History of Football in Cambridge

The game of football has its origins centuries in the past, but until relatively recently it was a fairly unrecognisable mob form, little more than a street brawl.

It was in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century that a more organised game began to emerge - in the Public Schools of Britain. The first codified rules originated from Eton, Harrow, and Winchester, and from there spread to Oxbridge. The children who had learnt the game at school now sought to play it at university but encountered something of a problem - they all played to different rules.

The initiative was taken by Cambridge, where interest in the game was all too apparent. "In walking with Willis we passed by Parker's Piece," noted Dr. G.E. Corrie, Master of Jesus College, in 1838, "and there saw some forty Gownsmen playing at football. The novelty and liveliness of the scene were amusing!"

In 1848 H. De Winton and J.C. Thring met with fourteen representatives from the leading public schools in Cambridge, and devised a momentous set of standardised rules known as the 'Cambridge Rules'. In order to circulate the information, copies of the (very basic) rules were pinned up around Parker's Piece. These varied very differently to the rules of today - for example, there was no stipulation on the size of a team, offside was as in rugby, shoulder barging was legal, as was catching, and all members of the team could act as goalkeeper a la 'rush goalie' rules!

Debate continued and in 1863 a revised set of Cambridge Rules were created. In October of that year twelve teams from London got together at the Freemasons' Tavern on Great Queen Street in Holborn, under the auspices of the fantastically named Ebenezer Cobb Morley, to found the Football Association (FA). It was to the Cambridge Rules that they turned. Some, of course, became very confused and played rugby, as remains precedent today.

The 1860's saw the foundation of a formalised Cambridge University Association Football Club (CUAFC); the university club had previously been a somewhat ad hoc mix of students from Trinity and Jesus. It now received a great impetus from the rise of collegiate football in the 1870's. Charles Alcock, the father of modern sport, had devised the FA Challenge Cup in 1871-72, and Cambridge was quick to take up the novel idea of the knockout. Cuppers was first run in 1882-83, with representatives from nine colleges (Caius, St. John's, Clare, St. Catharine's, Pembroke, Sidney, Jesus, King's and Trinity Hall) and three old boys sides (Old Harrovians, Trinity Etonians and Trinity Rest). A league of some description probably followed soon afterwards.

It transpired that Oxford, always a little behind the times, had also formed a university football side. The first official Varsity match took place on 30th March 1874 at the Oval. Cruelly, Oxford won. The Varsity match has gone from strength to strength, stopping only in the event of world war, and in total Cambridge has, just about, won more than their nemeses.

Come 1882, and the university side were still playing on Parker's Piece, which seemed a bit shabby now next to the facilities at, for example, Jesus. A meeting of the Club concluded that it would be advisable to buy a ground, for Parker's Piece was not appropriate "owing to the fact that anyone can walk across and about the ground during the game". It was not until 1895, however, that they were able to acquire Grange Road, in tandem with the Rugby Club, for £4,300. They were still paying it off until just before the First World War. Grange Road remains the university ground, although it was joined by Fenners in 1975.

The game of football boomed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with new social legislation that distributed more money to the working classes and made free-time on Saturday, and new technological advances, such as the expanse of railways, which made away matches much easier. All the great clubs of today were formed at this time. The munitions workers at Woolwich Arsenal put down their tools and started picking up their boots in 1886. Members of the cricket club at Everton expanded their sporting interest in 1878, although a disgruntled manager would later decide to form a rival club that played in red. With the support of the Three Crowns, Newton Heath was founded in 1878, soon joining with another side to become Manchester United, while Aston Villa grew out of the Bible Class at a Wesleyan Chapel in 1874. Fair to say that football sprung up from many different areas!

Cambridge University embraced the football revolution. It provided almost fifty England internationals in the early years. It was given a seat on the FA Council, which it maintains to this day. It has played against a plethora of league sides from within Britain and abroad; the first overseas tour took place in Hungary in 1902.

Since the Second World War ended in 1945, Cambridge University football has continued to grow. As rules on entry began to lose their aristocratic stranglehold, so a rush of new football fans arrived. The number of teams in the collegiate league has grown remarkably; today there are over seventy sides, with over a thousand young men taking to the pitches every season. The league has also expanded to include non-collegiate sides, breaching the gap between town and gown, and continues to foster its long-standing tradition of training referees.

Another new development has been the explosive introduction of women to Cambridge Football. In just a few years in the last quarter of the twentieth century, women's football became an established presence within the university. The first women's Varsity match took place in 1986. At the turn of the twenty-first century, there are over thirty collegiate sides, with over four hundred young women taking up the game with equal enthusiasm to their menfolk.

Cambridge University football remains as strong as ever as it enters a new millennium, launching a fresh and innovative website in 2001. World-class stars will come and go, multi-million pound signings will be made and forgotten, but the power of football to bring people together will remain. And so will the enjoyment of football at our own hallowed centre of academia. A century from now, David Beckham will be a name of the past. But Parker's Piece will still be attracting the hordes of the present.