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Post by Avinalaff on Oct 26, 2013 9:41:01 GMT
2013 has seen the Football Association celebrating 150 years since the eight founding fathers of football met to create the game as we know it today. The range of special events to mark the anniversary have included everything from showcase England games against the likes of Brazil and Scotland at an elite level, through to the Sir Bobby Robson National Football Day and the honouring of 150 of football’s grassroots volunteers at an event hosted by HRH Prince William, The Duke of Cambridge. Today, the FA will host a gala dinner at the Grand Connaught Rooms in London to mark exactly 150 years to the day since the meeting took place that triggered the formation of the nation’s favourite game. A presentation between FA chairman Greg Dyke and the two team captains will take place before the kick off of this afternoon's game against Aston Villa, while Everton's players will also wear commemorative 150th anniversary t-shirts during the warm-up at Villa Park. How It All BeganIn 1863, Ebenezer Cobb Morley, a solicitor and sportsman living in Barnes in south west London, thought that football should have a set of rules in the same way that the MCC had them for cricket. So, the captains, secretaries and other representatives of a dozen London and suburban clubs met at the Freemasons' Tavern in Great Queen Street, near to where Holborn tube station is today. Their purpose was to form an association, with the object of establishing a code of rules for the regulation of football. The clubs represented at the first meeting were: Barnes, Civil Service (War Office), Crusaders, Forest (Leytonstone), No Names (Kilburn), Crystal Palace, Blackheath, Kensington School, Perceval House (Blackheath), Surbiton, Blackheath Proprietary School and Charterhouse. The intention of those original meetings was to standardise the rules and to iron out differences in the forms being played, not to create a new game. Morley became the FA’s first secretary, later its president, and he drafted modern football’s first set of rules at his Thames-side home. It took six meetings for the FA to finally approve those rules before the first match played under them kicked off at Limes Field, a couple of minutes’ walk from Morley’s home, on Saturday 19 December 1863. Barnes and Richmond drew 0-0. The Freemasons’ Tavern was extended and remodelled from 1905 and was renamed the ‘Connaught Rooms’ in honour of the Grand Master, the Duke of Connaught. At around the same time, Limes Field was built on with housing now known as Limes Field Road. Before the FA was formed, football was in a hybrid state. Today, it spans a world that is caught up in its magic. To those men of a clear vision and high resolve who first gathered together at the Tavern, the FA - and the football world - owes a great debt. Source: Evertonfc
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Post by jimmy on Oct 26, 2013 17:02:29 GMT
Ebenezer Cobb Morley eh? Take a bow son.
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Post by Avinalaff on Oct 26, 2013 22:42:54 GMT
Ebenezer Cobb Morley eh? Take a bow son. That's quite a name isn't it? I wouldn't call my own child it, but I do like that name.
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Post by Texan Toffee on Oct 27, 2013 0:35:19 GMT
I didn't know about this 150 years. I thought the league started much later.
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Post by jimmy on Oct 27, 2013 13:30:06 GMT
I didn't know about this 150 years. I thought the league started much later. Did they consult you at the time Tex?
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