Football: The First Hundred Years: The First Hundred Years: The Untold Story

by Adrian Harvey, Boria Majumdar (Series Editor), James Anthony Mangan (Series Editor)

The story of the creation of Britain's national game has often been told. According to the accepted wisdom, the refined football games created by English public schools in the 1860s subsequently became the sports of the masses Football, The First Hundred Years, provides a revisionist history of the game, challenging previously widely-accepted beliefs. Harvey argues that established football history does not correspond with the facts. Football, as played by the 'masses' prior to the adoption of the public school codes is almost always portrayed as wild and barbaric. This view may require considerable modification in the light of Harvey's research Football's First One Hundred Years provides a very detailed picture of the football played outside the confines of the public schools, revealing a culture that was every bit as sophisticated and influential as that found within their prestigious walls Football, The First Hundred Years sets forth a completely revisionist thesis, offering a different perspective on almost every aspect of the established history of the formative years of the game. The book will be of great interest to sports historians and football enthusiasts alike.

Genres: Sports, Football

320 pages, Paperback

First published July 13, 2005

Reviews

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fabulous revisionist history of the emergence of football (soccer) that does not fall into the teleological trap of assuming that the way football turned out must have been the way it was intended. Harvey shows several things: that the Football Association only governs the kicking game seems to have come about by the accident of who was able to get to meetings in November and December 1863; that football as we know it only came about because the stronger football culture of Sheffield 'saved' the FA and sacrificed its ways to the southern game, and that the middle class, public school missionaries of football did not take a new game to the masses, but provided working people with a common game that built on and adapted their local versions. The level of detail is likely to put off general readers, but it is detail that is essential to debunk many of the myths and fantasises modern football and of the analysts of the past whose attention to detail and therefore historical rigour is wanting. One of the two or three most significant books in academic studies of football's past. Vital reading.