The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-10-23
THE DEVELOPMENT
 OF FOOTBALL

| Throughout the English-speaking world, and to lesser extent in other
 lands. football is now occupying the
 attention of the devotees of outdoor
 sports. No other game has so great
 a following. The International Foot
 ball Association, the body which con I trols soccer football the world over,
 has affiliated with it national asso-
 citations of every important country of
 Europe, as we'll as those of the United
 States, Canada Australia, South
 Africa and South America
 l Modern football is peculiarly an English game, and all of the different
 varieties of the sport, including Rug by, American intercollegiate. soccer,
 Australian and Gaelic football, ori- ginated from the pastime of English
 men many centuries dead. There is
 a venerable legend that Englishmen
 first played football with the head of
 a Dane killed in warfare.
 1 Among the ancients there were games somewhat similar to football.
 The Greeks are said to have had such
 a sport. The old Romans played a
 game which partook of some of the
 characteristics of football, although I PldS GU "llA lHt HdIu lIldH WlII
 the foot. During the reign of Angus
 tus there was an awful row in Rome
 over a proposed change in the rules
 of this pastime, which was called | 'follis." It seems that the soldiers l complained that the game was too
 tame. and lacking in pep" where
 upon the Emperor, sought to change
 the rules. This peeved the defenders
 of the old regulations. and they made | Rome howl with their cries of wrath. In the forests pf ancient German l the Teuton barb"rians played foot | ball with the skulls of their enemies According to Cortex, he found the Aztecs devoted to a variety of foot
 ball. The Mexicans were thus the
 first American football players, al- I though their descendants have not
 taken very kindly to the game.
 The English legend as to the origin
 of football is that in the year 982, | when the Danes were invading that
 country, one of the enemy was snoop-
 ing around the walls of Chester
 when some of the citizens sallied forth and took him captive The | Dane was beheaded, and his head was
 kicked about the town. This sport was so interesting that it soon be-
 came popular, and, when the supply Lof Danish heads was exhausted, a 1 "balle of leather was made to serve as a substitute.
 Early English football was no pink l tea game. It was a. sort of free-for- all, the men of one part of the town against the other, the married men against the single. e even whole parishes and townships against others. The contest often lasted all day, and there were usually several fatalities. and numerous broken heads, fractured bones and bloody
 noses. This sort of thing was popular in Scotland and Ireland as we'll as in England, and the game often degen- erated into a sort of domestic war fare. The wealthy and the property owners were dead set against it and
 Edward IT., Henry ", Edward III,
 Richard II, and James III all made | laws against it. but they might as
 well have tried to stop the sun from
 shining. The spirit of football was fin the blood of their subjects. and it had to come out. Football was first mentioned in
 English literature in 1175. when William Fftz Stephen, referred to the
 game in his History of London"
 Four centuries later Philip Stubbs,, in
 his "Anatomie of Abuses" printed in London in 1883, gave this description of the sport:
 "It may rather be called a friendly
 kinde of fight than a play or recrea- tion; bloody and murthering prac- tice, than feiowly sporte or pas time. For dooth not every one lye in waight for his adversarie seeking to overthrow him and to picke him
 on his nose, though it be upon hard
 stones? In ditch or dale, in valley or hill, or what place soever it be, he careth not, so he have him down. And he that can serve the most in this fashion, he is counted the only fellow. and who but he? So by this
 means sometimes their legs, some time their armes, sometime one part thrust out of Joint, sometime an other, sometime the nose gush out with blood sometime their eyes start out. and sometime hurt in one place, sometime in an other. Whosoever scapeth away the best goeth not scotfree. but is either sore wounded, craised and bruised, so as he dyeth of it or els scapeth very hardly And no maervaile. for they have the sleight to meet one betwixt two to dashe him against the hart with their elbowes, to hit him under the shut ribbes with their griped fists, and with their knees to catch him upon the hop, and to pick him on his neck, with a hundred such murthering de- vices; and hereof groweth envie amlice, rancour, choler, hatred, dis pleasure, ennite and what else; and sometimes fighting, brawling. conten- ton. quarrel picking. murther, homicide and great efusion of blood, as experience dayly teacheth."
 Nice old game what?
 In Scotland football has been for centuries the popular Shrove Tuesday sport, the men of the east side of town opposing those of the west, or the married men the bachelors. Al description of such a game played at Scohe. near Perth, Scotland, in the latter part of the eighteenth century is here given:
 'The game was this: he who at any time got the ball in his hands. ran with it till overtaken by one of the opposite party; and then, if he could shake himself loose from those on the opposite side who seized him, he ran on; if not. he threw the ball from him, unless it was wrested from him by the other party, but no party was allowed to kick it. The object of the married men was to hang it, that it, to put it three times into a small |