Sports
History of Soccer
There is documentary evidence that a game or skill building exercise, involving kicking a ball into a small net, was used by the Chinese military during the Han Dynasty - around the 2nd and 3rd centuries BC. Earlier evidence - of a field marked out to play a ball-kicking game has been found at Kyoto, in Japan. Both the Greeks and ancient Romans played a soccer-type game which resembled modern soccer - although in this early version, teams could consist of up to 27 players! It is impossible to say accurately where and when soccer started - but it is reasonable to assume that some type of ball game - from which the organized sport we know today developed - has been played somewhere on the planet for over 3000 years.
Britain is the undisputed birthplace of modern soccer/association soccer. Soccer - as soccer is called in Britain was a popular sport of the masses from the 8th century onwards. But this game was a war game! There is a story which places the first soccer game in the east of England - where the locals played 'football' with the severed head of a Danish Prince they had defeated in battle! In medieval times, towns and villages played against rival towns and villages - and kicking, punching, biting and gouging were allowed. The object of the game was to move the ball to an agreed spot which had been marked
The earlier version of soccer was so violent, that many attempts were made by the authorities to ban soccer. In England, King Edward III passed laws in 1331 to try and exterminate soccer. In Scotland, King James 1, in 1424, proclaimed in Parliament, “No man shall play soccer.” Good Queen Bess, Queen Elizabeth 1 of England, had a law passed which provided for soccer players to be “jailed for a week, and obliged to do penance in church." But no law could stop the game in Britain. It was too popular. In 1815, the famous English School, Eton College, established a set of rules which other schools, colleges and Universities began to use. Later, these were standardized and a version, known as the Cambridge Rules, was adopted by most of England's Universities and Colleges in 1848.
But now, soccer was divided into two separate camps. Some colleges and schools preferred to follow rules drawn up by Rugby School...