PAST
I think that if you do away with it you will do away with all the courage and pluck of the game, and I will be bound to bring over a lot of Frenchmen, who would beat you with a week’s practice
the ball from him; but no player shall be held and hacked at the same time. That last point was an important part of Rugby lore: repeatedly kicking a player’s lower leg with hefty swings of a heavy leather boot is clearly manly and right, but doing so while he’s being restrained by one of your teammates simply isn’t on. For clubs used to playing a more sedate “dribbling” game, these rules were completely untenable. William Chesterman, the honourable secretary of Sheffield FC— now the world’s oldest surviving football club, which codified its own rules in 1858— wrote to the FA stating that rules 9 and 10 were “directly opposed to football, the latter especially being more like wrestling. I cannot see any science in taking a run kick at a player, at the risk of laming him for life.” Proving that he wasn’t entirely soft, Chesterman was, however, deeply sceptical about the FA’s nascent plan to outlaw boots with nails hammered through them, the use of which he considered to be entirely safe. JC Thring of Uppingham was even more acidic in his objections. He called rule 10 “a concession to Rugbean ideas, giving them their little amusement of breaking each other’s shins occasionally”. Matters came to a head during a fiery meeting at the tavern on 1st December. Charles Alcock of Forest FC, later captain of England and founder of the FA Cup, insisted that the controversy over rules 9 and 10 be settled for good. Morley agreed, declaring himself neutral on the subject and stating his belief that “hacking is more dreadful in name and on paper than in reality”. His concern though, as it was throughout this arduous process, was to create a set of laws that would be widely embraced by the nation’s clubs. Hacking, he decided, would seriously inhibit the association’s reach. “If we have hacking,” he told the gathered members, “no one who has arrived at years of discretion will play at football, and it will be entirely relinquished to schoolboys.” The fearsome FW Campbell of Blackheath was outraged, insisting that outlawing hacking would appeal to “those who liked their pipes and grog or schnapps more than the manly game of football”. Even worse, it might even appeal to the French. “I think that if you do away with it you will do away with all the courage and pluck of
the game,” he blustered, “and I will be bound to bring over a lot of Frenchmen, who would beat you with a week’s practice.” Given the current domination of our game by obscenely skilful foreigners who can dance like ballerinas but fall over at the slightest touch—never mind a good kicking in a pair of hobnail boots—Campbell’s stance seems remarkably prescient. Ultimately, Morley’s pragmatic position—based on the idea that anyone who isn’t an indolent aristocrat can’t afford to have his professional life interrupted by a pair of broken shins—garnered more sympathy than Campbell’s belief in “that spirit of the game” embodied by Rugby school. As Morley pointed out, “Mr Campbell himself knows well that the Blackheath clubs cannot get any three clubs in London to play with them whose members are for the most part men in business, and to whom it is of importance to take care of themselves.” The dribblers held sway, and the Blackheath hackers flounced off to form the Rugby Union. The remaining delegates returned to the pub on 8th December to ratify a list of the 13 laws of football, which were sent for publication by John Lillywhite of Seymour Street in a booklet that cost a shilling and sixpence. Keen to see its new rules in action, the FA arranged a match between Morley’s Barnes FC and their neighbours Richmond at Limes Field on 19th December—a less than scintillating 0-0 draw. Richmond, rather ungratefully, became a rugby club shortly afterwards. The rest of the planet proved somewhat more receptive.
55 Covent Garden Journal Issue 21 Autumn 2013
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