Home of football statistics and history1869-70 season
It becomes curiously apparent, when studying the state of football in this season, that the Football Association having provided a set of fixed and defined rules by which the game might be played free of disagreements and wrangling, there was set in motion a great movement of London footballers away from the dribbling game towards the rugby code. On any football season Saturday in the sixties there were twice and three times as many clubs in the metropolitan districts playing rugby, and rugby-style football as there were indulging in the other fancy, and at least four times as many players.
Despite the impossibility of translating the original Rugby game, with its laws peculiar to Rugby School, to any other ground, an inviting sentimentality favourable to Rugby rules emanated from the literature of the period; in short, the handling game had a good press. It did not matter that no two clubs anywhere played exactly the same rules, Rugby was a jolly good romp, and Rugby players a jolly good crowd of blokes.
As for the other game, The Football Association’s rules had still not achieved that universal popularity its authors had hoped for, most clubs preferring their own rules and customs. Barnes, CCC, Charterhouse School, Crusaders, Crystal Palace, Hitchin, No Names, Kilburn, Wanderers, Wasps, and West Kent, were all members of the FA, and were all supposed to know, to understand, and to play, the Association rules; but they would cheerfully vary them, or even ignore them all together in favour of some other (obscurely local) code.
The new generation of footballers sought a scientific side to their endeavours on the field. It was no longer sufficient merely to play football – one had to play with purpose. A step to be taken in this direction was in the deployment of forces, who should stand where, and who should do what.
It would be as ridiculous as it is untrue to say that positional play was unknown before 1869/70; Eton rules, especially, had pretty strong ideas of the places to be occupied during a game, (and gave names to those positions). But in the general run of football it had always been a case of every man for himself, each doing as he thought best. The new thinking perceived that the best way to the opponents’ line, and the best way of keeping an adversary away from its own end, could be greatly assisted by the intelligent marshalling of human resources.
Under the Association type of football, a favoured method was to employ a full-back, a half-back, and eight forwards. Using this system, the full-back was advised to “brook no delay” in sending the ball into his opponents’ half of the field, the forwards to play in a close pack, a sort of scrummage, backing up the man on the ball, and the half-back to kick or dribble “at this discretion”
The game this season was dominated by Wanderers, and a relatively new club, Royal Engineers. The latter had its headquarters at Brompton Barracks, Chatham, and played on Chatham Lines, the windiest ground in the country where, on a blowy day the ball could be out of play more often then it was in; spare footballs were always available as it might take whole minutes to retrieve a ball blown off the pitch. The Sappers, as the Royal Engineers were sometimes called, played 17 matches this season, and lost only one of them, – away to Charterhouse School. Perhaps it was not so surprising that the one defeat should be administered by a school side when one considers the attitude of the Chatham club. For although the Royal Engineers was one of the roughest and toughest (though strictly fair) sides in the history of Association football, it had the peculiar quality of knowing its own strength.
Against a team of its own class and weight, the Engineers would give not quarter; one of the most terrifying sights in football for an opponent (especially a goalkeeper) was when facing a “combined rush” of the Royal Engineers, Half-a-dozen beefy soldiers charging on the goal in a body, sweeping all before them, – players, ball, and all. Yet against weaker sides the Sappers would play a gentler game, and in matches with the schools they would generally refrain from anything like heavy charging.