Early development of football (all codes) in Coventry

Welcome to the forum NeilW. There are very few towns in Britain that still supportively play the annual Shrovetide football. Another is Ashbourne in Derbyshire and Alnwick in Northumberland though I understand they use a large field with makeshift goals, unlike Atherstone and Ashbourne.

The ball's the right shape but cross country netball would be a more appropriate name for it!

Very interesting to hear that about the Aussie rules take on what is considered your goal, Johnnie. In rugby, a "goal" isn't used to describe anything other than a converted try or a penalty or drop, but I guess in the rugby codes you are essentially defending the whole of your goal line (or try line), whereas in soccer and Aussie rules the scoring zone is more limited. But I've just said "your" goal or try line, so the same issue probably applies to that ! The origin of Aussie rules is really interesting. The British, Irish and other European settlers (not all convicts !) were coming over at exactly this late18th / early 19th century time when there was this multitude of pre-codified football games and out of this "soup" they developed their own version. Here in the UK, there was a version of what would ultimately become soccer that included two further posts either side of the goal and if a game finished in a draw, the winner would be the team who had scored more "rogues",  i.e. shots that missed the goal but went inside these extra posts, although I understand in Aussie rules these extra posts were originally just markers and didn't have any scoring value, even to settle draws. I guess early Gaelic football was the biggest influence, but definitely not the only one. Fascinating stuff.  Thanks for the welcome, Mike. Yes, it's great that these few remaining mass football games are still played, keeping these traditions alive. I used to live in North Lincs and the Haxey Hood, played on the Isle Of Axholme, is considered the oldest surviving game. They don't use a ball, but rather a leather tube, the hood, and it's basically one massive shove to push it to one of four pubs, so even if you lose you can drown your sorrows ! It's unusual as it's played at this time of year rather than Shrove Tuesday or Easter.  There's a very good book called Uppies and Downies: The Extraordinary Football Games of Britain by Hugh Hornby that details all the surviving football games in Britain (that aren't soccer, rugby union or rugby league). There's these fascinating Hand ba' games still played in the Scottish border towns that I had no idea of until reading that book.    It can't just be Atherstone where folk football was played in Warwickshire. There would definitely have been other mass games played, and I'm sure Coventry had its own version(s), with its own rules but probably now lost to time. The Coventry Football Club thing I find quite interesting. Most big towns and cities had an early club that "staked a claim" to that town or city, in a lot of cases that club played rugby. Leicester Tigers are still officially Leicester Football Club for instance, Hull FC have only ever played rugby in their history (albeit both codes),  the original Liverpool Football Club played rugby, Manchester Football Club too. Sheffield FC is an obvious exception, they only played Association rules (or Sheffield rules before that). It just surprises me a bit that an early club didn't do the same for Cov....assuming they didn't !

This might be of interest. My thoughts - When it comes to early sport in Coventry, I really don't think I came across any form of football as a thing. It did have quite strict bylaws about conduct. There was even a law about what visitors could and couldn't wear depending upon their status. There was clearly trouble with men wearing the colours of their lord and it acting much like rival football strips. Racing (horse and foot) were mentioned but outside the city walls. People were done for 'riding furiously' on the city roads. There was cock fighting, bull baiting, archery (well before the Civil War but the same area, the Butts, might have been used for guns by that time) and a lot of the pubs had skittle alleys. There was green bowling but that might have only been open to the rich. Of course there were the Mystery Plays. Executions were fairly popular for crowds. There were maypoles but they were ceased for the Civil War years. The city did like its parades, like the Godiva festival but that might have been relatively modern. Physically there wasn't much room for large scale recreation within the city. Open spaces were orchards, gardens and rapidly built upon from the 1700s onwards. The bulk of the city was built outside the former walls after 1800. The city swelled to encompass villages like Stoke but not until the mid to late 1800s. The schools didn't have much land either until they too moved out of the city walls eg King Henry VIII School moved to its current location in 1885. You can get an idea of the city centre by looking at the Board of Health 1850 maps here. The political landscape wasn't conducive either. From the Civil War onwards the city was increasingly Non Conformist (chapels and austerity rather than high church and festivals) and Whig. While not all the toffs were Tory, the Whigs were dominated by merchants and that was especially so in Coventry. They were very much on the Parliamentarian side during the Civil War and we all know what the Puritans were like. Even the charities that ran the schools were under the aegis of the dominant party. So all in all I doubt that football in its wilder, more primitive form was a thing in the city and by the time it was, places like Stoke had been absorbed.

All I can say is a massive thanks for taking time and effort to do all that research, Helen, and to summarise it so eloquently. If anything, you've highlighted to me just how much was going on, even if, for the very plausible potential reasons you state, it looks like the climate was never conducive toward mass football within the city itself. From my time in Coventry, I do remember going to see the Godiva parade as it passed near my grandparents' house (we'd walk down to Earlsdon), also the regular funfairs and circus visits on Hearsall Common. Sporting-wise, I was lucky I was in the same class at Limbrick Wood as my next-door neighbour and that his dad used to take us to see the Sky Blues, my first two games being a 1-0 home defeat to Leeds United, followed by a 2-1 loss to Liverpool, both in April 1973 when I was 9. I can clearly remember a pitch invader in one of those games running around at the interval until finally apprehended and the Tannoy announcer saying "....and that concludes your half-time entertainment, everyone". I suppose it's stuff like that rather than anything specific from the game itself that sticks in the memory banks ! My dad was a teacher and mad on horse racing, so we also visited race courses within reach, Warwick most often, obviously. He used to create and sell horse racing systems, our little study being full of annuals containing all the racing results from each year, going back to the '40s. The trouble is, creating a scheme that works in retrospect is a very different thing to one that's guaranteed to work in the future and I can remember some disgruntled punters actually turning up at our doorstep to demand their money back ! Thanks again Helen, I really do appreciate your consideration on this. The Sporting History link was very informative too.

Talking of early football teams, Ebay has a postcard of a Longford team from 1908-1909 here.

Thanks Helen, I love those old team photos. In photos from the Victorian and Edwardian eras, everyone generally looks serious, no matter what the subject matter, but those great Mitchell and Kenyon films from around the turn of the 20th Century show that there was still time for frivolity. There's a great clip on YouTube of the game between Hunslet and Leeds in 1901 where the Leeds team are goofing it up for the camera and the team bosses are desperately trying to make them behave ! I have a couple of copies of the Boys Own Paper from the late Victorian era and I've attached an advert from the back of one from 1889 (apologies for the poor focus and lighting, my snapping skills leave a bit to be desired !). But you can clearly see that in that era if you went into a sports shop and asked for a football, you'd have to say which type you wanted, Association or Rugby. The popularity of both codes would have been much more on a par then. I'm guessing it wasn't until around the First World War that the Association code became so dominant nationally that the generic term "football" became associated (if you'll excuse the pun) with just one "species" to the point nowadays that a big team like Bath Football Club felt it had to rebrand as Bath Rugby. I'm personally glad Hull FC still proudly play as that, even though it probably confuses a few people ! In the advert, I'm guessing that chamois leather football cap with ear guards would have been for playing rugby.