by Simon Wright

Created on: May 11, 2008

The sport of Association Football dates back to 1848, which is when the first formal set of rules were drawn up. The sport quickly became known simply as football and has gone on to become the dominant team sport in the world.

Its origins, however, go back much further than 1848 and can be traced right back to Roman times. The Romans introduced the sport of Harpastum to Britain. Harpastum was like a combination of soccer and rugby but with little in the way of rules! A tradition of annual Shrovetide matches sprung up, where rival villages would play each other, using a pig's bladder for a ball. King Edward the Second even tried to ban the sport, in 1314, and there were subsequent attempt by other monarchs but luckily they were largely unsuccessful!

However, most of you will probably be all too aware that there are other sports that use the word football'. These include:

- American Football (sometimes also referred to as Grid Iron)
- Rugby Football (more commonly referred to as Rugby Union)
- Gaelic Football (played in Ireland)
- Aussie Rules Football (played in Australia)

One of the consequences of the 1848 codification of the rules was that handling the ball was outlawed (with the exception of goalkeepers and throw ins). The dropping of draft rules to allow players to run with the ball in hand, and to obstruct an opponent by holding them, led eventually to the formation of the Rugby football union in 1871. American Football then descended from the rugby branch.

Both rugby and American football can therefore be regarded as owing their existence to the original form of football, namely Association football. (Note: I don't intend in this article to look at the separate emergence of Gaelic football and Aussie Rules football but suffice to say that these are less global sports).

Given that the term football' traces back to Association football, I think it's clear that it is more deserving of the general description of football than its rugby or grid iron relatives. It's also a term that makes much more sense in relation to Association football, where the object is to kick a ball with your foot. In rugby and American football, the aim is to throw the ball to a team-mate who then runs with the ball in their hand. It is of course also possible to kick the ball but players of these sports spend more time with the ball in their hands than at their foot. Maybe Throwball', Handball', or Catchball' might be more apt terms to use for these two sports?!

Had the makers of the 1848 rules patented the term football' then we probably wouldn't be having this discussion. However, branding wasn't big business back in the Nineteenth century and so the word football' was allowed to be used without impunity by the other sports. Indeed, it can perhaps be seen as an umbrella term to cover a family of sports that are all related. I therefore don't have a real problem with the term American Football' but I do think that it is a liberty for the organizers of the American sport to market their game purely as football'. If that single word description is to be used for any sport it has to be for the daddy of the football sports Association Football.

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