You're Dead to Me - The History of Football (Radio Edit)

Episode Date: December 5, 2020

Where did football come from? Was it really invented in China or is the truth a little closer to home? And what’s the truth behind the history of the women’s game? Greg Jenner is joined by comedian Tom Parry and historian Prof Jean Williams to learn the history of the beautiful game.Produced by Dan Morelle Scripted by Greg Jenner Researched by Emma Nagouse, assisted by Eszter Szabo and Evie Randall Radio edit by Cornelius MendezA Muddy Knees Media production for BBC Radio 4.

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Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the history podcast for everyone. For people who don't like history, people who do like history and people who forgot to learn any at school. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster, and I'm the chief nerd on the BBC comedy show Horrible Histories. You might have heard my Radio 4 series, Homeschool History, although that's for the kids. So how does this show work? Well, in each episode, I'm joined by an expert historian who knows their clop from their cop and a top comedian with more creative flair than Kevin De Bruyne. Today, we are rolling down our socks, popping our collars and launching a two-footed Cantona lunge at the history of football.

Joining me in History Corner is a professor of football. No, it's not Arsene Wenger. She's an expert on how footy influences culture, the history of the game and she specialises in the story of women's football. From the University of Wolverhampton, it's Professor Jean Williams. Hi, Jean, thank you for coming. You are a specialist on the history of football, but specifically the women's game.

How did you get into it? What was your route? The route was playing football and needing a PhD to work at a university. So I put together the things that I love, which was history and women's football. Pretty good route. Can't complain about that. And in Comedy Corner, he's the pride of Wolverhampton.

One of the members of the legendary sketchery Pappy's, co-host of Pappy's Flatshare podcast, multiple Edinburgh Fringe Award nominee, a writer, director, powerful box-to-box midfielder. It's Tom Parry. Oh, that last one.

That's what really matters to me. Thank you. Tom, you're a Wolverhampton fan yes I was delighted to hear that James was from the University of Wolverhampton I assume you're a Wolves fan

I'm afraid not Tom I'm a Leicester City fan unbelievable terrible isn't it I'm off betrayed that's it so what do you know

this is the section where I summarise what I think the listeners at home might know about the subject. And to be honest, today's subject is football, so you probably know a huge amount. So it's the world's most popular sport watched by a billion people. Many of you at home will have a team you support, even if it's just a sort of quick surge of patriotism when the World Cup's on the telly. Or maybe you play football down, maybe it's a question of, you know, five a side by your mates. Maybe you like watching it or placing a few bets yelling at the referee in the pub maybe it's fifa on your xbox or three thousand hours of life destroying addiction on football manager that's my story and also of

course it's uh it's a global industry it's the money it's the images it's the global superstars messi ronaldo neymar rapinoe bronze beckham moussa sissoko obviously maybe that's just me there's gonna be hopeless bias in this, isn't there? Sorry. But how does this enormous global game with a billion fans, where does it come from? How does it originate? It's time to find out.

So I hope you've both limbered up. And next, your isotonic sports drink, because we're about to kick off with our history of football. So, Tom. Yes. Football's beginnings. What do you know about the beginnings of the game? You know what?

I was thinking about this in the shower this morning. I was kind of thinking the story that I know, and it's only from like primary school playground. It's like someone tells you is like, there used to be a village and there was a pig's bladder. It's always a pig's bladder. Every like May bank holiday, a pig's bladder gets thrown into the town centre

and one half of the village wrestle for it against the other half of the village. And it's like, and then football was born. I think that was enough for me. I was kind of like, oh, yeah, pig's bladder and the town square. And like, it's like a nine year old. You'd be like, and that makes sense. And then that's kind of where my brain stopped.

And then suddenly it's Italian 90. You've missed a few steps there, but it's not bad. It's not a bad start. Jean, can we hear a little bit about the origins of the game? I mean, obviously, the surprising thing is China sort of claims the origins. What? Yes, with an ancient game called Shuzhu, which was actually, we would think of it as a kind of form of keepy-uppy, highly stylised and ritualised games in kind of quite formal gear. And Set Blatter, unfortunately, told China that they'd invented football,

which they didn't really. There have been all sorts of ball games that people have played, obviously, ever since people have been around. Probably, you know, if one caveman kicked a stone to another caveman, that was probably the earliest ball game. Sepp Blatter's given it to the Chinese, has he? Yes, he has, unfortunately. What did he get for that? I wonder.

A couple of yen in the back pocket for a sec. But the thing to draw attention to is that football's always been in the DNA of the English and the British people. We love the game and we've always loved

those kinds of ball games right from folk times. And we know that as historians because it got banned so often. So these kind of Shrove-type games that you were speaking about... They're real? They are real. There are uppies and downies versions of the game.

Great. There's even one... It's not always pig's bladder, by the way. Sometimes in Hallerton, in Leicestershire, it's bottle kicking. Bottle kicking? The British will literally kick anything. It's not necessarily a football in actual fact bottle kicking in Hallerton

is actually two kegs of beer and they play against another local village called Medbourne do they still do this? they still do this now and it's done on Easter Monday so the idea of just a village or maybe two villages playing against each other and they're essentially trying to get a ball or some sort of thing

from one set of, I guess, from maybe the church gates into the other church gates, the other side. I mean, this is a massive game. So it's not even like a question of fans watching the game. It's like people are taking, the whole village takes part. The whole village takes part, men, women, and obviously it got tremendously rowdy as it continues. And actually it's a kind of invasion game,

one village versus another or up is versus down is, which kind of brings in from the very ancient times, this notion of football as war, that it's kind of an invasion game and taking over. Oh, it's exciting, isn't it? And it's crazy violent as well. So some of the most common injuries suffered during football matches. Do you want to guess what they are, Tom?

In the medieval period? Well, the hamstring. Sure, sure. Metatarsal. Yeah, yeah. Someone did their metatarsal, I'm sure. Definitely all of those. The most common one we find in sources, as well as just sort of general, you know, leg breaks and all that, stabbing.

Whoa, hang on. Happens an awful lot. Do you get a yellow card for that? Yeah, I mean, that's an instant caution. No, it's just because people used to carry knives on them. Everyone would carry a knife all the time because you need a knife for just general living. You'd carry a knife for your dinner. You'd carry a knife for like all purpose things.

And you'd accidentally stab your mate. Yeah, there are several recorded deaths. And obviously then this leads on to the notion of banning it. You know, there are several monarchs who actually want to ban football because it's rough, it's rowdy, it's dangerous. And they would prefer that people were practicing archery, which was a martial skill. Much safer. Something that they could take. Have this lethal weapon.

It's safer than a football. So one of the kings who bans it is Edward III. Yeah. Another one would be Henry VIII. Henry VIII, even though he... Yeah, he banned it. Although he played. History fact for you, Tom.

Have a quick guess. He owned the world's first what? Related to football. FA Cup trophy. He just had one made for himself. Hand me my FA Cup trophy. Football boots. He had the world's first football boots.

No way! Yeah, made from Italian leather. He had them specially commissioned for him in the 50s. This is really good. Umbro are missing a trick here by releasing, like, the King Henry VIII football boots. They weren't studded. I mean, they probably weren't like predators.

They weren't like, you know... I'm not sure the first touch was that good in them. Not like George Best specials. Why is it called football? I mean, there's two theories to this, aren't there? Yeah. One is that it was the common people playing a game on foot rather than the aristocats who were playing games on horseback.

Right. And the other is that it was to do with a kicking code as well as a carrying code. It was really a rough and ready kind of game. Closer to rugby, would you say? Closer to rugby in respect of it was about, you know, physical wrestling of the ball from your opponent. So, yeah.

So, either like rugby or like League Two. Yeah. This is obviously an interesting challenge, but you've got the first written source for us is from the Anglo-Saxon period. It's from the 9th century. Is it a match report? It's not a match report. It's from the 9th century. Is it a match report? It's not a match report.

It's more of a complaint, really, from a guy called Nennius. 1,200 years ago is the first written report of it. It's essentially a folk game. It's a people's game for a long, old time. We've also got references to football in a couple of Shakespeare's plays. We've got King Lear and A Comedy of Errors. Both talk about football. And he's a guy from Midlands, isn't he?

He's talking about ordinary people playing a kickabout. It's not talking about football. So, and he's a guy from Midlands, isn't he? He's talking about ordinary people playing a kickabout. It's not, we're not talking about an organised game, but it is something that even Shakespeare is noticing. Yeah, and that's another way that football is very much part of the British DNA. It's in our language. So people who write about Shakespeare very often say that he was born

into a Latin speaking tradition. When he went to grammar school, he will have definitely learned Latin, but actually managed to revolutionise our language and football and sport and the way he uses those metaphors in his work are very much part of that. Well, of course, Hamlet, when he reads the football results, says 2-3 or not 2-3. Oh, my God.

Am I right, guys? Am I right? The important moment, really, the transition moment, seems to be in the 1800s, when it starts to change from being a folk game. Weirdly, it's sort of posh people who give it shape. Yeah, so we talk about this transition from folk football to modern football, and what we mean by that is that it's when people started to write down the laws of the game as we call them now and that was often done in the public school so public schools very often invented games for the boys that were deliberately exclusive so Eaton for example

has two kinds of football game one more reminiscent of what we would think of as soccer or football today and the other more akin to rugby union. And it was a way of integrating the young boys into the school spirit and also deliberately exclusionary so that if you didn't go to Eton, you wouldn't know what the Eton wall game was. So it's got that kind of insider kind of banter status of initiating the young boys into this. It's like the top six pulling up the ladder after it. I mean, in the 19th century, there is still the kind of folk game still happening. So in 1848, there's a pub landlord near Bolton who announces that he's going to organise a match between two teams of unlimited numbers. And the prize is a 40 pound cheese. A 40 pound cheese. definitely 40 pound cheese that's

a big cheese isn't it that's worth playing for all right so uh that was in 1848 but we then get this really important moment in 1863 which is the first proper attempt to form an fa to codify the rules to make football a sport can you tell us a bit about it jean yeah rather pompously there were 13 original rules and they were called the laws of the game and that's because the guy who wrote footballer sport. Can you tell us a bit about it, Jean? Yeah, rather pompously, there were 13 original rules and they were called the laws of the game. And that's because the guy who wrote them was called Ebenezer Morley. He was a solicitor by profession and the first secretary of the FA. So he got the idea of written rules from cricket, as many teams did. And as well as laying out the size of the playing field,

there were little gems included, such as a player shall not throw the ball or pass it to another. So it definitely invents a kicking code. William Ware Bellis was gutted. Neither tripping nor hacking shall be allowed and no player shall use his hands or hold or push his opponent. So it stops that kind of uh physical the wrestling thing the wrestling kind of thing stabbing did they bring the stabbing thing in they tried to prevent stabbing mainly on footwear by saying no player shall wear projecting nails

iron plates or gutter percher on their shoes and gutter percher is that hard stuff that's in the center of golf balls all right so you can imagine that if you had that on your boots and you kicked somebody's shin, that would be pretty painful. So just the 13 rules and then off we went. Yeah, initially, isn't it? And then they gradually start adding little bits and pieces in. 1870 is when handball is made a deliberate foul. We also see the offside rule going through a few tweaks.

Tom, can you explain the current offside rule for us because it's so complicated now here we go this feels like the test this is like the big test in the pub you know the offside rule don't you Tom yes yes as long as you're in line with the last defending player while the ball is played through then you're on side unless the ball is played sideways or backwards which is fine yes yes you can also not be interfering with play all that sort of complexity but in the early years uh the offside rule is a bit more complicated it's basically it's basically rugby really isn't it because it's any attacking player ahead of the ball is offside oh really yeah so the ball can't go forward what so you're playing the ball backwards until you score until youways and backwards, yeah.

Yeah, you really have to think of these gentlemen amateurs. One of them was upbraided after a match by his colleague who said he didn't pass to him. And he said, my dear sir, I'm playing entirely for my own enjoyment. So they're not that interested in passing to one another. It was mainly a dribbling game. It was mainly a dribbling game. It was mainly a dribbling game. Individuals would try and dribble forward.

That would seem to be the art and the skill of football. Gosh, that's fascinating. Isn't it good, isn't it? It's different. And then they changed the rule a bit because they realised that's not hugely exciting. So they changed it to a three-player rule. An attacker is offside if positioned goal-side

of the third-last defender. So you need a back three. So it's a bit more conservative. A lot of the modern game really, the back three is embraced. Yeah, exactly that. Jean, historians tend to argue that the Industrial Revolution and the movement of peoples from, you know, you get a huge number of people from the countryside moving into the cities,

loads of people coming in from Ireland, from Scotland, but also, you know, just rural workers going into big cities like Birmingham and Manchester and Liverpool and so on. That really changes the game. Can you explain how that was happening? What really happens in the 1880s and 1890s is that football becomes the game of the people. As people move into urban centres, they want to take their football with them. And things that help are things like we get a national railway timetable, which gives us a national sense of what the time is both in London and in Newcastle, say, so that you can schedule matches.

People can schedule to go to watch and also they can compare how their local team is doing against other teams. The key thing that happened in 1885 is that the FA had to give in to professionalism so that clubs were now paying their players because they were good enough to perform in front of a paying public and formation of the Football League in 1888. And that really gives people a sense of, oh, how's my local team doing against national sides? And it starts to build up a greater sense of local pride. And the other big thing, of course, is the invention of the weekend. In the 19th century, you get leisure time. What?

The weekend was invented? As an idea. What? It's not always been there. I mean, there have been Saturdays and Sundays before. We didn't just invent those. But everyone was working through. But the idea of a leisure, of a two-day little holiday for the working people is a 19th century idea isn't it yeah most skilled

manual workers would work the saturday morning which obviously made saturday afternoon even more special which meant as you said the rush to the pub because they'd just been paid sunday was more a day for Sunday observance. And again, the Football League was not played in this country on a Sunday for quite a long time due to Sunday observance. But it made Saturday afternoon really, really special. And even if you couldn't make it to the ground because not everybody could afford it,

there were these newspapers that would be bought by public houses called the Greenen or the Pinken. The pink papers, of course. Yeah, you could readily spot them and a lot of public houses would put them in their windows so you could read about it even if you couldn't actually make it to the match. So that by the time you got back to work on Monday morning

and you were talking to your mates about the match, you got an opinion. You knew. We had the pink papers still. Did you? Yeah, all the way through the end of the 80s and into the 90s in Wolves that would come out on the Sunday and it'd be all the reports from around the around the area right the way through to like games that like non-league

games and things like it'll be in the pink papers did they have transfer gossip in the 19th century because that's all I do with my day you know all I do is get on Twitter and see whose spurs are not going to buy but did they did transfers exist in the 19th century? And if so, were they reported? Yeah, very much existed. If I give the example of Steve Bloomer, who was born in 1874, later of Derby County fame, he became known as R. Stephen within Derby, played for them for 14 seasons.

And then, shock horror, he gets a little bit of national glamour because he gets transferred to Middlesbrough. And he would not be in control of that. So the retaining transfer system meant that Derby and Middlesbrough would have agreed that and he would have had to go. So he didn't have a say in it? He wouldn't have had a say at that stage. And he would also have been subject to a maximum wage.

So they used to get about two pounds in their um playing season and about a pound in the off season so it was a fairly precarious way of earning a living would he have been full-time then full-time footballer well as much as he could in this season yeah um but very often they become publicans or they work in pubs or work in other occupations some are also professional cricketers in the off-season to try to earn a living from sport all year round. So it was quite precarious. And then when he transfers back from Middlesbrough four years later,

by then he's 36. Oh, his years are behind him, he's gone. Oh, I'm 36. His best years are gone. And Derby love that he comes back. You know, they play See the Conquering Hero Comes because he's got a little bit of glamour because he's appeared in the national

newspapers, not just in the Derby newspapers. So the media were really important. So he was like the Beckham of his day, old man, was he? Absolutely, yeah. An England star as well. Is England up and going now? England's up and going in 1872. Oh, wow, so it's been around since the get-go.

The first ever international match, isn't it? It's England versus Scotland, 1872. Oh, the old rival. Yeah. Did it kick off? I bet it always kicks off. It really didn't kick off. No way!

Oh, we've just got worse over time. It was 0-0. No one snapped the crossbar. No, that came later. Tom, do you know what a penalty was called in 1891? When they were first introduced? A special kick? The kick of death.

The kick of death? That's really good. You should bring that back, shouldn't we? Yeah, I like that. Yeah, so penalties come in in 1891. Another big change in 1891 is referees are allowed onto the pitch. Before that, they're on the sidelines. sidelines just doing the VAR from the sidelines that's really interesting

were they allowed on a podium or were they elevated they were just on the side weren't they just running the line with a whistle but there were umpires on the pitch one for each team and the other thing to talk about I guess in terms of football's impact on culture

but also there's a sort of ideology behind it as well, because football is meant to be morally uplifting for masculinity. It's meant to be producing sort of good, strong, healthy Christian men. Yes, there was this thing called muscular Christianity. And this notion was... I already like this. Jesus with a massive six-pack. That sounds fantastic. The notion was that actually by doing sport, it was a rational recreation that kept you out of the pub and other pursuits that were not quite so morally improving

and therefore football was good for you. And yeah, it was definitely promoted you you were quite quite right in your comment earlier on that actually pubs had a lot of teams obviously made sense but but a lot of teams grew out of church side so again everton were originally a church side that had to change their name to everton in 1872 to enable people from the local area who were not part of that church to play to play for them so yeah there's a strong um link between the church and football that's really interesting my dad used to play for a church team and we used to go watch

every Sunday every Saturday morning really yeah and it was great you know like and there was genuine rivalry between churches it got quite heated Okay, so we've talked about masculinity, but let's talk about the women's game, because it's not a recent history. We had the Women's World Cup, where England got to the semi-final and it was watched by 12 million people, which is an amazing thing. But you're a specialist on this, Jean, and the women's game is not a new

thing. So where does it start? Women's football is, in terms of folk football, there were always women's games as well as men's games. And this shoo-zhoo that Seth Blatter so likes, there were women's forms of shoo-zhoo as well that went on for centuries. So women's football is as old as men's football. We should just call it football, really. Sure.

And we have images from the 1860s. And we then have the first organised game in 1881 in Edinburgh. And again, to pick up on that rivalry of England versus Scotland men's that's already happened, it's called England v Scotland. We know that it wasn't England v Scotland because the second match that these two teams have, some of the players have swapped sides. They're just trying an accent. Well, I think... Who's Tim? You're... I can't do a Scottish accent.

I don't know why I was going to try. That's the sort of Jack Charlton approach to... Are you Irish? Have you ever met anyone Irish? Get in my team. Get in my team, yeah. Yeah, definitely. And the women were playing professionally

in front of large crowds back in 1881. That is unbelievable. Yeah, we'd also had similar things happening in women's cricket that male cricket professionals would form two lady teams and they would play in front of a paying audience. And very often the male cricketers would abscond with the takings and guess what? That's what happens this time.

The guy absconds with the takings after a couple of matches and then we get the creation of the British Ladies Football Club in 1894 with the beautifully named Nettie Honeyball who is the playing secretary of the side. Nettie Honeyball? Yeah.

That's amazing. I thought that was the name of the game to begin with. I thought you were going to say to begin with they called women's football Nettie Honeyball. I was like, the name of the game to begin with. I thought you were going to say, to begin with they called women's football Nettie Honeyball. I was like, no, that's not quite right. Nettie Honeyball played football. That's amazing.

Have you ever heard of Lily Parr? Lily Parr? No. Have you ever heard of Dick Curse Ladies? No. All right, so Lily Parr is arguably the top goal scorer in history because she banged in 986 goals in her career. Whoa, whoa, whoa. That's even more than Steve Ball did for 100 wonders.

She's a phenomenon. So she was the star of the women's game in the 1920s and 30s and 40s. But let's sort of approach why she became such a massive star. Because it's linked to World War I, the fact that men are going after the trenches and women step in and become the main attraction don't they yeah definitely i mean i think until world war one we have to think that most young women up to about the ages of 18 to 21 would have gone into service or they'd be working in factories and then working for the family in the evenings so if you think kind of downton abbey you can picture that they wouldn't have a lot of spare time

to play football. Go and play football now. But during World War I, as they move into the munitions work, which is obviously dirty and dangerous, not only did they get higher pay, they get time for their own leisure. And what do they choose to do with that? Because their brothers and fathers and everybody else

is serving over over in france in belgium they um decide to play games of football in large stadia and we're talking um you know like goodison park for example in 1920 which ordinary working men largely and and a few women turn up for week in week out and and they raise thousands and thousands of pounds for charity. God, that's incredible because that's kind of like the film A League of Their Own about baseball. It's already a story that's been told over here, really. Well, we do not know.

That's a story that needs to be told. So Lily Parth was inducted into the National Football Museum, wasn't she? She was the first woman to be inducted in in the inaugural year. Yes, as the first big star. And it's great that people love this story because she was a superstar. The Nuance Window!

The Nuance Window, where we unleash our historian, let them go to town, talking about something they're passionate about. And Jean, you are a specialist on the women's game. You wrote the history of the women's game. In this Nuance Window, you have two minutes to tell us about how it was suppressed and the story of how it's been revived so two minutes on the clock here we go so having said that women's football began in the 19th century hundreds of games by 1921 there were 150 women's teams in the UK.

The FA expanded the Football League from two divisions to a third division south and a third division north. Effectively, that doubled the size of the Football League. And no coincidence that they banned women's football in 1921 on the 5th of December. On two grounds, one as unsuitable for women and secondly on the grounds that the women like Lily Parr are taking too much of the expense money for their own expenses i.e. they're being paid as professionals. In response to this some women's teams organise a match in front of 44 doctors who declare it to be no more taxing than a day's heavy washing. So there's no medical reason why women's football couldn't continue. But hey,

presto, this ban travels across the world, travels to Germany because of the British influence in South America. It travels there too. It's actually banned by law in Brazil in case women who are playing football don't go on to have children. And it's not withdrawn until about 1969, 1970, very gradually in a piecemeal way across the world when FIFA begins to take charge of women's football. And they do that because there's been these huge interesting unofficial world cups the one in mexico is always a really great example unofficial women's world cup in mexico 71 played in the azteca stadium the final crowds of 110 000 people paying to watch women play so that changes fifa's mind because they suddenly think, ah, there's a revenue stream here. Wow. The FA's shame. That has to be the FA's shame. It's incredible.

Hopefully it's all changing. That's all we have time for. And before we hand over to Lineker and Shearer for the post-match analysis, I just want to say a big thank you to both my guests. In History Corner, it was Professor Jean Williams from the University of Wolverhampton. And in Comedy Corner, it was Tom Parry from the mean streets of Wolverhampton. It was a physical match out there, but I think both teams

will be happy going home with a point. Join me next time for some more surprising history with a couple more top of the league guests. But for now, we're off to go and see who can do the most keepy-uppies

in the car park and maybe find a massive cheese for the grand prize. Thank you for listening. Take care. Bye. Hi, Hugh Dennis here, and a quick interruption from me to tell you about the 2020 BBC Radio 4 Christmas Appeal with St Martin in the Fields. For people experiencing homelessness,

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