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.

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.

Golf is an exciting game. People who have never tried golf can never judge what joy and excitement lies beneath a swing of the club. A perfect game of golf highly depends on the choice of a golf club.

It is hard to determine which club would best suit a golfer but there is such a wide range of golf clubs in the world that every golfer can metaphorically speaking get a golf club specially designed for him. You must have noticed and wondered at the number of golf clubs that the caddie is seen carrying along in the golf bag. The fact is that a golf player can carry 14 golf clubs with him at a time. The golf clubs come in sets that have been fixed some how during the course of years. To have a good and perfect shot the player should not use a single club for all the shots. Your shots should be consistent and you should know which club suits you and which would assist your swing in the most accurate way. If you are an experienced player you will instantly know when your ball lands on a certain spot; which club should you take next.

The usual set of clubs that is sold in the markets consists of 2 wedges, 8 iron clubs, 3 wooden clubs and a putter. That is the basic requirement of a player during a game. These golf clubs are designed in a specific way and they are graded with different numbers according to the angels that the club heads have and their weight plus their shaft length. This angel is known as the loft of the club head. And this specific angel of the club head makes the ball take the flight in a certain direction. You can notice the difference when you hit a ball with either a bat or a plain stick and you will find out the difference yourself.

There are Iron clubs are used for playing shorter shorts and their length is even shorter because of the same reason. The wedge is actually one of the iron headed clubs and these are the shortest. And these wedges and the putters are used for playing shots from the bunkers and the greens.

The wooden clubs are the best and they are longest in length. They are made from different kinds of woods that may differ in different countries. However the fact remains that while you are playing golf you should be careful with the choice of clubs that you make for playing a good game.