a similar prohibition in 1866.
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Rugby received bad publicity after a Richmond player was killed in a practice match in 1871, prompting leading clubs to respond to Richmond and Blackheath's call for an organizational meeting.
Thus, in 1871 members of leading rugby clubs met to form the Rugby Football Union (RFU), which became the governing body for the sport.
By this time, hacking had largely disappeared from club rugby, though it remained a part of the game's "character building" qualities at Rugby School.
As a result of its continued adherence to the practice, Rugby School did not join the RFU until 1890.
