Mere Players: “Roughness” and the Development of Football in XIX
Century England—A Discursive Outline
It is hardly a question that football in England is more than entertainment.
Many people would recognize that the game is the expression of an industry of
gigantic proportions that generates profits not only for players and executives directly
involved in the game, but also for a larger number of people on the periphery of the
industry. From the lawyers who participate in the signing of television contracts to
those involved in the construction, upkeep and cleaning of stadiums, the game is at
the core of an enterprise that branches out into different areas of England’s socioeconomic life, directly and indirectly supporting thousands of people all over the
country. Considering its economic magnitude, it would be reasonable to assume that
the game is also a reflection of English society. Whether it is in the global nature of
the culture, in its consumerism, or in its class frictions and divisions, British football
is in many ways a product, and therefore, a projection of the mother country. By
looking at football and its social extensions, then, we can extrapolate the major
characteristics of 19th century British society.
Specifically, I will contend that industrialization was a major force in the
organization of the sport, that the game reflected the nature of class relations at the
time, and that eventually, it also became an expression of masculine working class
identity away from neighborhood and work. In other words, the organized game was
one of the many organs that grew out of the body that was Industrializing England in
the mid-1800s, and as such, it was one of the many expressions of this society. As is
the case today, football was a display of a society in which people tried to improve
and give meaning to their lives by competing with each other, asserting their
2
identities, expressing their emotions, and building and maintaining social
relationships.
Methodologically, I believe historians should shy away from promoting one
historical view over another. People are not static. They’re ever-changing,
influenced, among many factors, by historical time, social context, physical space,
even the workings of a day, the emotions of a minute, the interplay of these and
infinite others. If anything, individuals are the product of their experiences and
because it is often impossible to interview the actors and witnesses of the past, to read
their minds and figure out the unconscious, historians have to settle for an incomplete
story based on limited resources and the awareness that the value of their work lies in
the contributions they make to the larger historical discourse. Recognition of such
considerations makes the balance between historical interpretation and objectivity
even more challenging, and the motivations and influences of people’s actions more
difficult to interpret. So in an attempt to gain only a partial understanding of the
issues that affected the development of football in the middle of the 19th century, I
will create a narrative that incorporates some of the major ideas on the role of class
distinction and masculinity in the development of football in an Industrializing
England. These include Ian Taylor’s view of working class behavior during football
games as a resistance to the imposition of bourgeois values, Eric Dunning’s
interpretation of workingmen’s actions during games as the expression of a code of
behavior produced by the working structure of a “rough” working class environment,
as well as a number of popular interpretations dealing with football in the 19th and
20th centuries that address an even larger number of issues. I will use these works to
create a narrative in which the game is viewed as a social organ, which when looked
at closely, can provide some insight into at least part of the organic make up of XIX
3
century English society at large, intertwined with the ever-changing qualities of the
entire configuration of society.
This organ began as a growth in pre-industrial England. During the Middle
Ages, and perhaps as early as the Roman times, people in England and in other parts
of Europe played a game that in some areas went by the name of football, in others
campball, hurling, knappan, and so on.1 These games were usually part of community
events, in some cases involving very few pre-established standardized rules that
covered more than a village or a particular countryside area,2 for standards on a
national scale required communication, agreement, and/or commitment to a set of
rules and conditions. While it could be argued that religious leaders and merchants
served as agents of general values and ideas, that there were migrant workers who
occasionally ventured from town to town, in ancient times community traditions were
often more important in regulating the behavior of the people.3 There were monarchs
in England before industrialization, but it took years for them to consolidate power,
and even then the enforcement of rules was very difficult, for to some degree on a
very basic level, these difficulties reflected the limitations of communication. A local
leader could have decided to ignore a decree or have interpreted a law in a way that
fitted the needs of his particular community and/or his relationship with important
members of the locality. Mostly in cases where decrees affected many of them in
negative ways and the monarch could hold them accountable, regional leaders would
have made the effort to communicate their dissatisfaction and confront the monarch to
create a different cultural standard, a different legal code. Taxation and salvation
were sometimes the sticky issues, and the limits of royal power began this way; but
when it came to the daily workings of village or a countryside area, to the rules of
entertainment, for instance, the community was usually more important in creating a
4
behavioral framework.4 Sports were not an exception to this social phenomenon; and
so it was that prior to the creation of a stronger central state with a stronger
bureaucracy and system of communication—indeed, prior to the second phase of
industrialization—that many games were played all over England that only resembled
modern football or each other.5
The nature and rules of the game varied from village to village, from town to
town, from region to region. Even the balls varied in size, in shape (some were round,
others oval), and in composition from different scraps, leather, and the bladder from
different animals. The fields were different from community to community in shape
and length. Some were rather large by modern standards, in some cases measuring
more than a mile in length, with familiar trees and slopes serving as markers along the
way. Others were comparable to today’s fields, though even then the number of
players was different from parish to parish. In some cases teams of one hundred
players could go at each other, violence permissible, a spectacle of brute strength,
with players wearing spurs on their shoes to increase the effectiveness of the possible
blow. Yet in other cases the number of players was a lot smaller, and the potential
violence tamed through adherence to pre-established community rules. There was
rarely a referee as this was often the role of local leaders and spectators, or any
random person the teams agreed upon. The nature of the score, the markers of the
field also varied from locality to locality. Such was the confusion when teams from
different communities met, that the players of each team could be guided by different
rules, or simply by the individual impulse of a moment. Supposedly it was out of this
confusion that the game of rugby was born, when a player decided that it was easier to
carry the ball in his hands and run for the score instead of pushing and kicking.
Perhaps it is only what would appear to be the modern need for a common national
5
origin and our sense of football posterity that have guided our desire to call these
primitive competitions by the name of football. For by modern standards the game as
it existed at that time can be compared to no more than a growth without clear
definition, uniformity, and the hostility of some matches illustrate that the potential
was there for games to become violent and deadly. However, in the long run, that
was not the case, for by the late 1800s football had developed into an organized sport
with standard rules of play. Furthermore, by the turn of the century, England had
developed a professional league with organized games played by different teams and
attended by thousands of fans.
The development of modern football was not a sudden occurrence, a spark,
nor the product of an overnight dream by a sport genius. Like industrialization, the
development of professional football as an organized sport with rules recognized and
understood by everyone involved in the game was a process that took many years to
unfold. The popularization of football was not uniform, nor did it follow a particular
progression, a particular rate of growth, a particular economic pattern that
encompassed all of England. By the 1850s and with the exception of a few rules
made by some schools, in the cities and in the countryside, men and children still
played different games following different styles and modes, the differences
resembling those that characterized play prior to industrialization. It was the year
1863, in fact, that marked a turning point in the history of football, and by extension,
in the history of sports, for it was that year that a group of middle and upper middle
class men met to create a league comprised of 12 teams that followed the same rules
and used comparable-size fields and balls, with the players who participated in the
matches having a clear uniform understanding of the game.6 For industrialization,
mechanization, and standardization brought people together, linked different
6
communities through infra-structural improvements, broadened markets, and
contributed to a stronger state capable of exercising (if only selectively) more control
over the population. The development of football was a reflection of these changes
taking place in the larger society.7 In essence, England was becoming a more unified
cultural organism.8 Football was one of its organs now, the railroads, the canals, the
roads were the veins of the economic system, and the cities were the heart, evolving,
growing, changing, and forever amorphous. The creation of modern football
represented an agreement between members of different communities to come
together and have fun under the same standard rules. What had been a cyst of preindustrial England with no clear definition was becoming a useful part of the national
social body.
For many years now scholars have debated many aspects of the Industrial
Revolution: the causes and effects of the process, the nature of the change, and the
predominance of some socio-economic factors. Some have emphasized the role of
women, of international and internal markets, of the accumulation of capital through
agriculture, population growth, the role of the state, consumption, the development of
an effective banking system, class divisions, and more. The point of this essay is not
to engage this debate, as I perceive it to be in part the classical case of historical truth
explained from many angles, but to focus instead on some of the basic structural and
social changes that in the long run took place in England as a result of the Industrial
Revolution, and to explore how the game of football evolved in accordance and as a
result of these changes. Such transformations include improvements in
communication by the middle to late 1800s, the development of a distinct working
class, and a middle and upper middle class with goals that they often perceived to be
different from each other and the aristocracy, and the development of massive cities.
7
All of these socio-economic factors influenced the development of modern football.
Industrialization contributed to urbanization, produced the railways and trolleys that
allowed fans and players to travel from game to game in a relatively short period of
time. How better do a people develop a stronger and more continuous sense of a
national identity with their country-mates than through the exercise of activities that
promote a sense of a shared experience, of belonging to a nation? Wars were always
useful in this respect, but they were risky and expensive, nationalism was an
inadvertent effect, not necessarily their aim, taxes were resented, the crown was far
away, in many cases it was only a symbol of a distant central authority perhaps of a
different religion, and Parliament represented only a minority of the population.
Regional allegiances, immediate relationships were often more important. Football
was one of the peaceful venues, inexpensive, an activity that people enjoyed, that was
played in many versions and at different social levels, bringing people of different
regions together, promoting England as a nation, and inadvertently reflecting the
country itself.9
This is not to say that industrialization destroyed community allegiances.
What it did do, however, was create a stronger national network, a larger layer of
more solid connections on top of smaller local ones. Class identity, setting yourself
apart in a Victorian society through the demonstration of available resources
continued to be an important part of the social reflection of the country, especially for
a growing middle class carrying the heavy load of insecurities produced by limited
safety nets and the presence of a mass of poor, especially when so many businesses
collapsed every day all around them. This meant dressing a certain way, acting a
certain way, attending certain activities that helped them reinforce the ostensible
uniformity of their identity, sharing and creating an exclusive experience, giving
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permanence, turning the fiction of a higher rank into a physical reality of clothes,
styles, behaviors, and laws.
Attending the public schools was one of such activities. In them, boys were
supposed to receive an education that was to teach them the values that would help
them succeed in society.10 However many middle and upper class parents (whether
they were bourgeois or aristocrats) felt that the schools were ineffective in educating
their children, as these institutions were known for the disorderly conduct of some of
the boys and for an outdated mode of teaching that reflected the more romantic ideal
of an aristocratic life style.11 Many parents reacted by demanding a pedagogy that
reflected the needs of living in an industrial and ever-changing society with
measurable objectives and statistics, a time of major profits and loses, when business
became large-scale, distinctively set beyond the bounds of agriculture,12 and never
safe as investment. Such a dynamic was instrumental in promoting football as a game
that reflected certain values and expectations, and therefore, in setting the stage for its
human and physical characteristics.
It was in this educational environment that a group of middle class men from
the public schools sat down and in 1863 created a game that served as a mechanism
(even if only inadvertently) for the further promotion of their expectations and values
in the classroom and beyond the surrounding walls.13 This can be seen in the way the
game was organized. Selfless cooperation was more important than individual
competition.14 And this not to say that the organizers necessarily believed that middle
class men should not have pursued their own interests, but like the ideal in society,
players needed to follow an external standard of rules that was to represent the
parameters within which the interplay between self-control, group care and work,
creativity, and competitions were to take place—their performance measured through
9
a final result and the power of figures. Players could catch the ball with their hands,
but they could not run with it, they could not wear any cutting objects on their shoes,
and pushing and hacking were not allowed anymore. This is really when football and
rugby separated, in the difference between pushing, kicking, and how, when, and who
could carry the ball.15 Games were decided by a difference of goals. This set up was
a reflection of the workings of an organized industrial society, and therefore football
served as a model and a mechanism for social training, like a family to a child.
Players, like members of an industrial society, like businessmen and workers, needed
to follow standards of behavior, laws, symbols, and social uniformity; like the
interchangeable parts of a machine, they needed to follow a standardized form, a
script in which the players could improvise on the spot--the rules of the game were
indeed to a football player what a musical score is to a great jazz performer or anyone
engaged in any social script or play: he improvises to beautify, to stay ahead of the
competition, to win the accolades of the fans, make a profit, move forward, and
ensure his own security through a higher rank but within the pre-established limits of
the community and group.
Perhaps to the leaders and organizers of the Football Association individual
competition as a result of a desire for a higher rank came more naturally than a
concern for the community. If industrial society were an example, they could see
what men were capable of doing to their fellow humans to ensure their own security:
child labor and putting men and women to work under despicable working conditions.
They could also see that in order to ensure success, men needed to pay attention to
tangible mathematical figures and have a sense of the system as a whole—Dickens
made a living out of telling these stories. So it comes as no surprise that the
organizers and leaders of the FA encouraged players to promote the welfare of the
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team, of the community first, even if at the cost of their own individual performance.
They had to be gentlemen first, control their emotions, use restraint, and channel their
competitive spirits, their manly physicality through the framework of rules, values,
and team play. In essence, the game was a recreation of an ideal society where men
had to have honor, discipline, and courage, and more importantly, follow the rules of
the game as they would follow the standards of society as defined by the leaders and
organizers of the middle and upper classes. Men were members of their middle and
upper class communities and they had to stick to the rules. It was the sacrifice of
victory, of reaping the benefits of belonging to a group. “Spends a great deal of
money on his dress, ma’am,” said one of Dickens’s characters, reflecting the
mentality of the time, and another responded: “It must be admitted that it’s very
tasteful.” To which the first replied: “he looks at me as if he gamed,” and the first
returned: “It’s ridiculous, ma’am because the chances are against the players.”16 It
was such a view about human behavior and understanding of self that to some degree
informed the creation and formulation of football, and the reference to class, gaming,
and player have a ring of comical irony in this context, as if society were sport and
“men and women were mere players” with costumes and interests that reflected their
worth. Such a constructionalist and materialistic view of the world is also illustrated
by the words of N. L. Jackson, who throughout his life played the multiple roles of
player, referee, and sporting journalist during the early years of the Football
Association. His view of the game becomes clearly evident when in 1900 he is
quoted as saying that: “Players should never lose their temper… [that] The game
should be played for enjoyment…[that a player] should be absolutely unselfish. Play
only for [his] side and never keep the ball when [he] ought to pass it. No captain
should retain a selfish player in his team, for he sets a bad example.”17 But of course
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no matter what the social background, or the intentions of leaders and organizers,
people will very likely be competitive, and football, like any social creation, was also
a game of ingenuity and display, a balance of staying ahead as individuals and as a
group, a competition for a higher rank within the team and against others. The latter
meant trying to win games, and a desire to win tied the latter to the former, as winning
ultimately meant trying to score more goals than the opposing team. It comes as no
surprise, then, that early on the rules and style of football reflected a focus on
offensive play despite the philosophy emphasized by coaches and organizers like N.
L. Jackson. In a sense, football was a compromise between individualism and
cooperation, one of the eternal human struggles. The rules of the FA created a
standard that brought players together by giving them a common understanding of the
game, of limits and extremes, and of fair play as a group, while individual players
represented the power of individualism and a constant desire to exert themselves
through finesse, creativity, and rough physicality. Schools like Sheffield still resisted
the FA offside rule, momentarily catching the ball was initially allowed, and it was
common practice for individual players to keep the ball for longer than it was
practical and beneficial to the team. Five, six players in a squad will be focused on
scoring without the deliberate18 use of their teammates, and it will not be until years
later that teams following the rules of the FA will develop a more defensive style of
play with four defenders, and a sense of glory defined by the short pass and team
performance.19
But before that came to be, the game had to grow in popularity and for that to
happen English society had to change. At first the Industrial Revolution created a
social scenario without which the creation of the FA would most likely not have been
possible. But by the middle of the XIX century, the game was no longer the cyst of
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earlier years, when local matches were often a spectacle of violence, and chaos ruled
the scene of some games. Industrialization created a new set of circumstances. It
brought standardization and a different sense of order on many different social levels.
It created a new social body to which football functioned as an organ that helped the
system stay strong and grow. The organizers and leaders of the FA turned what had
been a disorganized display of roughness and confusion, a potential cancerous cyst,
into a useful social organism. Football had evolved with society. It had adapted to
industrial England the way a living being adapts to and adopts the challenges of a new
environment.
But once organisms evolve, they rarely stay static for the span of their lives:
they grow, they tend to reproduce, they change and they may continue to evolve
through the passing of time. This was not an exception in regards to football.
Although at first middle and upper middle class men from the public schools
primarily played the game, as the 1800s progressed, many working class men also
began to play and attend games as formulated by the Football Association.20 This was
the result of several social factors. Definitely influential in this respect were the
changes that took place in labor laws and practices in the second half of the XIX
century.21 For it must be noted that playing football was kind of a social luxury.
Middle and upper middle class men were the ones with the time and money available
for formal entertainment and the ones more likely to have had the formal skills
required to organize an institution around the notion of regulating a sport and what to
do with leisure time. In the 1860s, it would have been difficult for many working
class men to have even fathomed standardizing the rules of football, even less, setting
them down on paper, because in many cases they had not had a formal education, so
often times they did not know how to read and write. Simply put, working folks
13
lacked the mentality and self esteem in relationship to society, the cultural capital that
such a formal enterprise required of a human being. More basic still, attending and/or
playing any games on a regular basis would have been difficult because they also
lacked the time, money, and energy for such social pursuits, as in some cases workers
had to spend 12, even 14 hours a day laboring in factories for meager wages. They
only had Sundays off and by then they would have been tired and exhausted,
physically and psychologically needing a day of rest. I imagine them sitting in a chair
after work, projecting the physical decadence of their unfulfilled hopes and dreams.
The lucky ones in the cities would have lived into their forties, before the common
contextual pressures (i. e. ineffective medicine, bad nutrition, unhealthy sanitary
conditions, and a general lack of proper social services) would have put their bodies
to rest forever. Life was short, both figuratively and literally. Playing football would
have been difficult under such circumstances, formalizing the game, perhaps a
ludicrous possibility. This is not to suggest that members of the working class were
helpless victims in the face of social oppression, or that they lacked agency in their
lives, that whenever the opportunity presented itself, they did not play a spontaneous
game of football in the streets of the neighborhood. What it meant, however, was that
the situation was emotionally, financially, and physically challenging for the majority
to enjoy such social luxuries as participating in formalized sporting events on a
consistent basis.
This situation began to change, however, as working people acquired a
higher standard of living through higher pay and shorter hours22as a result of the
struggles of organized labor movements. By the 1880s many industries had lowered
the working day to 12, even 10 hours a day, and in many cases industrial workers
were also given Saturday afternoons off. Now workers had the time and money
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available to enjoy some form of leisure through direct involvement as players or as
spectators.23 Football was also very adaptable to an urban environment. The rules of
the game were simple and therefore easy to follow, and the game did not require
much equipment other than a ball made out of animal bladder and scraps. Moreover,
since pushing and hacking were not permitted like in rugby, the game could be played
on any flat ground in spite of the roughness of the surface. Participants could also
reduce the size of the field and the number of players to meet the needs of an urban
environment with limited space and of people with different obligations.24 It is no
wonder then that by the end of the XIX century football had become the main form of
entertainment for common people all over England, with the FA growing from 1,000
members in 1871 to 10,000 teams by the turn of the century.25 Football played
multiple purposes: it was fun and cheap, the game brought people together, allowed
them to form community around space, in the fields, riding the trolleys to games, or
just simply by wearing a team t-shirt as a connecting symbol to a fictive family. No
doubt about it: as the 1800s came to a close, football had become an essential
organism of industrial English society.
The popularization of football among working folks was also due partly to the
work performed by the graduates of the public schools who had been educated to
believe and had internalized the notion that it was their responsibility to care for the
community.26 The plight of urban workers in industrial England offered many
opportunities to provide social assistance, and indeed in the second half of the XIX
century many graduates of the public schools worked as leaders of organizations that
sprang up with the purpose of helping the working poor and their families improve
their lot.27 The organization and playing of football played an important role in
accomplishing this social goal. Many of the former graduates who now worked in the
15
churches and social organizations that tried to help the urban poor had played football
in their school years and in some cases were still directly associated with the sport, as
was the case with Lord Kinnaird, an “old Etonian,” who in the 1880s was president of
both the FA and the YMCA.28
Two major forces guided the promotion of football by middle class leaders in
the communities of the poor. One was the belief that football promoted the “right”
social values in the way it had served as a learning tool for the boys of the public
schools, and another was the notion that football could serve as a promoter of the
health of the working class by encouraging physical exercise. The notion of a
muscular Christian came into vogue as an ideal at the time, and this was an individual
with balance of both physical and mental health.29 He was to be strong and fit,
protected from the deadly epidemics that sometimes swept the cities and from the
temptations of social excesses like drunkenness and prostitution. He was a believer in
God, a practitioner of the values of hard work, discipline, and care for his community,
family, and self. Indeed, it comes as no surprise that churches and other religious
organizations promoting such values took a lead in the founding of many football
teams in working class communities all throughout England. But the muscular
Christian was only a social ideal that did not quite fit the social reality of the working
class community. In addition to churches and religious organizations promoting a
perfect social model, teams were founded in pubs and in different industries all
throughout the country, as well as in the new state schools that began to play the role
of educating the children of the working class. Football served for state schoolboys
the same purpose that it had served for their counterparts in the public schools—it
created a framework for social training.
16
According to Dunning and other authors, the participation of working class
men in games following the rules of the FA changed the style of play into one that
reflected the harshness of a working class living environment. When players of
working class backgrounds began to play football in the 1870s and 1880s, games
became more physically contentious as reflected by the higher number of fouls called
by referees. In Dunning’s opinion, such a physical style of play was a reflection of
the socialization of children in working class neighborhoods, where parental
supervision was minimal because parents were busy working and the living quarters
of the working class were generally too small and physically uncomfortable to spend
time in them. Children grew up in the streets where they integrated and naturalized
physical aggression. The use of violence for status and control was an acceptable
mode of interaction, a usual form of communication, “pleasurable” even (as John Kerr
argued in his book), becoming part of the modus operandi of working class adult men,
giving rise to what Dunning and others termed their “rough” culture. Working class
players transplanted this “roughness” onto the football field. Essentially, these new
players brought an acceptance of physical play that reflected all the dysfunctional
characteristics of their urban environment and undisciplined countryside origins.
Although Dunning offers valuable insight into the immediate conditions of
working people and their possible effects on some individuals, his analysis suffers the
malady of misplaced emphasis and limited scope. In his framework, the working
class is guilty of plaguing, of infecting the playing of football with the virus of their
roughness and acceptance of violent physicality. Prior to their participation in
football in the 1870s and 1880s, football as played by members of the Association
was supposedly a sport of gentlemen that required little supervision other than two
neutral referees provided by each team. He sees the addition of an umpire and the
17
conversion of the neutral referees into independent enforcers of rules as a reflection of
the physical roughness that the working class brought to the game. Surprisingly,
Dunning downplays the importance of the introduction of FA Cup play in 1871 and
the professionalization of football in 1885 as important factors in the rise of the
competitiveness of contests. Politically, he also fails to emphasize the influence of a
system in which working people had had little institutional recourse, as the right to
vote came slowly to them. Roughness could indeed be expressed through institutions
as well as through body-to-body contact. The latter was more visible and
reproachable to the untrained eye, and a matter of choice and agency to those in
positions of power. The former was more subtle and naturalized, part of a selection
process to some, projected by institutions that had been designed to promote a social
status quo where it was acceptable for a few men to live off the toil of his others. The
upper classes were slow and smooth in their roughness as players. The working class
must have noticed the nature and hypocrisy of such socio-economic dynamics, for
they fought hard to have unions and representation—they must have noticed too that
they were the casualties of the law of the land, the ones who according to the upper
classes had populated the cities too quickly and brought their roughness from the
countryside and transplanted it onto their physical jobs and their whole way of life.
The upper classes weren’t rough; they were just looking out for their own interests—
perhaps doing their best.
Many working people understood that they were engaged in a social struggle
for survival and a better quality of life. They interpreted the community ideal their
own way, and wondered in what ways exactly were they part of the community: were
they just servants to wealthy men? Thus they seemed rougher in the streets and on the
football field; and this was the result of several factors beyond the scope of local
18
socialization patterns and the transplantation onto the city of old country ways: there
is the understanding that working people were exploited at the job, that for a long
time, they did not have the means to exert change in society and their lives other than
through their bare bodies illegal cooperation (life was that simple sometimes: the
upper classes had money and documents (i.e. security) and the workers did not have
as many choices); and the influence of professionalization after 1885 can not be
understated. Some prayers officially began to receive payment for playing football
and the fans began to pay for tickets, for t-shirts, and for transportation to games30—
football had become a financial investment, an emotional experience linking local
communities, city, and country. Fans and players could share concerns, make plans,
bond with each other during practice, in the stands, traveling to games. There were
shared memories and associations of a whole set of symbols in the community, its
strengths and exposure of potential weaknesses—the drive for success, despite the
roughness of the social environment kept them going. The workingman was more
than a harsh sociological being, static, responding helplessly to an environment. He
was the product of his historical past, his individual upbringing, his sociopolitical
context with all its limitations and opportunities, his choices within, conscious and
unconscious, his hopes and dreams, his good qualities and intentions, and “the
roughness” of the competition—the historical workingman was infinite in his
humanity, amorphous, full of possibilities, like all of us human beings: bones, flesh,
hopes and memories.
It is no wonder the working fans started shouting, and here and there, there
would be fights in the streets, on the field, and in the stands.31 One week around the
turn of the century, three people would lie dead in the streets from fights springing
from three different games. Football meant a lot to everyone now: it was a matter of
19
life and death to some, for victory meant glory. The players were playing for money,
sometimes making much more than what they would make in the factories,32 for
twelve years if he was disciplined, didn’t drink too much, and he was lucky enough to
not get hurt. When he performed well his fans and teammates honored him, his
community, and possibly his co-workers, depending on the level—he had a lot going
for him. So he pushed hard sometimes to protect his interests and all their
associations, and truly that’s the way some fights started; but to leave the story there
would be bias, for the upper classes played a detrimental role in this social dynamic.
When it came to football they were the ones giving out orders, telling everyone what
to do, commanding, creating a script33 for “a poor player who strut[ted]… his hours
upon the stage,” because the workingman had very few other choices and football was
his venue. And the show was a huge success, with fans flocking to the big stadiums,
to the point that over 60,000 of them were willing to pay to watch the important
games by the turn of the century.34 England was on top of the world—the portion of
an island that had conquered an empire where the sun never set. A lot was at stake
now, so it is not surprising that when the fans didn’t like a call, they threw things onto
the field, aiming for the referees, shouted profanities, especially when the ruling of an
offside took a goal away, or just simply when they didn’t like the officiating and they
blamed him for an unsatisfying result. Such was the shame of defeat, as when on the
24th of February the Leicester Mercury reported that after a Football League game
“the referee was mobbed at the close…So demonstrative were the spectators that the
police could not clear the field. [He] had to take refuge under the grandstand, and
subsequently, in a neighbouring house. The police force was increased and eventually
the referee was hurried into a cab and driven away followed by a howling, stonethrowing mob.”35 On another occasion in 1895, the Daily Mail reported how a referee
20
“was so badly assaulted that he did not recover consciousness for some time.”36
Understandably, some members of the middle class didn’t like such unpredictable
spectacles of out-of-control behavior. The noise and violence must have seemed
threatening and dangerous, and definitely not courteous and smooth. There were no
documents and no guarantees when it came to the unscripted and spontaneous
roughness by some members of the working class—so members of the upper classes
expressed concern. Such a conflict of approaches took over some blank spaces in the
media, as when leaders of the FA announced in one of the papers that “the
Association [was] determined …to stop the use of foul language on the part of the
spectators and football matches and that referees will receive the full support of the
executors.”37 The referees were to act like policemen now, making sure that the
players and fans behaved, that they followed the script of the game; but when the
latter felt that a call was unfair, that an action or judgment had gone beyond the limits
of fair improvisation, they did what anyone without political recourse has done to
have a say and bring us closer to that ideal of equality: they threw stuff at the
executers and shouted some curses to call attention and intimidate to get their way.
They attacked the referees; they attacked the opposing team players. The goal was to
win at any cost, so the situation got out of control sometimes, to the point that after
some games the fans would rush onto the field and attack anyone38they held
responsible for the shameful feeling of defeat in a rough capitalist environment. The
workingman was rough—very rough—and so was life in England in the 1800s.
The middle and upper classes, on the other hand, were very concerned about
appearances, making sure that everything looked nice and neat, that it was
“mathematical” and “predictable.” They lived in an economic environment plagued
by the persistent fear that a business may collapse on their lives at any time.
21
Examples abounded from years before and all around them. The competition was
harsh; the plan was only a screenplay, variable, for the actors were human beings,
infinite, always wanting more, challenging the limits of possibility. At worst a person
would end up in jail for trying to pull a trick on the other team that was beyond the
rules of possibility. At best, a life would be deferred, like the servant, Mrs. Sparsit, in
Dickens’s Hard Times—recessions and depressions got in the way of many economic
dreams that were defined by how much a person accumulated in his/her lifetime to
ensure his/her economic security and rank and those of his/her children. So the new
entrepreneurs shared power with the aristocracy and they found many common
grounds to play their capitalist game. Their favorite player was the worker because
s/he was desperate and with very few choices. So sometimes his/her children turned
out to be of “harsh” personalities as adults, but this was because harshness was at the
core of English Capitalist-turning-consumer Society in the 1800s. Some members of
the middle and upper classes were somewhat fearful of the possibilities of this
“harshness,” and the question they sometimes asked was: How far would the workers
take things next? To them, workers acted “impulsively” and “un-mathematically,”
and the results of uprisings in France and the rest of the continent were familiar to
those concerned. Physical roughness was a questioning of the rules and the middle
and upper classes did not want any social challenges. Such an understanding explains
why the loudness and screaming at football stadiums seemed threatening and out of
place to the Victorian middle and upper classes, and why by the 1890s less and less of
their members ventured in to watch a game.
The Victorian Era was in full swing, a time when appearances took a life of
their own and the world was full of players. Social status was always important, and
your house and clothes were the first impression. The rest could be stored inside, a
22
few drinks away, neatly packed. As Eric Hobsbawm has so eloquently put it, some
wanted to distance themselves from the workers because of comfort. The author puts
such men in the category of “complacent…well-off or successful m [e]n who [were]
also at ease in a world which seem[ed] to have been constructed precisely with
persons like [them] in mind.”39 Apparently, it was a man of such breed who wrote to
the paper to express his approval to the leaders of the FA for trying to control the
situation with the fans at the stadium. He encouraged the authorities to do “all they
[could] to keep the game so no self-respecting man may hesitate to bring either male
or female members of his family [to the games].”40 It makes sense that a middle class
man did not want to expose his family to shouts of profanity in public. He had an
image to protect. He was a player of a different game, and his status and that of his
family were at stake. He wanted workers to watch the game quietly, follow the rules
and instructions, and do everything at the “proper” time and by the book assigned to
them by those who socially represented upper class values and concerns. Life was
serene for the upper class man; so he thought (perhaps reasonably) that the worker
was emotional, too extroverted, and simplistic, and that his clothes were a bunch of
rags assembled in senseless styles and colors. Indeed, some middle and upper class
men must have felt noble not to be workers—their higher status confirmed by taste
and choices. Life must have seemed like a dream sometimes to these men, minus the
nightmare of those workers—rowdy and rough workers of the lower ranks and their
demands.
In sum, this is why football was so popular and continues to be today: it was a
business, a really good job, a way of living, of affirming and perpetuating social
dynamics on all different levels and forms, a family of men, a simple venue to
compete and express emotions, and a way to glory—indeed, football was
23
entertainment as usual: a organ that had grown out of and therefore reflected the
larger social body. A few middle class men and fewer women would be watching in
the stands, reflective to some degree, of their still low numerical proportion as a class,
and the roughness of a young fan with a bleak future ahead of him, and very few
alternative role models around. By the turn of the century, the game was watched and
played predominantly by working class people.41 The upper classes still controlled
the business aspects of the game, set up the rules, judged the behavior of fans and
players, and in essence, turned the game into a social barometer and mechanism for
social control—many people were watching, tensions were high, a lot was at stake.
As a contemporary observer noticed, football “created a safety valve through which
pressure generated by industrial capitalism could pass safely, without endangering the
basic relationships of society.”42 Such a conclusion becomes even more evident and
the social tensions they arouse more glaring, when an eyewitness at the turn of the
century made a similar observation:
Is it not wonderful that 60,000 men of passions …, stronger
passions likely, and certainly less schooled, should quickly
assemble round a plot of ground, wait patiently for a considerable
time, watch an exciting match, and as soon as it is over quietly
disperse? …Or could you wish for proof more striking of the good
sense…and the strong self control of your countrymen? Whenever
I see such a crowd my heart goes wholly out to that Lord Derby
who could cry ‘Lord, what am I that I should govern such a
nation!’ And I muse on what might happen if they gave their
passions play? 43
Needless to say and as implied by the sarcastic tone of the last line, it was not
always as tranquil at the stadium as the observer admired, and often, the fans did give
“their passions play,” but around football and not a political or social cause.
Although the possibility was there, the latter was only permissible through the slow,
and often frustrating, intervention of the proper channels and authorities. So when
24
emotions erupted in violence at the stadium, those in charge had to call the police, the
crudest enforcers of the legal standard. There was a lot of pushing and shoving during
games, in the stands and on the field. Players were hit with flying objects. The fans
fought each other, the players, the referees, the police, and even the army. Such was
the scene after the Aston Villa-Preston Cup-tie in 1888.44 After fans invaded the field
and rushed after players, the referee and each other, the organizing authorities had to
call in more police, and then the military, to bring the situation under control. There
was clubbing and laughter, blood spilled, drunkenness, frustration, anger, and a few
were put in jail. This was England at the turn of the century, and so were the game of
football and the fans: rough, very rough, and the violence, drunkenness, and
screaming of some games only reflected the extent of these social dynamics and
traditions.
Football was an instrument of social control that promoted perceptions and
understanding, and allowed some members of the upper and middle classes to instruct
workers on what to do and how to behave. When the workers went too far by
throwing stuff and fighting, the authorities called in reinforcement to stabilize the
situation. England needed control, order, and projection, for the empire was never
safe. In the beginning, it was the Spaniards, then it was the French and the Spaniards,
the French, and now it was the Germans, making demands and causing trouble in
Paris and later on, all over Europe. American industries were also running a rich
game across the Atlantic, expanding west and then southward. Where would their
products go next?
The empire was always confronting different challenges and threats, from
outside and within, so the players needed a script to ensure the best possible play.
Professional football as known today developed in this environment of insecurity and
25
possibility, of control, progress, limits, violence, and negotiation. The rules and
structure of the game, the behavior and expectations of fans and organizers reflected
this social framework, and the endless possibilities within, their memories, ambitions,
interests and dreams—the whole humanity of everyone involved, not just their
roughness.
By the 1940s, German bombers would begin bombing cities all over the
country, in a way signaling the beginning of the final chapter for many English
industries. Paper money would continue to rule the scene by the year 2004, in some
cases making the English laborer 40 to 200 times more expensive than some of their
not-so-fortunate counterparts in other countries. But that is a story that is outside of
the scope of this one, too large-scale, jumping too far ahead, ignoring too many
important details about the workings of international markets, social differences,
available resources, production, and the other internal, economic, social, political, and
cultural dynamics of nations and regions, as well as the signing of some documents
and a screenplay provided by the IMF and the World Bank—an inconsequential
historical leap. For this story revolves around football and I should stay within the
limits of my framework, contained, within sight of my thematic center and stop
challenging understanding and wandering so far ahead into a future with little hope.
For despite its complexities, the story of football is also a simple one of social
release and joy that began early in the modern era, when a bunch of men kicked and
carried a ball; they were mere players who hit each other, screamed and shouted their
competitive spirits and physicality across any field, around the world and back,
coaxing and forcing victory, hoping and remembering, challenging social limits they
“strutted their hours upon the stage,” playing a game “full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing” but themselves, and the social context in which the game
26
originated. That was football in the 19th century, and that was also England—men
and women who were mere players, playing and watching an exciting game of shouts
and kicks, hopes, and memories, in very familiar fashion but like no one else before,
forever, and anywhere they played.
1
Murphy, Patrick. Football on Trial: Spectator Violence and Development in the Football World. Ed.
Patrick Murphy, John Williams and Erick Dunning. London; New York: Routledge, 1990: 28.
2
Canter, David, Miriam Comber and David Uzzel. Football in its Place: An Environmental
Psychology of Football Grounds. London: Routledge, 1989: XIII.
Walvin, James. The People’s Game: The History of Football Revisited. London: Mainstream
Publishing, 1994: 48.
3
Walvin, James. The People’s Game: The History of Football Revisited. London: Mainstream
Publishing, 1994: 48.
4
5
Mason, Tony. Association Football and English Society: 1863-1915. Brighton [Eng.]: The
Harvester Press, 1980: 5-6.
Russell, David. “Associating with Football: Social Identity in England 1863-1998.” Football
Cultures and Identities. Ed. Gary Amstrong and Richard Giulianotti. Basingstoke: The Macmillan
Press, 1999: 16.
6
Walvin, James. The People’s Game: The History of Football Revisited. London: Mainstream
Publishing, 1994: 48.
7
Walvin, James. The People’s Game: The History of Football Revisited. London: Mainstream
Publishing, 1994: 48.
8
9
Mason, Tony. Association Football and English Society: 1863-1915. Brighton [Eng.]: The
Harvester Press, 1980: 5-6.
Walvin, James. The People’s Game: The History of Football Revisited. London: Mainstream
Publishing, 1994: 37.
10
Walvin, James. The People’s Game: The History of Football Revisited. London: Mainstream
Publishing, 1994: 32-33.
11
Walvin, James. The People’s Game: The History of Football Revisited. London: Mainstream
Publishing, 1994: 32.
12
Walvin, James. The People’s Game: The History of Football Revisited. London: Mainstream
Publishing, 1994: 37-38.
13
Walvin, James. The People’s Game: The History of Football Revisited. London: Mainstream
Publishing, 1994: 37.
14
Walvin, James. The People’s Game: The History of Football Revisited. London: Mainstream
Publishing, 1994: 43.
15
27
16
Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. Ed. Kate Flint. London: Penguin Books, 1995: 123.
17
As quoted in Mason, Tony. Association Football and English Society: 1863-1915. Brighton [Eng.]:
The Harvester Press, 1980: 224.
Murray, Bill. The World’s Game: A History of Soccer. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois
Press, 1998: 8
Walvin, James. The People’s Game: The History of Football Revisited. London: Mainstream
Publishing, 1994: 74.
18
Walvin, James. The People’s Game: The History of Football Revisited. London: Mainstream
Publishing, 1994: 74.
19
Russell, David. “Associating with Football: Social Identity in England 1863-1998.” Football
Cultures and Identities. Ed. Gary Amstrong and Richard Giulianotti. Basingstoke: The Macmillan
Press, 1999: 16.
Walvin, James. Football and the Decline of Britain. London: The Macmillan Press, 1986: 47.
20
Walvin, James. The People’s Game: The History of Football Revisited. London: Mainstream
Publishing, 1994: 69-70.
21
Walvin, James. The People’s Game: The History of Football Revisited. London: Mainstream
Publishing, 1994: 69-70.
22
Walvin, James. The People’s Game: The History of Football Revisited. London: Mainstream
Publishing, 1994: 56-57.
23
Walvin, James. The People’s Game: The History of Football Revisited. London: Mainstream
Publishing, 1994: 70.
24
Murray, Bill. The World’s Game: A History of Soccer. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois
Press, 1998: 6.
25
Walvin, James. The People’s Game: The History of Football Revisited. London: Mainstream
Publishing, 1994: 44-48.
26
Walvin, James. The People’s Game: The History of Football Revisited. London: Mainstream
Publishing, 1994: 44-48.
27
Murray, Bill. The World’s Game: A History of Soccer. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois
Press, 1998: 9-10.
28
Walvin, James. The People’s Game: The History of Football Revisited. London: Mainstream
Publishing, 1994: 44-48.
29
Walvin, James. The People’s Game: The History of Football Revisited. London: Mainstream
Publishing, 1994: 65-68.
30
Walvin, James. The People’s Game: The History of Football Revisited. London: Mainstream
Publishing, 1994: 80-81.
31
Walvin, James. The People’s Game: The History of Football Revisited. London: Mainstream
Publishing, 1994: 84-85.
32
Russell, David. “Associating with Football: Social Identity in England 1863-1998.” Football
Cultures and Identities. Ed. Gary Amstrong and Richard Giulianotti. Basingstoke: The Macmillan
Press, 1999: 16.
33
28
Walvin, James. The People’s Game: The History of Football Revisited. London: Mainstream
Publishing, 1994: 78.
34
35
Leicester Daily Mercury. 24 February, 1890.
36
Daily Mail. 28 January, 1895.
37
Leicester Daily Mercury. 24 January, 1899.
38
Dunning, Eric. The Roots of Football Hooliganism: an Historical and Sociological Study. London;
New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1988: 58-59.
39
Hobsbawm, Eric. Industry and Empire: The Birth of the Industrial Revolution. New York: The
New Press, 1999: 58.
40
Leicester Daily Mercury. 24 January, 1899.
Russell, David. “Associating with Football: Social Identity in England 1863-1998.” Football
Cultures and Identities. Ed. Gary Amstrong and Richard Giulianotti. Basingstoke: The Macmillan
Press, 1999: 16.
41
Russell, David. “Associating with Football: Social Identity in England 1863-1998.” Football
Cultures and Identities. Ed. Gary Amstrong and Richard Giulianotti. Basingstoke: The Macmillan
Press, 1999: 16.
42
43
Budminton Magazine of Sports and Past Times. Vol. III. 1896
44
Dunning, Eric. The Roots of Football Hooliganism: an Historical and Sociological Study. London;
New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1988: 60.
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