Early Football What Ifs?
- cepmurphywrites
- 3 days ago
- 13 min read
By Gary Oswald.
Association football, better known as either football or soccer depending on your nationality and class, is the world's most popular team sport. It is, alongside American, Arena, Australian, Canadian, Rugby and others, one of many codes to emerge from the old game of football, which was probably first played in China thousands of years ago but was also independently invented elsewhere. That game was popular throughout Europe and as such was codified for the first time in the mid-19th century in England.
In terms of the code that would become association football, the Cambridge rules were in use by 1848 and the Sheffield rules by 1858, but the rules that would eventually be adopted worldwide, though they borrowed from both of them, was Ebenezer Cobb Morley’s 1863 ‘Laws of the Game’ (soon called the ‘London Rules’). The organisation that Morley ran, the Football Association, began organising matches under those rules and as more and more clubs began adopting them, the first competition, England’s FA Cup (a knockout competition), was founded in 1871. This was followed by the Scottish Cup in 1874, the Welsh Cup in 1877, the Irish Cup in 1881 and a Danish Cup in 1888, as the popularity of the code spread from its London origins.
The first national league, organised as a double round robin, was the English Football League in 1888, which was followed by the Scottish and Irish Football Leagues in 1890, the Belgian League in 1895, and the Italian League in 1898. (There was a Dutch league in 1888 but it is often discounted due to teams not playing an equal number of matches, with some playing seven and others one.)
The first Second Division in football history was founded in 1892, again in England, and was followed by one in Scotland in 1893, thus establishing relegation and promotion which would soon become a key part of football – and I write this just after the USA, one of the last holdouts, has voted to introduce it in their own football league. This template, established in England and Scotland, of a national cup and a league system (organised in the double round robin) with promotion and relegation would soon spread around the world, carried initially by British emigrants, so that nowadays most countries in the world have one.
Most countries also have an international team. The first international game was held in 1872 between England and Scotland. Regular games between England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland were held over the next decade leading to the British Home Championship, a single round robin championship between all four teams, starting in 1883. In 1886, the four associations started the International Football Association Board and in 1904 the continental associations started FIFA, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, which organised games in Europe (and enforced the use of the London Rules), leading to both the first game between the four home nations and a team from outside the British Isles (England vs Austria in 1908) and eventually the 1930 World Cup.
This, then, is the history of association football. The template of the London Rules spread throughout the world leading to a replication of that set up with a Cup, a league system and an international team all governed by a single organisation, the FA in England and their equivalents in other countries. Because of the way that set up became the template used in other countries, any changes to that template are hugely profound.
So, let’s look at exactly how that process happened in England.
For a start, the idea of footballing competitions was itself quite controversial. A lot of left-wing papers seriously argued that sport was entertainment and so all football should be exhibition matches where the point is to show off moves, not matches for trophies where the players want to win. So, no 0-0s wherein spectators’ hard-earned cash is not rewarded with thrills. This later became an issue in faction fights in European socialist movements about whether their affiliated sports federations should have competitions or should not encourage division between workers that way. The one sport that is closest to this ideal is pro wrestling which lent into sport as a spectacle rather than a competition by creating scripted contests. In a socialist Britain, football might well bear more resemblance to WWE than the Premier League!
Beyond that, I called the FA Cup “England’s FA Cup”. That isn’t true. In 2023-24, the last completed season as I write this, six of the 732 teams to enter the competition were based outside England, five in Wales and one in Jersey. In the first ever competition, in 1871-72, one of the fifteen teams was Scottish (Queens Park) and the 1880s saw seven clubs for Scotland, six clubs from Ireland, and six clubs from Wales enter the competition. The FA had never intended the Cup to be solely an English competition. Scottish and Irish clubs stopped competing in it not at the behest of the FA but of their own football associations, who feared their own Scottish and Irish Cups become devalued is their teams were to go for both prizes. After all, alongside the Scottish, Irish and Welsh Cups, a number of other competitions had been formed such as the Lancashire Senior Cup or the Northumberland and Durham Association Cup, with limited geographical reach. These were all explicitly less prestigious than the national FA Cup and the Scottish and Irish Football Associations wanted their cups to be seen as on the same level as the FA cup instead.
An obvious what if at this point then is what if Wales also withdrew their teams in the 1880s, thus making the FA Cup a truly English competition. That didn’t happen for the reason that the early heartlands of Welsh Football were split, between North Wales (around Wrexham) and South Wales (around Cardiff). The Irish League by contrast had seven of their eight founding members based in Belfast, with the eighth being from a village not far from Belfast. Likewise, all of the Scottish Teams were from the Central belt, primarily Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Both Ireland and Scotland are big countries with poor infrastructure, but their early footballing teams were concentrated in such a way that their leagues didn’t have to grapple with that. Wales did and so faced with the expense of trying to run regular transport between Wrexham and Cardiff, they didn’t withdraw their clubs from the English system as the distances weren’t much bigger and had much bigger rewards in terms of crowds. Their teams instead entered the football league and would remain in there until they formed their own league in 1992, by which point the largest clubs were so well established in England they remained within it. You’d need a different history of football in Wales, presumably one wherein it never caught on in either Cardiff or Wrexham, for the Welsh to also pull out and leave England as the only players in the FA Cup.
But what if instead of the FA Cup becoming English by default, a regional English cup was started instead, keeping the FA Cup as what it was originally intended to be, a cup for anyone following the FA rules?
As fun as the idea of a Cup which every single football team in the world can enter, travel times and costs especially in the 1880s are going to vastly limit what that could be. But if Irish and Scottish teams remain in it, is there a possibility that Dutch, Belgian, and French teams also join? After all, the travel costs were much less, and many English players went to those teams to play in those days.
The answer is “almost certainly not”. The British football associations had a famously parochial attitude, which was often utterly contemptuous towards football outside those isles. They didn’t join FIFA until two years after it was first founded and refused to join in any of the early World Cups thanks to a contentious relationship with the other members. Moreover. early matches between British and non-British sides were one sided; it wasn’t until the 1920s and 30s when there was genuine competition in terms of quality. There were good reasons for the British to look down on the quality of the continent. It feels incredibly unlikely for foreign teams to become a yearly fixture in the FA cup, though it’s possible for there to be a few guest teams before opinions become hardened.
It’s actually probably a lot easier to break that connection entirely, as the Home Nations were never entirely comfortable with joining FIFA and the result of that is probably FIFA not adapting London Rules to avoid the current situation of FIFA governing a game which they don’t have control over the rules of. (Changes to the game’s rules are still done by the International Football Association Board, meaning FIFA cannot change any rule without the support of at least two of the four home nations) That permanent split probably hugely damages football’s popularity.
It is worth noting at this point that there was a challenge to FIFA in OTL, as part of the most dramatic split in early footballing history: Professionalism vs Amateurism.
The FA was initially dominated by amateur clubs from the south ran by upper class nobility who didn’t need to work. But as the FA Cup grew in popularity, more teams began to apply from the northern working-class towns who couldn’t afford to labour on sports fields without pay. In 1879 the first paid team (Darwen from Lancashire) entered the FA Cup to much controversy, with it being proposed they were refused entry. The northern clubs preferred the passing game of Scotland compared to the running game of the south and so grew increasingly dominant within the FA Cup, leading to increasing tension. Accrington was expelled for paying players in 1883, the year the first Northern club, Blackburn Olympic, won the cup. As a result, and of promised new rulings dealing further punishment for teams paying players, the Northern teams created their own football association in 1884 which challenged the FA. In response the FA, after an initial failed vote in April, finally pushed through a law allowing payments to players in July 1885.
This paved the way for the Football League in 1888, to be made primarily from northern professional teams and not the southern amateur ones that held sway in the 1870s. Those teams formed their own breakaway Amateur Football Defence Council, which broke away from the FA, leading to a temporary ban for no paid players in FA teams. This Amateur Football Defence Council formed the Union Internationale Amateur de Football Association with primarily Eastern European teams between 1909 and 1912 as a competitor to FIFA and the FA, before a reconciliation was arranged.
Given this same divide led to the split between Rugby Union and Rugby League, it is far from impossible for such a split to also lead to two different codes emerging in football. Certainly, if the southern teams remained dominant within the FA, then it is likely they will adapt the Sheffield rules rather than the London rules.
The key in OTL however was that England embraced professionalism in 1885, while Scotland did not until eight years later. As a result, numerous Scottish football players moved south to England where they could get paid, something that vastly enriched English Football but led to its own backlash. In 1887, Sunderland AFC were banned from the FA Cup due to paying their Scottish players (the FA rules at the time were that players from anywhere could join the club but only players who had lived within 6 miles of the stadium for over two years could be paid). As a result, numerous Scottish players left Sunderland AFC to form Sunderland Albion, a team which was deliberately amateur to avoid such penalties (though there was suspicion that they merely paid their players through backhanders instead).
I bring this up because I said that the first national league, organised as a double round robin, was the English Football League in 1888, and while that is the official story, the Football League wasn’t really a fully national league. Neither Sunderland AFC nor Sunderland Albion were allowed to enter it due to Sunderland being too far away, though they both applied. To reduce transport costs, all twelve teams were from around the North West and West Midlands; teams from further North, East, or South weren’t welcome.
That did not change until 1890 when Sunderland AFC were accepted into the league after offering to pay for the other clubs travel costs and Stoke City, twice bottom, were unelected by the other members. Woolwich Arsenal would turn pro in 1891 and enter the Football League in 1893, becoming the first London (and southern) team in the new league, thus paving the way for a truly national league.
But this only happened because various competitor leagues were not professional. The Sunderland teams would have probably applied for the Scottish League instead, as it was closer and their players were mostly Scottish, if it wasn’t for the solely amateur nature of it. Likewise, the Northern league, based around the North Wast, made the decision to abolish the professional division and restrict itself to amateur clubs, which limited its appeal, despite containing excellent teams. Further south, Arsenal had initially proposed in 1891 to form a professional Southern League as a counterpoint to the Football League but gave up in the face of opposition from the London Football Association who wished only for a purely amateur league, which would run for less than one season in 1892. It was only after Arsenal joined the Football League that their dreamed of professional Southern League started in 1894 and it was initially limited in popularity.
However, in 1893 the Football League introduced a rule that meant that once a player was registered with a Football League club, he could not be registered with any other club without the permission of the first club. It applied even if the player's annual contract with the club holding his registration was not renewed after it expired. The club were not obliged to play him, and without a contract the player was not entitled to receive a salary. Nevertheless, if the club refused to release his registration, the player could not play for any other Football League club. This was then followed by the introduction of a four pound per week maximum wage within the League.
This suddenly meant that playing outside the Football League became much more attractive –and indeed it was many players’ only option – and the Southern and Scottish leagues boomed as a result, as did France. In 1901 a Southern League team, Tottenham Hotspur, won the FA Cup, the only time a non-Football League team has done so since its formation; and in 1907, Bradford Park Avenue, a team from Yorkshire, joined the Southern League in defiance of geography. The Southern League was for a brief time a genuine alternative to the Football League.
In 1910 however, shortly after a failed strike and legal challenge by football league players against their rules, the two leagues came to a deal, which led to the Southern League adapting the player detainment rules of the Football League, handily destroying its main competitive advantage. In 1920 virtually all the Southern League teams joined with the Football League to become the new Third Division. Thus Football League absorbed their main competitor, something they’d already done once before.
The Combination formed in 1888, the same year as the Football League, and later become the Football Alliance which Sunderland Albion joined. It attempted to act as a direct competitor to the new Football League but covering a wider area. But a combination of poor organisation (many Combination fixtures never happened meaning there was no champion of its first season) and difficulty covering the travel costs for the wider area (Sunderland Albion left after being expected to cover the train fares of their opposing teams in the way Sunderland AFC did) meant the Association agreed to merge with the Football League in 1892, becoming the League’s Second Division and creating promotion and relegation.
The Football League, almost despite itself, absorbed all its competitors. Instead of being merely one league among many within England, it became the top of a pyramid which all other teams are funnelled towards. The Northern and Southern leagues, once seen as comparable in quality with the Football League, are now in the seventh to tenth tiers of the English pyramid, with their teams needing a decade of promotions to reach the top flight. English Football is unique in having this vast pyramid wherein teams like AFC Wimbledon can claw their way up to the Football League after winning promotion six times in the eight years since their formation as a club at the very bottom because most football leagues are all linked together.
But that only happened because every possible competitor to the Football League insisted in shooting itself in the foot and allowing itself to be absorbed. If Sunderland had refused to pay their opponent’s travel costs, Arsenal had been received more warmly by the London teams, Scotland had banned professionalism earlier, or the Southern League had held firm on player detainment, then you could have easily seen the Football League be only one league among many operating within England, of equal prestige. This after all was how things happened in Brazil, Germany and other countries, where the National Championship was competed between the winners of various regional leagues. If that happens a truly national league might not form until much later, and probably also includes the Scottish teams. It also probably prevents the Football League using their monopoly to introduce the anti-workers law they did in OTL.
There is one last topic to cover. All of the above is solely about men’s football, and women’s football also existed in those early formative years.
In 1919 and 1920, there were a series of charity exhibition games with the female workers of a Preston factory, the Dick, Kerr Ladies, that included the first women's international game, and were hugely popular. On Boxing Day 1920, they played a game at Goodison Park, Liverpool that got 53,000 through the gates, during a season when the average attendance at a men’s home game there was closer to 30,000. (Though to be fair, Everton did get 59,000 for the game on New Year’s Day so it was least partly 'this is a bank holiday lets go the footie’)
In response to that, in 1921, the FA said 'Complaints having been made as to football being played by women, Council felt impelled to express the strong opinion that the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and should not be encouraged.
Complaints have also been made as to the conditions under which some of the matches have been arranged and played, and the appropriation of receipts to other than charitable objects. The Council are further of the opinion that an excessive proportion of the receipts are absorbed in expenses and an inadequate percentage devoted to charitable objects.
For these reasons the Council requests the Clubs belonging to the Association refuse the use of their grounds for such matches.'
With no league clubs being able to host them, the Dick, Kerr team, later renamed Preston Ladies, were unable to attract big crowds in the UK anymore, though they did still play in front of big crowds when touring USA and Canada. English woman's football was essentially destroyed as a result, the 1920 crowds became a high point that has only recently been beaten for women’s football in the UK.
This ban is hard to avoid given the culture of English Football at the time, but much like the player retention rules were only so significant because the Football League had taken a monopolistic position of English league football. It’s a different story if the breakaway Amateur and Professional organisations had not reconciled with the FA.
Gary Oswald is the editor of the Grapeshot and Guillotines, Emerald Isles, and If We'd Just Got That Penalty anthologies.