The First Football League

It is generally accepted that the first officially organised league competition in the world was the (English) Football League formed in 1888. Then, it consisted of 12 clubs all of whom were based in the North and the Midlands of England. The very first winners of the Football League Championship were Preston North End.

In 1992 with the influx of megabucks from BSkyB (now called Sky TV), the top teams broke away to form their own league called the FA Premier League.

Today, the original Football League has 3 divisions called; the Championship, Division 1 and Division 2.

So that England today has a total of 4 professional football leagues, with teams moving up (promotion) or down (relegation) through the leagues depending on their points tally at the end of each season.

The First Football Association Cup (FA Cup)

The first FA Cup final was played in England in 1872 between Royal Engineers and Wanderers in front of 2,000 spectators. Wanderers ran out 1-0 winners partly because Royal Engineers — who were the favourites — lost a player through injury, early in the match, and had to play on with only 10 men since substitutes were not allowed then. The “Challenge Cup”, as it was known originally, was the brainchild of Mr. C. W. Alcock of Sunderland who proposed only the year before that “A challenge cup should be established in connection with the Association“; the “Association” being the Football Association, hence the FA Cup.

The Oldest Football Club in the World

There have always been many arguments over the oldest football club in the world. Here are some facts to consider though…

The oldest, continuously documented, “football” club in the world is Dublin University Football Club, in the Republic of Ireland, which was founded in 1854. However, the club now plays Rugby Union, not Association Football. For this reason it is not officially recognized as the oldest football club in the world.

Sheffield Football Club — Sheffield FC — founded in England in 1857, is recognised by both the English FA and FIFA as being the oldest, continuously documented football club in the world still playing Association Football. They play in the Northern Premier League Division 1 South in England. So they are generally now recognised as being the oldest football club in the world.

But, there is documentation of a “football club” in Edinburgh, Scotland between 1824 and 1841. Several documents still exist today which refer to the “Foot Ball Club” and it’s rules. It worked rather like a golf club where members selected teams from their membership to play one another. The club has been now been reconstituted and plays under the name of “The Foot Ball Club of Edinburgh” in an amateur capacity.

The First International Football Match

The first international football match was played between Scotland and England in Glasgow, Scotland on 30th November 1872, in front of 4,000 spectators. The result was a hard-fought 0-0 draw. And of the 110 games played between 1872 and 1999 when the fixture was disbanded, Scotland had won 41, England 45, and 24 games had ended in a draw.

The First Trainer’s Dugout

The first ever recorded use of a sunken covered enclosure at the side of the pitch (the dugout) was in the early 1920s at Pittodrie Stadium, Aberdeen, Scotland. The trainer at the time, Donald Coleman, had it built to protect himself while he took detailed notes of his players during matches, as was his practice, and, was partly sunken into the ground so as not to block spectators’ views of the game. Visiting teams were so impressed that the idea soon spread throughout the UK and then the rest of the world.

A critical part of hitting a short game shot is choosing the right club. It’s not too hard to hit the shot straight. Getting the ball close to the hole means controlling the distance it is hit. The club you select is a major factor in accomplishing that.

There are two ways you can change the distance a ball flies. One way is to change the loft of the club. You might hit the shot with an 8-iron or a pitching wedge. Assuming you swing each club the same way, the ball will fly farther and run farther after landing with the 8-iron than with the pitching wedge.

The second way is to use the same club, but change the size of the swing you use with it. A pitching wedge hit with a half swing will of course not fly as far or run as far as a pitching wedge hit with a three-quarter swing.

In both these cases, the golfer works with one variable and eliminates the other. We can give each method a name to make it clear how each one works. The first method could be called the Iron Method, taken from the idea that we use the same swing with clubs of different lofts to hit the ball different distances from the fairway. The second method could be called the Putter Method, following the idea that we use the same club for all shots on the green and vary the distance with the size of the stroke.

Certain shots work better with one method than the other. The Iron Method works well for long pitch shots. You can use the same-sized stroke, say where your left arm (right arm for left-handed golfers) stops when it gets parallel to the ground. Then you see how far each club from your 8-iron through your sand wedge hits the ball.

For shots close to the green, but not right next to it, you might want to use the Putter Method and choose your sand wedge. Because you’re standing close to your objective, it’s relatively easy to judge how hard to hit the shot and fine-tune the size of your stroke accordingly.

Greenside chips, from no farther than a few feet off the green, are best hit with one club, a 5-iron or a 6-iron. This lower loft means the ball will start rolling sooner, which makes it easier to control distance, and using primarily one club makes it easier for you to be familiar with how the ball responds when struck.

A third method of club selection combines the two methods. You might have three differently-sized, standardized swings that you would use with three different clubs to hit a particular shot through a range of distances. This is the most accurate way of controlling distance, but it takes a lot of work to find what distance each combination yields, and lots of practice to maintain your consistency with it.

However you choose to do it, spend some time around the practice green developing distance control in an organized way, so that when you pull a club on the course for that 25-yard chip, it’s the right club.

Imagine an Olympic ice skater. Watch how she moves, leaning steeply, pressing herself powerfully around a corner, always perfectly balanced. See how she pivots, effortlessly back then forward, never losing her stride. Enjoy the smooth arcs her arms carve in the air, the graceful circling of the legs. Now remember that she’s doing all of this on cold, hard, unforgiving ice.

Imagine, now, an old man surrounded by a half dozen attackers. On a signal from one, they converge to grab the old man. They reach the spot where he’d stood, but he’s gone, and they collide with each other. Somehow, he slipped from their circle.

Again they surround him, and again he evades their grip, disappearing like the wind. They become frustrated. They go after him, attacking, trying to grab or tackle or somehow subdue him. The old man glides among the furious attackers, unperturbed, using the energy of their attacks to throw them onto the ground. Again and again they attack. The old man flows through them, striding here, whirling there, perfectly balanced, harmonizing with his unwilling partners. He seems like he’s dancing. But his attackers don’t want to dance with him any more than the ice wants to dance with the ice skater.

Watching well-done aikido is like watching an Olympic skater: the graceful circles, the gliding motions, the flowing extension. With an ice skater, though, one can understand that it’s her years and years of ceaseless practice that allow her to move so gracefully, not a prearranged cooperation with the ice. With aikido, though, people often suspect that there is some overt or covert cooperation by the attackers.

There is no such cooperation. In our dojo, we demand that attacks be as real as the skater’s ice. Of course for beginners, we slow down attacks so they can learn to move well. Our skater didn’t learn at full speed. But still, the ice is the ice. And a punch, even a slow one, if it connects, will be felt.

An ice skater may practice her spins and jumps on the padded floor of a gym. She may practice slowly. Ultimately, though, she knows she has to perform her art at full speed on the ice.

The grace and flow of well-done aikido, too, comes from years and years of training. At its roots, aikido is a martial art. Though we may practice slowly, we train with real attacks, ones with the force and solidity of ice. The performance of our art demands this reality.