Football

i
ASSOCIATION FOOTBALL.
O
CHAPTER I
.
THE FORMATION OF THE ASSOCIATION.
A
NY
treatise on latter-day football would be incomplete
without a sketch of the events which led to the formation
of the Football Association. The modern revival of foot-
ball, indeed, practically dates from the inception of that
organization, the largest of the many societies which now
direct the forces of football. The institution of the Associa-
tion, as a matter of fact, marked the first attempt to bring
the many different sects into which football players were
then divided under the control of one central body. Forty
years ago there was little or no football outside the public
schools. In some of them it still lingered, the survival, in a
modified form of course, of the rough and semi-barbarous
sport of the last century. Even in the majority of these,
though, it only occupied a comparatively inferior position,
regarded merely as a part of the curriculum of physical
training. An occasional visit of a team of Old Boys would
arouse a little excitement, but only of a transient character,
and with the arrival of spring the schoolboy's fancy would
lightly turn to thought of other games. What was worse,
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