1824: THE WORLD’S FIRST FOOT-BALL CLUB

 

1824: THE WORLD’S FIRST FOOT-BALL CLUB

John Hope and the Edinburgh footballers: a story of sport, education and philanthropy

John Hutchinson and Andy Mitchell

This book breaks new historical ground to reveal that Hope Foot-ball club should be acknowledged as the first football club.

The Edinburgh club lasted until 1841, 17 years after it came into existence in 1824. This was 33 years before Sheffield FC were formed in 1857 and means the South Yorkshire club are left with the significant consolation prize of being the oldest existing association football club.

It is perhaps not too surprising that Scotland’s capital was the location for the first football club as the city also holds numerous other sporting firsts. These include the world’s first archery club (1676), first golf club (1735) and first gymnastic club (1785). The first two sports could never be described as vigorous and it was not to until the 1820s ‘when the concept of taking vigorous exercise for pleasure and self-improvement began to take hold.’

The decision by John Hope, aged 17 and newly enrolled at the University of Edinburgh, in 1824 to form a football club didn’t though emerge from nowhere because this book shows the game, although different from today regarding its rules, had been played for many years amongst the middle and upper classes in their formative years and into adulthood.

First illustration of football in Scotland in 1670s

Archibald Flint, who graduated with an MA in 1673 from the University, which since 1591 had a playing field where students engaged in supervised games, produced a remarkable set of drawings in the 1670s. These included what is the oldest known illustration of football in Scotland. This shows two men in hats on Calton Hill kicking a ball between an unusual set of three barred goal posts.

Hope’s initiative was seized on eagerly by his fellow students and over the following decade and a half a minimum of over 300 became club members. Their fees helped to purchase goalposts and footballs and to hire a playing field at a time when attempts to play football in public places was being actively discouraged as police rules of 1814 meant anyone playing football in the street could be fined up to 20 shillings.

Membership records show that football games involved up to 40 men. Caps were used to distinguish sides.

First written rules

The football was clearly competitive but it included a code of behaviour and in 1833, Hope wrote down what are believed to be the first set of rules for playing football. There were just six rules and the final one is perhaps the most important in defining that the game that was being played was one using the foot rather than hands.

Rule 6 states ‘allow the ball to be lifted between fields’ Authors John Hutchinson and Andy Mitchell state that it was the only rule that Hope redrafted.

They believe ‘It appears to mean that the only time the ball could be lifted, i.e. picked up or handled, was when it was out of play ‘between fields.’ If that is correct it confirms that this was a forerunner to the non-handling code that became association football’.

The club had many different homes. Some players signed up for just a single season, others for 2 or 3 while a smaller number played for the 12 years that membership records were kept.  By 1836 Hope, a remarkable man who later encouraged women to play football, was close to 30. He had a busy life and was heavily involved in work, including great charitable initiatives aimed at young people from straitened circumstances, and politics, which later included anti Popery campaigns.

The last known correspondence on the club is dated 14 April 1841 and with its demise organised football in Scotland fell into decay. As such when the Edinburgh Academy sports ground opened in 1854, Francis Crombie, who had spent the previous two years as a border at Durham School had a booklet of printed rules in which the handling game was key. Academy boys adopted Rugby. In December 1857 the first recorded representative (rugby) football match was played between Academical Football Club (consisting of former pupils from Edinburgh Academy) and students from the University.

Oldest medal

Not until Queen’s Park was formed in 1867 did Association Football make a formal comeback. None of which meant that football had been forgotten between 1841 and 186. In 1851 a 24-a-side match was played between university students and kilt wearing soldiers of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. 500 attended and a medal was presented to the winners -the soldiers. This medal is recognised as the world’s oldest football medal.

The son of a former Hope member played in the first unofficial international

In 1870, Scotland and England played each other in the first unofficial association football international. Scotland were capped by James Kirkpatrick (1841-99) who was an FA Cup winner with Wanderers in 1878. His father was Charles Sharpe Kirkpatrick, a Hope Football Club member in 1832 -33.

Amazingly, James Kirkpatrick, the captain of the Scotland rugby team in its first international, was the son of another Hope member, James Moncreiff, in 1832-33.

All praise to John Hutchinson and Andy Mitchell for researching and publishing this book.