Origins
The game was codified in London in 1863, and the Laws of the Game turned a set of local customs into one sport. This facet covers the Victorian and pre-war game, the FA Cup, and the earliest surviving match film, including a Mitchell and Kenyon reel shot at St James' Park in November 1901.
Part of Football
8 moments in this segment.
- - Newcastle United against Liverpool, 1901. Mitchell and Kenyon footage of a First Division match at St James' Park, filmed in November 1901 and preserved by the BFI. It is among the earliest surviving moving pictures of English league football, showing the crowd, the kit and the playing style of the Victorian and Edwardian game.
- - The 1863 rule book goes on display. News coverage of the Football Association's original minute book, compiled in 1863 and handwritten by Ebenezer Cobb Morley, being put on public display at the British Library. The volume contains the first written Laws of the Game, the document from which the codified sport descends.
- - Archibald Leitch, the man who built the grounds. A profile of the Scottish engineer whose stands and terraces shaped football grounds across Britain and Ireland. Trained on industrial buildings, Leitch gave the early professional game the functional architecture that framed how supporters watched it.
- - The early years of the FA Cup. A history of the FA Cup's first decades, when a knockout competition helped turn a set of local codes into a national sport with recognisable heroes. It covers the clubs and the players who defined the tournament before professionalism reshaped it.
- - The Laws of the Game as a Book That Changed the World. A television segment in which Melvyn Bragg argues that the 1863 Laws of the Game belong among the books that changed the world. It explains how a short printed set of rules, agreed to settle arguments between English clubs and schools, became the framework for the most widely played sport on earth.
- - How the Football League Grew from 12 Clubs to 92. A detailed history of the English league pyramid, starting with the twelve founder clubs that kicked off the Football League in September 1888 and following each expansion, regional division and re-election vote that produced the modern structure. It is the administrative story behind club football in England.
- - The First Match Played Under the New Laws, 1863. A reconstruction of the match played on a muddy field at Mortlake in London on 19 December 1863, the first contested under the newly written Laws of the Game. Handling and hacking were gone, and the rules agreed weeks earlier at the Freemasons' Tavern were tested for the first time.
- - The 1863 Meeting That Created the Laws of the Game. A long-form account of the meetings at the Freemasons' Tavern in London in the autumn of 1863, where representatives of clubs and schools argued over handling and hacking and produced the first Laws of the Game. It explains why the split with the handling code mattered and how the written rules travelled.
