[FONT="]THE RULES[/FONT]
[FONT="] Events across the Atlantic were to have a profound effect on Football in America. In October 1863, representatives of eleven English clubs and schools met in London to agree a set of standardised rules for Football and formed the Football Association. A series of further meeting followed until the rules were finalised in December 1863. The result was that the carrying and handling of the ball (except by the goalkeeper) were outlawed, along with the hacking, tripping and holding of opponents. The supporters of these features left the FA and went on to establish the Rugby code, though it would take until 1871 for the Rugby Football Union to be formally established.[/FONT]
[FONT="] The rules of both codes soon made their way across to America, and those colleges which had outlawed handling of the ball naturally gravitated toward the ‘Association rules’.[/FONT]
[FONT="]On November 6, 1869, Princeton met Rutgers in what is considered to be America’s first true football game. Although the two sides played first to six goals and fielded 25 men a side, they followed what were predominantly ‘Association rules’ with Princeton winning 6-4. However the following week they met again with the six goal rule not in effect as Rutgers annihilated their opponents 8-0. With inter-collegiate matches spreading more and more institutions such as Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania founded teams in order to compete.[/FONT]
[FONT="] Harvard meanwhile was left out in the cold. Stubbornly sticking with the Boston Game which allowed handling, they became increasingly desperate for opponents. They cast their eyes north across the border to Canada, where a number of colleges had embraced the pro-handling Rugby. In May 1874 they agreed to a two-match contest with McGill University of Montreal, in which the first game would be played to ‘Rugby rules’, and the second to ‘The Boston Game’. Harvard found that they preferred Rugby to their own rules and after playing McGill again at Rugby that October and in 1875, armed with an evangelical zeal for the Rugby game approached their arch-rival Yale in an attempt to sway them toward Rugby. Though keen to engage with their rival in regular sporting contests, Yale did not want to succumb to Harvard’s rules and demands and turned down the proposal, believing that Harvard would cave in and convert to the majority ‘Association rules’.[/FONT]
[FONT="] In 1876, keen to cement the position of ‘Association Rules’, Princeton called a conference at Springfield, Massachusetts to finalise a set of standardised football rules. Yale, Columbia and Harvard attended, the latter emphasising their commitment to the Rugby code and stating that they would not give it up. Princeton’s response in defence of Association was equally robust and a standoff seemed likely until Yale noted how both Association and Rugby were flourishing side by side but separately of one another in England. They asked if it was not possible to establish both, adding that ‘each school must surely contain enough men of good character and hardiness to be devoted to both codes.’ This was a decisive breakthrough as both Princeton and Harvard admitted that followers of each others’ code did exist in both institutions. It was then agreed that the delegates would return to their colleges and form into groups of Association devotees and Rugby devotees in order to form separate inter-collegiate bodies for both codes. And so, whilst the American Rugby Football Union was formed in Boston in November 1876, a similar meeting took place on the same day in New York in which the Football Association of America was established.[/FONT]
[FONT="] Initially both codes remained sports of the campuses but over the next decade, Association was to steal a march on its Rugby rival. Many factory managers and owners had had a college education where they had taken part in Football games. This was also an era where there were concerns about the conditions of the working classes. Many managers and owners established factory teams to promote the well-being and improve the health of their workers. It kept them away from the bar, tavern and gambling dens and fostered a spirit of teamwork, co-operation and loyalty to their employers. Many had already seen success with company Baseball teams already a common occurrence, but Football could keep the workers occupied during the autumn and winter months when Baseball wasn’t played. Whilst Rugby teams were established, its nature meant that injuries were much more frequent and serious than those of Association. For the son of a wealthy industrialist or from the establishment, a lengthy injury was all very well, but for a factory worker an injury could mean a lengthy lay off work, during which they would not be paid, and in many cases would find themselves out of a job and replaced. Association, offered a physical game full of vigour but with less risk of serious injury. Rugby continued to flourish amongst the upper and middle classes and of course thrives to the present day, but it was Association Football which grabbed the attention of the masses of America, as it was doing simultaneously in Britain. Though aficionados of both codes referred to their preferred game as simply ‘Football’, in general speech, ‘Football’ came to mean the Association code. Its followers noting that this was only right ‘since we use our feet and they use their hands.’[/FONT]
[FONT="] Both codes were spreading rapidly north of the border in Canada as well, and in 1882, the Canadian Football Association invited the Football Association of America to send a select XI to face the Canadians at the Toronto Cricket Club Ground. The growing number of football fans on both sides of the border had craved international contests, casting their eyes enviously across the Atlantic to where England and Scotland had been playing one another regularly since 1882. And so, on a rather chilly late autumn day in November 1882, the two neighbouring nations stepped out to contest the first international football match take place outside of Europe. The players from both sides being from the elite colleges and universities. Princeton, arguably the institution most responsible for association rules prevailing in America fielded no less than six players in that first American XI, followed by two each from Yale and Columbia University and the eleventh man hailing from Dartmouth. The match took place according to the
New York Herald “with a lively temperament and a keen pace”. The ‘red caps’ of Canada took a first half lead, but were pegged back in the second half, and the game ended in a 1-1 draw in front of a satisfied crowd “who cried heartily throughout the game and applauded warmly at the end.” said the
Toronto Empire, whose match report was accompanied by a commemorative poem:[/FONT]
[FONT="]The day for which we all had longed arrived with celebrations[/FONT]
[FONT="]An international football match between two sturdy nations[/FONT]
[FONT="]The American team clad in white, hardy men were all[/FONT]
[FONT="]But our doughty boys in Canadian red were wizards with the ball[/FONT]
[FONT="]The game kicked off to hoots and cheers, for Canada held the play[/FONT]
[FONT="]And Billy Lee jigged and danced and crossed for John McCrae[/FONT]
[FONT="]Big Mac nearly took the lead; he’s such a powerful shot[/FONT]
[FONT="]But Currie in the Yankee goal foiled poor Johnny’s plot[/FONT]
[FONT="]Our boys came back full of pep and soon the moment came[/FONT]
[FONT="]Charlie Turner scored a headed ball to earn immortal fame[/FONT]
[FONT="]Alas our lead was not to last, those American lads were strong[/FONT]
[FONT="]They battled hard and so to them the second half did belong[/FONT]
[FONT="]James Gould scored the finest goal to put the teams on terms[/FONT]
[FONT="]And though our boys tried their best, the Americans were stern[/FONT]
[FONT="]The game it ended with sporting play and a score of one-all[/FONT]
[FONT="]And the crowd hailed the victor of the day, ‘twas that noble game, football![/FONT]
[FONT="]It was the industrial towns of New Jersey and Pennsylvania which became the cradle of the American game. This was due in no small part to the influx of Scottish immigrants arriving from a country where football-mania had rapidly taken hold. The town of Kearny, New Jersey had a huge Scottish population due to the arrival of two Scottish companies in the town, Michael Nairn and Company of Kirkcaldy and The Clark Thread Company of Paisley. The two companies both established factory teams and established a keenly contested rivalry for several years during the 1880s, before the development of the sport saw them merge in 1889 to form Kearny Caledonian. [/FONT]
[FONT="] With the game spreading amongst the working classes the spread of Professional occurred just as quickly in America as it did in Britain. It was no surprise to anyone as this had already occurred several years earlier in Baseball, which had spawned the first professional team in Cincinnati as early as 1869 and the fully professional National League in 1876. There were those though who feigned shock when it first appeared. The 1885-86 season had seen the establishment of the first ‘national’ competition, the American Challenge Cup. Modelled on England’s FA Cup, the Challenge Cup was open to all members of the FA of America, regardless of whether they were colleges, clubs set up by college old boys, or the factory and neighbourhood teams of the working classes. By the end of the decade there had been a number of accusations of professionalism, but the first real scandal occurred when it emerged that Fall River Rovers had paid their players for time lost from work, in particular for the week long training camp they had attended ahead of the 1889 Challenge Cup final against Dartmouth College. Furthermore it also emerged that the Fall River team had been paid bonuses as a reward for winning the match 2-1. That Fall River had trained and prepared was odious enough to the amateurs of Dartmouth, but that the players had been paid was an abomination. The Inter-Collegiate Football Association wrote a strongly worded letter of complaint to the FA of America demanding that professionalism be outlawed and ‘the Fall River team be banned from any meaningful contests for perpetuity.’ When the American FA decided against such punishment the ICFA withdrew its members from the following season’s competition with some other amateur sides also choosing to withdraw. The FAA’s response though was pragmatic. The FA in England had been rocked by a split over the issue of professionalism and had decided to allow professionalism simply because the majority of its members had been increasingly openly professional. Rugby had suffered from an even deeper amateur-professional split which had caused Rugby clubs in the North of England in favour of professionalism to split from the amateur Rugby Football Union and form a professional ‘Northern Union’ (which later became known as Rugby League). Moreover, the Football League which was specifically set up as a professional league had been established a year earlier in 1888 and was making good progress. In America, more and more clubs were joining the FAA and like their English counterparts were either openly professional or wished to be. To side with the amateurs would be severely damaging to the game internally and also in terms of keeping up with England and Scotland. It became apparent that professionalism would take hold with or without the support of the FAA and to oppose it would be suicidal. With professionalism finally out in the open, the American game was able to take the next crucial step in its development with the founding of the Professional Football League in 1890.[/FONT]
