Cambridge rules

Early codifications of rules of football

The Cambridge Rules were several formulations of the rules of football made at the University of Cambridge during the nineteenth century. Cambridge Rules are believed to have had a significant influence on the modern football codes. The 1856 Cambridge Rules are claimed by some to have had an influence in the origins of Australian rules football. The 1863 Cambridge Rules is said to have had a significant influence on the creation of the original Laws of the Game of the Football Association.

The playing of football has a long history at Cambridge. In 1579, one match played at Chesterton between townspeople and University students ended in a violent brawl that led the Vice Chancellor to issue a decree forbidding them to play "footeball" outside of college grounds. In 1631 John Barwick, a student at St John's College, broke the collar bone of a fellow student while "playing at Football". According to historian Christopher Wordsworth, football "was not, I think, played much in the [eighteenth] century" at the university. There is more evidence of the game in the early part of the nineteenth century. George Elwes Corrie, Master of Jesus College, observed in 1838, "In walking with Willis we passed by Parker's Piece and there saw some forty Gownsmen playing at football. The novelty and liveliness of the scene were amusing!" On the other hand, a former Rugby School pupil, Albert Pell, who attended Trinity College from 1839 to 1841, claimed that "football was unknown" when he arrived at Cambridge, but that he and his companions "established football at Cambridge", using the Rugby rules. During the early nineteenth century, each school tended to use its own rules of football. These school codes began to be written down in the 1840s, beginning with Rugby School in 1845. When Cambridge students who had attended different schools wished to play each other at football, it was necessary to draw up a compromise set of rules drawing features from the various codes.

Edgar Montagu, an old boy of Shrewsbury School who attended Cambridge from 1838 to 1842, recalled in an 1897 letter: "I and six other representatives of the School made a Club, and drew up rules that should equalise the different game. [ ] It was then we had two matches on Parker’s Piece". In another 1899 letter, he wrote: "I was one of seven who drew up the rules for football, when we made the first football club, to be fair to all the schools." The rules have not survived. and J. C. Thring, persuaded some Old Etonians to join them and formed a club. Matches were few and far between, but some were played on Parker's Piece. Unfortunately, the game was not popular at the 'Varsity then, and the club did not last long". Thring himself wrote in 1861: "in 1846, when an attempt was made to introduce a common game, and form a really respectable club, at Cambridge, the Rugby game was found to be the great obstacle to the combination of Eton, Winchester, and Shrewsbury men in forming a football club". No rules from this attempt at codification have survived. Green describes this development as "the first positive step to create an identity of views and a common code of laws [of football] acceptable to as many as possible", and laments the absence of a plaque "to commemorate this historic moment".

Henry Charles Malden attended Trinity College between 1847 and 1851. In 1897, he wrote a letter in which he described his memories of creating a set of football rules at Cambridge in 1848. The letter was subsequently published by C. W. Alcock in an 1898 newspaper article:

Though the 1848 rules described in Malden's letter have not survived, they have attracted significant interest from historians of the game. Alcock commented that "Mr. Malden's account of the original movement in favour of a uniform code of football is of the greatest interest, from the fact that none has previously seen the light. [ ] In any case, it certainly establishes the existence of a unified code fifty years ago". Malden's claim that the 1848 rules worked "very satisfactorily" is doubted by Dunning and Sheard, on the grounds that a new set of rules had to be created in 1856 (see below). Peter Searby also suggests that while "[p]erhaps these [1848] rules were adopted for some games the variety of practice that Malden described in fact continued for some time". Searby cites the recollections of T. G. Bonney, who attended St. John's College from 1852 to 1856, that he "often played football on Parker's Piece, without uniform or regular organization".

Another reference to compromise rules appears in the published memoirs of W. C. Green, who attended King's College Cambridge between 1851 and 1854: There was a Football Club, whose games were played on the Piece, according to rules more like the Eton Field rules than any other. But Rugby and Harrow players would sometimes begin running with the ball in hand or claiming free kicks, which led to some protest and confusion. A Trinity man, Beamont (a Fellow of his College soon after), was a regular attendant, and the rules were revised by him and one or two others, with some concessions to non Etonians. Few from King's College ever played at this University game: about the end of my time there began to be other special Rugby games on another ground.

In 1856, there was another attempt to draw up common rules. Frederic G. Sykes, who attended St John's College between 1853 and 1857, described their creation in an 1897 letter published in a magazine for St John's College alumni:

The Laws were drawn up in the Michaelmas Term of 1856, I believe. The meeting took place in W. H. Stone's rooms in Trinity College. Up to that time University Football consisted in a sort of general melée on Parker's Piece, from 1.30 to 3.30 p. m. [ ] There were no rules. [ ] When we met in sufficient numbers we chose two sides, and stragglers adopted the weaker side, or did as requested. The hand was freely used, everyone adopting his own view, until a crisis was reached in 1856, resulting in the drawing up of these rules. I never heard of an accident, and though the game was played vigorously, there was no violence, the ball being the objective, not the persons of the players. [ ] Do you think, (as I do) that the enclosed Laws may be regarded as the nucleus of the Association game? At that time football was played only in Schools and at the Universities, so that it did not then generally exist. There were no laws at Cambridge, whatever Oxford had. Different schools had their own rules, which had never been subjected to amalgamation. Each had its own. The enclosed rules seem to be the first attempt at combination, and from this point of view perhaps they led up to the Association rules. Sykes was unaware of any compromise rules earlier than his own 1856 code (which he suggests might be "the first attempt at combination") and stated that before their enactment "University Football" had "no rules". Curry and Dunning suggest that "[t]he regularity with which new rules were issued at [Cambridge] indicates a probable lack of effectiveness in the 'laws'". A copy of the 1856 Cambridge Rules survives at Shrewsbury School: another copy, dated from 1857, was included by Sykes with his letter. A notice, issued by the same club in September 1862, sought opponents for the upcoming season who would play "on the rules of the University of Cambridge".

The publication of the 1863 Cambridge rules happened to coincide with the debates within the newly formed Football Association (FA) over its own first set of laws. At this time, some football clubs followed the example of Rugby School by allowing the ball to be carried in the hands, with players allowed to "hack" (kick in the shins) opponents who were carrying the ball. Other clubs forbade both practices. During the meetings to draw up the FA laws, there was an acrimonious division between the "hacking" and "non hacking" clubs. An FA meeting of 17 November 1863 discussed this question, with the "hacking" clubs predominating. A further meeting was scheduled one week later in order to finalize ("settle") the laws. The Cambridge Rules appeared in the sporting newspapers on 21 November, three days before the FA meeting. At this crucial 24 November meeting, the "hackers" were again in a narrow majority. During the meeting, however, FA secretary Ebenezer Morley brought the delegates' attention to the Cambridge Rules (which banned carrying and hacking): resulting in hacking and carrying being banned. As the newspaper report of a later meeting put it, 'the appearance of some rules recently adopted at Cambridge seemed to give tacit support to the advocates of "non hacking".' The FA adopted the Cambridge offside law almost verbatim, replacing the quite different wording in the earlier draft. Morley even proposed making the FA's laws "nearly identical with the Cambridge rules", but this suggestion was rebuffed by FA president Arthur Pember. As a result, the FA's final published laws of 1863 retained many of the differences from the Cambridge rules that had been present in the earlier draft, including the following:
The FA laws provided for a change of ends every time a goal was scored, while the Cambridge rules stipulated that ends should only be changed at half time. The historical significance of these distinctions was, however, minor in comparison to the decision to reject hacking and carrying the ball. Jonathan Wilson has summarized it thus: [C]arrying the ball was outlawed, and [association] football and rugby went their separate ways.

Cambridge University Football Club continued to play according to its own rules. In March 1867, it summoned a meeting of "representatives of public schools and college football clubs" at which it was hoped that "Oxford would agree with Cambridge in adopting a common set of rules", with the intention that these rules "would in time become widely adopted throughout the country". Curry and Dunning suggest that Cambridge's decision to revise its own set of rules, rather than using those of the FA, reflects "the relative weakness of the FA at that time". The resulting set of rules, explicitly presented as a revision of the 1863 rules, included a "touch down", somewhat similar to today's "try" in rugby: a team who touched the ball down behind the opponent's goal line were entitled to take a free kick at goal, with the number of unconverted "touches down" being used as a tie breaker if both teams scored the same number of goals.

In 1869, the Cambridge club wrote to the FA to propose a match between the two bodies. It insisted on playing its own rules, a condition to which the FA would not agree. In 1871, the break between the two main codes of football was crystallized with the formation of the Rugby Football Union (RFU). This was followed in 1872 by the founding of the Cambridge Rugby Union Club, following RFU rules. Shorn of adherents of the "carrying game", the Cambridge University Football Club joined the FA in 1873. It played under FA rules when it took part in the third edition of the FA Cup, in the 1873 4 season.

In 2000, a plaque was erected in Parker's Piece by a football team consisting of homeless people. It bears the following inscription:

Here on Parker's Piece, in the 1800s, students established a common set of simple football rules emphasising skill above force, which forbade catching the ball and 'hacking'. These 'Cambridge Rules' became the defining influence on the 1863 Football Association rules. In May 2018, a monument titled "Cambridge Rules 1848" was installed on Parker's Piece. The monument consists of four stone pillars, engraved with the 1856 Cambridge Rules translated into several languages.

+ Laws of football reportedly created at Cambridge up to 1867 Date Survivestoday? Public school(s)involved Cambridge college(s)involved Source(s) Notes c. 1838–1842 ShrewsburyGonville and CaiusEdgar Montagu (letters of 1897 and 1899) Although drawn up solely by Shrewsbury alumni, the rules were intended to be "fair to all the schools". 1846 EtonShrewsburyRugbyWinchester St John'sTrinity J. C. Thring (article of 1861)N. L. Jackson (1899)The sources do not make it clear whether this attempt to create a code of rules was successful: "the Rugby game was found to be the great obstacle to the combination of Eton, Winchester, and Shrewsbury men in forming a football club". 1848 EtonHarrowRugbyShrewsburyWinchester Trinity[others unknown] H. C. Malden (letter of 1897) Malden claims that these rules were "still in force at Cambridge" when the FA's rules were created in 1863. c. 1851–1854 Eton"Non Etonians" Trinity[others unknown] W. C. Green (published memoir of 1905) Rules were "more like the Eton Field rules than any other" 1856 ✔ EtonHarrowRugbyShrewsbury ClareJesusPeterhouseSt John'sTrinity Copy preserved in Shrewsbury library (c. 1856)F. G. Sykes (published letter of 1897) Sykes states that before this code was created, university football was a "general melée" with "no rules". He suggests that these rules might be "the first attempt at combination". 1862 ✔ EtonHarrow Trinity[others unknown] Letter of J. A. Cruikshank to the Old Harrovian magazine The Tyro (October 1863) Rules were specially created for a match between old Etonians and old Harrovians at Cambridge in November 1862 1863 ✔ EtonHarrowMarlboroughRugbyShrewsburyWestminster Gonville and CaiusTrinity Published contemporaneously in newspapers (1863) Influenced the first FA rules 1867 ✔ CharterhouseCheltenhamEtonHarrowMarlboroughRugbyShrewsburyUppinghamWestminsterWinchester Christ'sEmmanuelGonville and CaiusJesusSt. John'sTrinity Published contemporaneously in newspapers (1867) Explicitly presented as a revision of the 1863 laws