Association Football: And How to Play it

By John Cameron

This book contains a detailed guide to the history, tactics, positions, and the contemporary state of football written by one of its earliest celebrities, John Cameron. Contents include: “Full-Back Play”, “The Middle Lineard Play”, “Training”, “Hints to Juniors”, “Captaincy”, “Refereeing”, “Football as a Profession”, “Continental Football”, “Football Reform”, “Present Day Football”, “Famous Cup-Ties”, and “Laws of the Game”. A classic guide to football not to be missed by collectors of vintage literature related to the subject. John Cameron (1872–1935) was a Scottish footballer and manager. He was a forward for Everton, Scotland and Queen's Park, as well as player-manager at Tottenham Hotspur who led them to victory in the 1901 FA Cup. He was appointed first secretary of the Association Footballers' Union in 1896 and was interned in a civilian detention camp in Germany during WWI after coaching Dresdner SC. When the war finished, he started a career as a football journalist, author and publisher. Macha Press is publishing this classic work now in a new edition complete with the original text and artwork for a new generation of football lovers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macha Press
• Release date: May 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9781528790475

Book preview

1.png

ASSOCIATION

FOOTBALL

AND HOW TO PLAY IT

By

JOHN CAMERON

First published in 1908

Copyright © 2020 Macha Press

This edition is published by Macha Press,

an imprint of Read & Co.

This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any

way without the express permission of the publisher in writing.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library.

Read & Co. is part of Read Books Ltd.

For more information visit

www.readandcobooks.co.uk

Contents

A History of Football

PREFACE

CHAPTER I GOALKEEPERS AND GOALKEEPING

CHAPTER II FULL-BACK PLAY

CHAPTER III THE MIDDLE LINE

CHAPTER IV FORWARD PLAY

CHAPTER V TRAINING

CHAPTER VI HINTS TO JUNIOR AND AMATEUR CLUBS

CHAPTER VII CAPTAINCY

CHAPTER VIII THE REFEREE

CHAPTER IX FOOTBALL AS A PROFESSION

CHAPTER X CONTINENTAL FOOTBALL: ITS GROWTH AND POSSIBLE DEVELOPMENTS

CHAPTER XI FOOTBALL REFORM

CHAPTER XII PRESENT-DAY FOOTBALL

CHAPTER XIII A FEW FAMOUS CUP-TIES

LAWS OF THE GAME

Illustrations

J. Cameron

Saving a High-Flyer

Heading the Ball

Ready for the Kick-off

Centring from the Right Wing

Centring from the Left Wing

Passing with the Instep

Shooting with the Instep

A History of Football

Football has an incredibly long and varied history. Various forms have been identified throughout times-past, as early as the second century in China. However the modern game as today's fans would recognise it, was officially codified in 1863, in London.

According to FIFA the competitive game cuju was the earliest form of football. It is evidenced in the form of an exercise in a military manual from the third and second centuries BCE. This was a Chinese manual compiled by Zhan Guo Ce, and the game literally translates as ‘kick ball.’ It originally involved kicking a leather ball through a small hole in a piece of silk cloth, which was fixed on bamboo canes and hung about 9 metres above the ground. During the Han Dynasty (206 BC - 220 CE), cuju games were standardized and official rules were established.

The Ancient Greeks and Romans are known to have played many ball games, some of which involved the use of the feet. There are also a number of references to traditional, ancient, or prehistoric ball games, played by indigenous peoples in many different parts of the world. For example, in 1586, men from a ship commanded by an English explorer named John Davis, went ashore to play a form of football with Inuit people in Greenland. There are later accounts of an Inuit game played on ice, called Aqsaqtuk. Each match began with two teams facing each other in parallel lines, before attempting to kick the ball through the other team's line, and then at a goal. These games and others may well go far back into antiquity.

Despite these early beginnings, the main sources of modern football codes appear to lie in western Europe, especially England. There, team football games were played in schools since at least 1581. England can also boast the earliest ever documented use word ‘football’ (1409) when King Henry IV of England issued a proclamation forbidding the levying of money for ‘foteball.’ In addition to this early evidence, there is also a Latin account from the end of the fifteenth century of football being played at Cawston, Nottinghamshire. This is the first written description of a ‘kicking game’, and the first description of dribbling:

The game at which they had met for common recreation is called by some the foot-ball game. It is one in which young men, in country sport, propel a huge ball not by throwing it into the air but by striking it and rolling it along the ground, and that not with their hands but with their feet... kicking in opposite directions.

While football continued to be played in various forms throughout Britain, its public schools (known as private schools in other countries) are widely credited with three key achievements in the creation of modern football codes. First of all, the evidence suggests that they were important in taking football away from its ‘mob’ form and turning it into an organised team sport. Secondly, many early descriptions of football and references to it were recorded by people who had studied at these schools. And thirdly, it was teachers, students and former students from these schools who first codified football games, to enable matches to be played between schools.

The first set of football rules was drawn up at the University of Cambridge in 1848, and became particularly influential in the development of subsequent codes, including association football. Known as the 'Cambridge Rules', they were written at Trinity College, at a meeting attended by representatives from Eton, Harrow, Shrewsbury, Rugby and Winchester schools, though they were not universally adopted.

Contemporary codes of football can be traced back to this codification. During the early 1860s, there were further and increasing attempts in England to unify and reconcile the various football games, especially in the industrial north, resulting in the ‘Sheffield Rules’ of 1857. In 1862, J. C. Thring, who had been one of the driving forces behind the original Cambridge Rules, was a master at Uppingham School and issued his own rules of what he called ‘The Simplest Game’ (aka the Uppingham Rules). In early October 1863, a revised version of the Cambridge Rules was drawn up by a seven member committee, again with a distinguished membership representing former pupils of Eton, Harrow, Shrewsbury, Rugby, Marlborough and Westminster.

With all these different rules, there was great scope for confusion on the football field. As a result, one Ebenezer Cobb Morley, a solicitor from Hull, wrote to Bell's Life newspaper in 1863, proposing a governing body for football. Morley was to become the FA's first secretary (1863-66) and its second president (1867-74). He is also particularly remembered for drafting the first ‘Laws of the Game’ at his home in Barnes, London – that are today played the world over. For this, he is considered not just the father of the Football Association, but of Association Football itself.

On 20th July 1871, C. W. Alcock, a gentleman from Sunderland and a former pupil of Harrow School proposed that ‘a Challenge Cup should be established in connection with the [Football] Association’ an idea that gave birth to the competition. At the first FA Cup in 1872, the Wanderers (from London) and the Royal Engineers (an Army team) met in the final in front of 2,000 paying spectators.