Cambridge rules


The Cambridge Rules were several formulations of the rules of football made at the University of Cambridge during the nineteenth century. One of these codes, dating from 1863, had a significant influence on the creation of the original Laws of the Game of the Football Association.

Context

The playing of football has a long history at Cambridge. In 1579, one match played at Chesterton between townspeople and University students ended in a violent brawl that led the Vice-Chancellor to issue a decree forbidding them to play "footeball" outside of college grounds. In 1631 John Barwick, a student at St John's College, broke the collar-bone of a fellow-student while "playing at Football".
According to historian Christopher Wordsworth, football "was not, I think, played much in the century" at the University. There is more evidence of the game in the early part of the nineteenth century. George Elwes Corrie, Master of Jesus College, observed in 1838, "In walking with Willis we passed by Parker's Piece and there saw some forty Gownsmen playing at football. The novelty and liveliness of the scene were amusing!" On the other hand, a former Rugby School pupil, Albert Pell, who attended Trinity College from 1839 to 1841, claimed that "football was unknown" when he arrived at Cambridge, but that he and his companions "established football at Cambridge", using the Rugby rules.
During the early nineteenth century, each school tended to use its own rules of football. These school codes began to be written down in the 1840s, beginning with Rugby School in 1845. When Cambridge students who had attended different schools wished to play each other at football, it was necessary to draw up a compromise set of rules drawing features from the various codes.

1838-1842

Edgar Montagu, an old-boy of Shrewsbury School who attended Cambridge from 1838 to 1842, recalled in an 1897 letter: "I and six other representatives of the School made a Club, and drew up rules that should equalise the different game. It was then we had two matches on Parker’s Piece". In another 1899 letter, he wrote: "I was one of seven who drew up the rules for football, when we made the first football club, to be fair to all the schools." The rules have not survived. On the basis of these letters, Curry and Dunning suggest that "the first Cambridge University Football Rules should, at present, be dated tentatively as having been constructed in 1838".

1846

According to N. L. Jackson, in 1846 "two old Shrewsbury boys, Messrs. H. de Winton and J. C. Thring, persuaded some Old Etonians to join them and formed a club. Matches were few and far between, but some were played on Parker's Piece. Unfortunately, the game was not popular at the 'Varsity then, and the club did not last long".
Thring himself wrote in 1861: "in 1846, when an attempt was made to introduce a common game, and form a really respectable club, at Cambridge, the Rugby game was found to be the great obstacle to the combination of Eton, Winchester, and Shrewsbury men in forming a football club". No rules from this attempt at codification have survived.
Green describes this development as "the first positive step to create an identity of views and a common code of laws acceptable to as many as possible", and laments the absence of a plaque "to commemorate this historic moment".

1848

Henry Charles Malden attended Trinity College between 1847 and 1851. In 1897, he wrote a letter in which he described his memories of creating a set of football rules at Cambridge in 1848. The letter was subsequently published by C. W. Alcock in an 1898 newspaper article:
Though the 1848 rules described in Malden's letter have not survived, they have attracted significant interest from many writers. Alcock commented that "Mr. Malden's account of the original movement in favour of a uniform code of football is of the greatest interest, from the fact that none has previously seen the light. In any case, it certainly establishes the existence of a unified code fifty years ago". N. L. Jackson, writing in 1899, stated the rules described in Malden's letter "establish that the Association Game owes its origin to Cambridge University".

1851–54

Another reference to compromise rules appears in the published memoirs of W. C. Green, who attended King's College Cambridge between 1851 and 1854:

1856

In 1856, there was another attempt to draw up common rules. Frederic G. Sykes, who attended St John's College between 1853 and 1857, described their creation in an 1897 letter published in a magazine for St John's College alumni:
Sykes was unaware of any compromise rules earlier than his own 1856 code and stated that before their enactment "University Football" had "no rules". Curry and Dunning suggest that "he regularity with which new rules were issued at indicates a probable lack of effectiveness in the 'laws'".
A copy of the 1856 Cambridge Rules survives at Shrewsbury School: another copy, dated from 1857, was included by Sykes with his letter. The rules bear the signatures of ten footballers: two each from Eton, Rugby, Harrow, Shrewsbury, and the University of Cambridge. The rules allow a free kick from a fair catch; otherwise the ball may be handled only to stop it. Holding, pushing, and tripping are all forbidden. The offside rule requires four opponents to be between a player and the opponents' goal. A goal is scored by kicking the ball "through the flag posts and under the string".

Use outside Cambridge

In 1861, Forest Football Club, issued a set of printed laws based on the Cambridge rules of 1856 with a small number of additions. A notice, issued by the same club in September 1862, sought opponents for the upcoming season who would play "on the rules of the University of Cambridge".

1862

In November 1862, a football match took place at Cambridge between a team of Old Etonians and a team of Old Harrovians. A set of rules, drawn up specifically for this match by a committee, mixed features of the Eton and Harrow rules, while being shorter and simpler than either:
The complexities of Eton's "rouge" tie-breaker and Harrow's free-kick for a fair catch were both excluded from the rules for this game, which ended in a draw.

1863

In October 1863, a new set of rules was drawn up by a committee of nine players representing Shrewsbury, Eton, Rugby, Marlborough, Harrow, and Westminster schools. The following month, it was published in the newspapers, with an introduction stating:
Like the earlier 1856 laws, the 1863 rules disallowed rugby-style running with the ball and hacking. Nevertheless, there were several differences between the two codes:
There is little textual similarity between the two sets of laws: in general the 1863 laws are longer and more detailed, but the 1856 rule that "very match shall be decided by a majority of goals" has no equivalent in the later code.
The Field published a detailed report of a game played under these rules on Tuesday 1 December 1863. The author concluded that while "e do not consider the best game that might be had, it is a good one", and suggested that it could be adopted by some of the schools.

Influence on the Football Association laws

The publication of the 1863 Cambridge rules happened to coincide with the debates within the newly-formed Football Association over its own first set of laws. At this time, some football clubs followed the example of Rugby School by allowing the ball to be carried in the hands, with players allowed to "hack" opponents who were carrying the ball. Other clubs forbade both practices. During the meetings to draw up the FA laws, there was an acrimonious division between the "hacking" and "non-hacking" clubs.
An FA meeting of 17 November 1863 discussed this question, with the "hacking" clubs predominating. A further meeting was scheduled one week later in order to finalize the laws. The Cambridge Rules appeared in the sporting newspapers on 21 November, three days before the FA meeting.

At this crucial November 24 meeting, the "hackers" were again in a narrow majority. During the meeting, however, FA secretary Ebenezer Morley brought the delegates' attention to the Cambridge Rules :
Discussion of the Cambridge rules, and suggestions for possible communication with Cambridge on the subject, served to delay the final "settlement" of the laws to a further meeting, on December 1st. A number of representatives who supported rugby-style football did not attend this additional meeting, resulting in hacking and carrying being banned. As the newspaper report of a later meeting put it, 'the appearance of some rules recently adopted at Cambridge seemed to give tacit support to the advocates of "non-hacking".'
The FA adopted the Cambridge offside law almost verbatim, replacing the quite different wording in the earlier draft. Morley even proposed making the FA's laws "nearly identical with the Cambridge rules", but this suggestion was rebuffed by FA president Arthur Pember. As a result, the FA's final published laws of 1863 retained many of the differences from the Cambridge rules that had been present in the earlier draft, including the following:
The historical significance of these distinctions was, however, minor in comparison to the decision to reject hacking and carrying the ball. Jonathan Wilson has summarized it thus:

1867

Cambridge University Football Club continued to play according to its own rules. In March 1867, it summoned a meeting of "representatives of public schools and college football clubs" at which it was hoped that "Oxford would agree with Cambridge in adopting a common set of rules", with the intention that these rules "would in time become widely adopted throughout the country". Curry and Dunning suggest that Cambridge's decision to revise its own set of rules, rather than using those of the FA, reflects "the relative weakness of the FA at that time". The resulting set of rules, explicitly presented as a revision of the 1863 rules, included a "touch down", somewhat similar to today's "try" in rugby: a team who touched the ball down behind the opponent's goal-line were entitled to take a free kick at goal, with the number of unconverted "touches down" being used as a tie-breaker if both teams scored the same number of goals.

Subsequent developments

In 1869, the Cambridge club wrote to the FA to propose a match between the two bodies. It insisted on playing its own rules, a condition to which the FA would not agree.
In 1871, the break between the two main codes of football was crystallized with the formation of the Rugby Football Union. This was followed in 1872 by the founding of the Cambridge Rugby Union Club, following RFU rules. Shorn of adherents of the "carrying game", the Cambridge University Football Club joined the FA in 1873. It played under FA rules when it took part in the third edition of the FA Cup, in the 1873-4 season.

Recognition

In 2000, a plaque was erected in Parker's Piece by a football team consisting of homeless people. It bears the following inscription:

Here on Parker's Piece, in the 1800s, students established a common set of simple football rules emphasising skill above force, which forbade catching the ball and 'hacking'. These 'Cambridge Rules' became the defining influence on the 1863 Football Association rules.

In May 2018, a monument titled "Cambridge Rules 1848" was installed on Parker's Piece. The monument consists of four stone pillars, engraved with the 1856 Cambridge Rules translated into several languages.

Summary

DateSurvives
today?		Public school
involved		Cambridge college
involved		SourceNotes
c. 1838 - 1842ShrewsburyGonville and CaiusEdgar Montagu Although drawn up solely by Shrewsbury alumni, the rules were intended to be "fair to all the schools".
1846Eton
Shrewsbury
Rugby
Winchester		St John's
Trinity		J. C. Thring
N. L. Jackson 		The sources do not make it clear whether this attempt to create a code of rules was successful: "the Rugby game was found to be the great obstacle to the combination of Eton, Winchester, and Shrewsbury men in forming a football club".
1848Eton
Harrow
Rugby
Shrewsbury
Winchester		Trinity
H. C. Malden Malden claims that these rules were "still in force at Cambridge" when the FA's rules were created in 1863.
c. 1851 - 1854Eton
"Non-Etonians"		Trinity
W. C. Green Rules were "more like the Eton Field rules than any other"
1856Eton
Harrow
Rugby
Shrewsbury		Clare
Jesus
Peterhouse
St John's
Trinity		Copy preserved in Shrewsbury library
F. G. Sykes 		Sykes states that before this code was created, University football was a "general melée" with "no rules". He suggests that these rules might be "the first attempt at combination".
1862Eton
Harrow		Trinity
Letter of J. A. Cruikshank to the Old Harrovian magazine The Tyro Rules were specially created for a match between old Etonians and old Harrovians at Cambridge in November 1862
1863Eton
Harrow
Marlborough
Rugby
Shrewsbury
Westminster		Gonville and Caius
Trinity		Published contemporaneously in newspapers Influenced the first FA rules
1867Charterhouse
Cheltenham
Eton
Harrow
Marlborough
Rugby
Shrewsbury
Uppingham
Westminster
Winchester		Christ's
Emmanuel
Gonville and Caius
Jesus
St. John's
Trinity
Published contemporaneously in newspapers Explicitly presented as a revision of the 1863 laws