Sheffield FC - oldest club in the world

I've never got this thing about clubs claiming to be the oldest in the World. Who did they play then?

It might just be the case they are the oldest club still in existence?

This is from Wikipedia


The history of the formation of the oldest football clubs is of interest to sport historians in tracing the origins of the modern codes of football from casual pastime to early organised competition and mainstream sport. Many early clubs did not use the word "football" in their name. Although the terms "football club" and "FC" are now strongly associated with association football (aka soccer in some countries), early rugby clubs also referred to themselves, or continue to refer to themselves, as simply a "football club", or as a "rugby football club". Similarly, most Australian rules football teams also refer to themselves as football clubs. The title of the world's oldest football club, or the oldest club in a particular country, is often disputed, or is claimed by several different clubs, across several different codes of football. The oldest football clubs with a well-documented, continuous history are Durham School Football Club, 1850 and the Dublin University Football Club, a rugby club founded in 1854 at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. The Football Association and FIFA, the English and international governing bodies of association football, both officially recognise Sheffield F.C. to be the world's oldest association football club



But as this piece points out, there may well have been football played in our country much earlier




It is possible that football organisations existed in London as early as the fifteenth century. For example, the records of the Brewers' Company of London between 1421 and 1423 mention the hiring out of their hall "by the "football players" for "20 pence", under the heading "Trades and Fraternities" The listing of football players as a "fraternity" or a group of players meeting socially under this identity is the earliest allusion to what might be considered a football club. Other early sporting bodies dedicated to playing football include "The Gymnastic Society" of London which met regularly during the second half of the eighteenth century to pursue two sports: football and wrestling The club played its matches – for example between London-based natives of Cumberland and Westmoreland – at the Kennington Common from well before 1789 until about 1800.

The Foot-Ball Club (active 1824–41) of Edinburgh, Scotland, is the first documented club dedicated to football, and the first to describe itself as a football club. The only surviving club rules forbade tripping, but allowed pushing and holding and the picking up of the ball Other documents describe a game involving 39 players and "such kicking of shins and such tumbling".

Other early clubs include the Great Leicestershire Cricket and Football Club present in 1840. In 1841 two clubs are documented in a contemporary challenge to play "foot-ball" in Lancashire: "The Body-Guard club" (Rochdale) and the "Fear-noughts Club"A club for playing "cricket, quoits and football" was established in Newcastle on Tyne in or before 1848. The Surrey Football Club was established in 1849 and published the first non-school football list of rules (which were probably based upon the eighteenth century Gymnastic Society cited above



Doing a goggle seach who invented the game of football I came up with this



Throughout history, people have played sports which involved using a ball and hands, feet, or sticks. Each area had its own rules. so there was no global definition of any sport.

In the 1300s, the king of England, Edward III, banned football, hockey, and handball. This shows a difference between sports using the feet, hands and sticks. So comes the argument that football was traditionally played using the feet and not the hands. However FIFA acknowledges Association Football (soccer)'s earliest drafts demonstrate 'handling' (possibly similar to Gaelic/Australian Rules) was acceptable, and hands appear to be involved in the earliest lithographic sketches of 'mob football' games such as Shrove-tide.

None of the modern codes of 'football' seem to have diverged formally from the various 'mob-footballs' until the 1800s.

In 1863,at Cambridge University, a group of Englishmen formed the Football Association and invented the modern game of soccer.

Many other "codes" of football were invented around this time. Rugby and Australian rules (earliest known draft, Melbourne 1858) were among the first to establish clear drafted rules. In North America, rugby and soccer were both played, and a hybrid, American football, was invented.

All sports using the term football have words placed in front such as Association (der.- Soccer), Rugby, American or Aussie Rules (Australian) or Gaelic (Irish) to differentiate them from each other. Typically they are individually and simply referred to as 'football' within the context in which they are the dominant code.



Read more: wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_invented_the_game_of_football#ixzz25aiFc3n4

Fascinating stuff posted by Dave. You'd think it was easy enough discovering which is the world's oldest football club. But it isn't and that's often the nature of history. We're talking about documentary evidence for a start: whether records were made at the time; their quality; have they been kept. Possibly too about how events were recorded by newspapers and other sources. Also whether there is an interest or desire to be regarded as the "oldest this" or "first that". You wonder when Sheffield FC first made that claim or, indeed, whether the honour was conferred upon them (and by whom). Either way, Sheffield's place seems to fit a version of history that suits both the FA and FIFA. So, in that way, it's "official". It also, of course, gives Sheffield FC a unique identity which, in these days, translates to a "selling point".

But I'm interested in the simultaneous claim of being both the "oldest" and the "first". In my mind there's a subtle difference: the "oldest" implies being in existence today; the "first" not necessarily so. I sense Sheffield might be the oldest but perhaps not the first.

Dave's discoveries also bring us into that area of competing forms of football. Years ago I read a joint history of all the various forms of football: association football, rugby union, rugby league, American football, Canadian football, Gaelic football, Australian rules football (have I missed any?). All, it seems, regarded themselves (and to a certain extent still do) as "football" and didn't really enjoy non-practitioners labelling them with other names. And earlier, prior to each of these codes going their own way and drawing up rules, there would have been any number of rough-and-ready forms of the game. No wonder there's all sorts of references to "football clubs" prior to 1857. And most of that is in the English-speaking world. What about China for example?

Nonetheless it would be interesting to learn of the nature of the game being played at Cricketfield Road, Torquay in the mid 1850s. Further to some of our earlier postings, we'd probably assume it was of a kind played in such-and-such public school. And it's also pertinent to enquire of the level of organisation of this "football club". Was it formalised with a constitution, committee and rules? Or was it a loose, informal description given to a group of cricketers who occasionally had a kick about or scrimmage during the winter or on wet days in the summer? The reference to the "Hon Sec of the Football Club" suggests a degree of substance unless it was expressed with a certain irony. It would be great to discover more.

The club might as well rename themselves Sheffield Nomads, because in the last 25 years they have played home matches at Abbeydale, Hillsborough Park, Woodbourn Road, Owlerton, Don Valley and now the Coach & Horses.

Never saw a football match at Owlerton but it worked well as a Rugby League venue because fans were allowed to stand on the track. Indeed, when we went to see the Eagles play Bradford Northern (in the age before RL sold out to Sky TV) the ref asked our group if we would mind stepping back a bit to allow the players more space at a scrum.

Rugby League is a grand game, by the way. If you have never seen a live match I recommend that you try to do so at least once. When I lived in York for a year I used to go to Bootham Crescent on a Saturday and to Wigginton Road (RIP) on Sundays and the RL was always much more entertaining. This was in the mid seventies when football terrace violence was at its height
but there was never a hint of trouble at the rugby matches, possibly because all the fighting took place on the pitch. Rugby players of both codes have always been allowed much more leeway than footballers to get involved in scrapping. In fact I used to feel disappointed if I went to see York and there wasn't at least one big fight with the ref in the middle trying to keep everyone apart. Norman Hunter and Franny Lee would have loved it!

Fascinating. I love a good old abandoned stadium

I was back at Sheffield FC last night for the self-styled "World's Oldest Derby" with Hallam FC in the Sheffield and Hallamshire Senior Cup. Apparently the two clubs have been playing each other since Boxing Day 1860.

Sheffield won last night's game 3-2 in front of a crowd of 228.

A question: what has the Sheffield FC manager recently achieved in another sport?

Yep, Curtis Woodhouse has just won the English light-welterweight title. Not sure where that puts him in relation to the British title - he lost an eliminator for that earlier this year - but he was looking pleased last night.