By Max Hardingham
Lots of the sports we play today were first introduced during the
Victorian period. Here are some examples:
 Football
 Cricket
 Boxing
 Croquet
 Cycling
 Roller skating
 Horse riding
 Rowing
 And many many more…….
 I am going to look in more detail at the Victorians and football
 Before 1863 there were no rules and so teams could do whatever
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they wanted.
On Monday 26 October 1863, there was a meeting of football
captains at the Freemasons’ Tavern in London. The meeting was
arranged to set up a football association which would set up a
code of rules and regulate the sport.
The meeting was organised by Ebenezer Cobb Morley, a solicitor
who loved to play football. He was captain for Barnes football
club. He is often called the founder of modern football.
Morley was made FA secretary and came up with the first set of
rules called the Laws of the Game. He was later made FA
president.
This was the start of the Football Association (FA). This year the
FA is celebrating its 150th birthday.
 There were 11 teams that first joined the FA. They
were:
 Barnes FC
Blackheath
Blackheath Proprietary School
Civil Service (War Office) FC
Crusaders (London)
Crystal Palace (1861)
Kensington School
Forest FC (Leytonstone)
NN Club (Kilburn)
Perceval House (Blackheath)
Surbiton FC
 The first FA Laws of the Game had 16 rules. They
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contained information about: size of pitch, starting
the game with a coin toss, throw-ins, hacking and
fouls, goal kicks.
Some of these rules are different to how we play
football now. For example:
- After each goal is scored the teams change ends.
- For throw-ins the ball is not in play until it has hit the
ground.
- There were no goal keepers, substitutes, red/yellow
cards and penalty kicks.
 Shin pads were invented in 1874 by Sam Weller
Widdowson( the Nottingham Forest team capt)
 He decided to cut down a pair of cricket pads to
protect his shins.
 The idea didn’t become popular straight away and it
took several years before they were widely used.
 The shin guard was included into the FA’s Laws of the
Game in 1881.
 In the first FA Laws of the game it stated that there
had to be ‘two upright posts, eight yards apart, without
any tape or bar across them’.
 However this meant that a goal could be scored even if
it was kicked high into the air as long as it went
between the 2 posts. This was very unfair.
 So a tape between the 2 posts was introduced in 1866
and solid crossbars in 1882.
 The goal net was invented by Everton fan and civil
engineer John Alexander Brodie. He decided to do
something after a wrongly-disallowed goal robbed his
team of a victory against Accrington in 1889.
 He tried his invention at Stanley park.
 Brodie later worked as chief engineer on the Mersey
Tunnel, but said the goal net was his best achievement.
 Even women played football in the Victorian times!
 At the beginning of 1895 the British Ladies’ Football
Club was started by Miss Nettie Honeyball .
 About 30 female footballers joined the club and would
train twice a week .
 The players wore kits that were the same as the men.
This caused an outrage because women usually wore
dresses.
 They wore baggy blouses and long knickerbockers,
stockings and fishermen’s caps. The players also wore
shin guards and football boots.
 Thank you for listening to my presentation.
 Hope you enjoyed it..