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Borger Kruge




Location: Norway
Joined: 13 Sep 2003

Posts: 20

PostPosted: Tue 24 Feb, 2004 6:07 am    Post subject: England banned football in 1314         Reply with quote

I believe it was Thomas McDonald who posted a link to this timeline in a previous thread http://www.timelines.info/history/ages_and_periods/. Of the many interesting things that emerge, one of the oddest might be that England banned football in 1314?

I remember reading someplace that "tournaments" sometimes took place between towns or villages, involving three-way contests of grappling, sword-fighting and "footeball". Which leads me to suspect that the rules of football in the 13-hundreds would be slightly more interpretable than it is today.

I would love to hear if anyone could give a picture of what football was like in the 14th century! I bet there wasn't many penalties, free-kicks or offside-rules...
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Geoff Wood




Location: UK
Joined: 31 Aug 2003

Posts: 634

PostPosted: Tue 24 Feb, 2004 9:28 am    Post subject: Re: England banned football in 1314         Reply with quote

Borger Kruge wrote:
I believe it was Thomas McDonald who posted a link to this timeline in a previous thread http://www.timelines.info/history/ages_and_periods/. Of the many interesting things that emerge, one of the oddest might be that England banned football in 1314?

I remember reading someplace that "tournaments" sometimes took place between towns or villages, involving three-way contests of grappling, sword-fighting and "footeball". Which leads me to suspect that the rules of football in the 13-hundreds would be slightly more interpretable than it is today.

I would love to hear if anyone could give a picture of what football was like in the 14th century! I bet there wasn't many penalties, free-kicks or offside-rules...


In Ashbourne in Derbyshire (English Midlands) there is a traditional game still played at Shrovetide that has sometimes been suggested as a representative of medieval football (my brother used to play it when he worked in the area, and I was born there, but grew up elsewhere). From my brother's descriptions it appeared to consists of the males of the town dividing into two sides, each of which spent several hours (it used to run on into the evening) trying to get a ball to a particular scoring point (sorry, I don't have detail of the method of scoring). The ball could be kicked, carried, hidden up your jumper, kept behind the bar in the pub, or whatever. Aside from that, there was a lot of consumption of alcohol, a lot of trespass onto private property, running around in gangs, fights etc.. I'm not sure if I ever heard of anyone actually scoring. I suspect it may have been banned elswhere to prevent riotous behaviour. Given the timing, in spring, you have to wonder if there were original, much older, versions played with a head or some other recently living substitute for the ball, but that is just speculation on my part.
Geoff
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