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Football is an
ancient game. Some 2,500 years ago the Chinese played a form of it called Tsu
chu, in which they kicked a ball of stuffed leather. Natives of Polynesia
are known to have played a variation of the game with a ball made of bamboo
fibres, while the Inuit had another form using a leather ball filled with
moss. However, much of the game's development came about in England where it
was first known in the 12th century. It became so popular that kings,
including Edward II and Henry VI, tried to ban it on the grounds that it
distracted men from the necessary military duty of regular archery practice.
Such edicts had little effect.
Varieties developed in England and in Europe (in 14th-century
Florence there was a form called calcio). A traditional version in
England was known as Shrovetide football, common in the Midlands and the
north of England for centuries. Such games might involve hundreds of men on each side and
were usually a free-for-all between sections of a town, villages, or
adjoining parishes that would often develop into a brawl. Many schools played
football and some, notably Eton, Harrow, Winchester, and Rugby, evolved codes
of their own, particularly Rugby, which established a code from which others
(American football, for example) developed. During the 19th century there
were concerted efforts to organize and structure the different forms and
provide acceptable rules.
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