History of Football

0:02Hello, welcome to Dead Funny History. I'm Greg Jenner, I'm a historian and I want to tell you about something cool. Football. My favourite. 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... ..and more like this. Oh, my windmills! Out of my spine. One of the earliest references to ball games in Britain is from the 9th century in a book called the Historia Brittonum, which means the history of the Britons, written, we think, by a Welsh monk called Nennius. It describes boys playing ball.

0:52Hello, and welcome to this coverage of a game of ball that I can see going on outside of my monastic cell. It's one group of boys against another group of boys. Historians have referred to the medieval game by lots of names. Folk football. Mad football. They were big community games, usually played in towns and villages on festival days. Sometimes Christmas Day. Hoo, hoo, hoo. Goal, goal, goal. But mostly on Pancake Day. Pancake Day? Yep. It's also called Shrove Tuesday. Now, these games could sometimes stretch the length of a town and could involve hundreds of players. There's some people on the pitch and by pitch, I mean the whole heist street.

1:52There were fewer rules. Oi, referee, he just picked up the ball. Yeah, you were allowed to carry the ball and throw it in the goal. Oi, ref, he's just punched me. Yeah, that was mostly fine too. Referee! Oh, and there wasn't a referee. What? Don't look at me, mate. I'm just a historian. Now, this football could be really, really gruesome. In 1321, William de Spaulding 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. It's a bit unusual getting the Pope to referee, although it might still prove more popular than VAR.

2:33And play is stopped as we consult a VAR. That's Vatican-approved review. And here comes His Holiness with the result. In nomine spiritu sancti, offside. Amen.

3:02So everyone must have loved football, right? Wrong! 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. 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. In the 1400s, football was banned by James I, King of Scots. Stop playing football! And James II? I said stop playing football! James III? Please, please stop playing football! And James IV? Please stop playing football, what's the point? But football remained popular.

3:49Shakespeare's plays referenced the game and even Henry VIII had a pair of leather boots in his great wardrobe. you wouldn't want to be marking him. Now coming on, number eight, King Henry VIII, King of England and defender of the faith. Yeah, I'd let him score, mate. 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. The Shrovetide game in Ashbourne, Derbyshire still happens today and it has goalposts which are three miles apart. Imagine the tactics. So, what do you reckon, boss? Short passing?

4:39Slow build-up from the bag? 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. But everything changed in the 19th century with the coming of the Industrial Revolution. That's enough fun. Get to work, you lot. 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. Aha! Now it's our turn to play. What ho? Football was now seen as the perfect sport for the middle and upper classes to show how strong and masculine they were.

5:26So, if you posh guys are all dead strong now, you could play against us commoners without worrying about getting here, right? Ah, well, we'd simply love to. We've scheduled all our games for when you have work. What a shame! What-o! Chuff-chuff! When posh people got into football, they also brought a bunch of rules with them. 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. Got a day off. Now can we play football? Yeah, but which football though? Eaton rules? 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 goals, no goals, touchdown goals?

6:16Ah, never mind. So how did we end up with everyone playing by the same rules? 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. Two of the main issues were around tackling and carrying the ball. And people had a lot of opinions. So, when a player has possession of the ball... Oh, but how does he have possession? Can he hold the ball with his hands, by his feet? Can he catch it, rush with it? Can other players tackle him?

7:00Hack his shins, gouge out his eyes, tickle him? Oh, never mind. Some schools even left in protest, and eventually a new sport splintered off, called rugby. Never heard of it. 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. If you lot can't play nicely together, then you're not playing at all. I will turn this football association round and nobody will get a vuvuzela. But at least as compensation, he got to have the best name ever, Ebenezer Cobb Morley. Ebenezer, Tonight you will be visited by three ghosts Who will show you the true meaning of football Turns out it's having lots of rules Oh spirit, I shall keep properly codified football in my heart all year round You boy, what day is it today?

8:08Today governor, why it's pancake day the best day to play rulers 300-a-side football. No! This is the one thing I didn't want to happen! Going into the 20th century, nothing could stop football. Apart from World War I. Oh, and World War II. That aside, the game flourished and evolved into the sport we know today. Everyone has been encouraged to play and watch and love football. as long as you're a man. 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. Welcome to the Inverness Derby with the married women versus all the single ladies, all the single ladies.

9:02If they want to switch teams, they're going to have to put a ring on it. The British Ladies Football Club played their first game in 1895, captained by its founder, Nettie Honeyball. What a brilliant name for a footballer. That's like having a banker called Volta Moneybags or a sprinter called Usain Bolt. Oh, wait. 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. My convictions are all on the side of emancipation and I look forward to the time when ladies may sit in Parliament. The women's game was incredibly popular and when the lads went off to war in 1914, many women swapped domestic housework for factory jobs.

9:56Not only were women doing different jobs, they were also being paid more and they had more time off. And what did they do with their time off? Goal! Footy! 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. They weren't all owned by some dodgy geezer named Dick Kerr. 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. Round the back of the factory yard, Preston.

10:37The star of the team was Lily Parr, a footballing superstar, even though she didn't exactly live the healthiest lifestyle, being a big smoker. Imagine how good a player she'd have been if she'd had healthier habits. Lily, you've gone grey. Why don't you switch out cigarettes for orange slices? I feel invincible. 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. She could nearly knock me out with a forced shot. There was even a story that she once kicked a ball so hard it could have broken a male goalie's arm.

11:22She kicks like a mule and breaks arms like a swan. Ow! 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. Lily retired in her 40s and lived to an old age with a woman named Mary. A happy ending for Lily. But a less happy time for women's football in general. Oh. Yep, in 1921, when there were 150 women's teams in the UK, the FA banned women from playing football on any FA-affiliated grounds. But some women kept playing in open defiance of the ban, which was not lifted until 1970.

12:111970? Yeah, I know. 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. I hope Lily Parr would have been proud of the likes of Mary Earps and not tried to break her arm. But I love breaking goalies' arms. Stop that, Lily! Oh, and that's full time. So, how much do you remember from today's speedy history lesson? Let's find out. Pencils at the ready. Question one. Medieval folk football sometimes involved the whole town and it was usually played on which festival days?

12:57Question two. Which game that allows carrying the ball split from football in the late 1800s? And question three. Who was the Dick Kerr ladies' star striker in the 1920s?

13:15Well done. Join us next time for another snappy history lesson. And if you're a grown-up and want to learn more about the history of football, listen to our episode of You're Dead to Me with Professor Gene Williams. Thanks for listening. Bye! This was a BBC Studios audio production for Radio 4. Dead Funny History was written by Jack Bernhardt, Gabby Hutchinson-Crouch and Dr Emma Neguse. The script consultant was Professor Gene Williams. It was hosted by me, Greg Jenner, and performed by Mally-Ann Rees and John Luke Roberts. Thank you.