ALEXGEEK

13.11.2020 13:14 •  Английский язык

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FOOTBALL
The history of football goes back almost as far as that of cricket. Here
is a quotation from a set of rules: do you recognize the game?
“The players form two sides, and the game is started when a person
throws the ball into the air from half-way line that separates the teams.
As soon as the ball is in the air, the players make a dash for it, the aim is
to run with the ball and touch it to the ground upon a line behind the
opponents. ”
Rugby Union, you think? The game which resulted from an afternoon
at Rugby School in the early part of the nineteenth century, when William
Ellis picked up a football and ran with it?
No, these rules were written by Roman soldiers who played the game
and called it “harpastum”.
Football in the M iddle Ages in England was played by teams formed
of whole villages, and there were no very clear rules. With as many as a
hundred people on each side, the teams struggled to score goals with a
ball made of the inflated bladder of a pig. You could attack the ball, or
you could attack members of the opposite team instead. In some villages
the annual football match was regarded as a perfect opportunity to settle
grievances against neighbours, who during the course of the game could
be thrown into the duck pond. There were many injuries, some of them
serious, and several times laws were passed to forbid the game, not only
because of these injuries but because it interfered with practice for archery,
which in those days was not so much a sport as an essential part of national
defence.
Football became a more orderly game in the nineteenth century, and
eventually a group of keen players met to form the Football Association,
the parent body of Associations all over the world and of the International
Football Association, which sees that rules are universal, and also runs
the Wbrld Cup Competition every four years.