The oldest football match in the world: Ashbourne, Derbyshire

 Unpublished 2023 article for Landworker Unite magazine Spring 2023 

Football has changed vastly since medieval times when games featured hundreds of players on fields spanning miles – but not everywhere. Football historian Mark Metcalf provides a history lesson from Ashbourne in Derbyshire.

Out of the chaos and pandemonium of multitudinous scrambles for the ball, football has shaped itself through the centuries and become a regulated sport with internationally recognised rules. But the spectacularly chaotic affairs from the past do live on in rare places that were prepared to defy laws brought in at the start of the industrial revolution.

One such place is Ashbourne in Derbyshire where every year on Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday the Royal Shrovetime Football match, which takes place over two eight-hour periods, involves every able-bodied man in the town who wants to join in. The result is a rough and slightly madcap event where the ball is frequently missing in a mass of sweating bodies.

Pre-match sees the shops boarded up, on the day the pub cellars are overflowing with barrels of beer, and the players get stuck into a gruelling two days of battle.

In Ashbourne a person’s team depends which side they are born of Henmore Brook – a tributary of the River Dove, which flows through the middle of the market town on the southern edge of the Peak District.

The Down’Ards try to goal the ball at the old Clifton Mill and their opponents try to score at the old Sturston Mill. The distance between the goals is around three miles.

The historic game this year started just after 2pm on Tuesday February 21st, when the day's turner-up, farming stalwart Paul Cook, threw his ball high into the crowd, with around 5,000 people expected to get involved. That’s over half of the 9,163 people that populate the town.

2022 had resulted in a remarkable four goals being scored over the two days with the Up’ards scoring three and the Down’ards just once. No side though is declared the winner as it’s more about the individual achievements of each goal.

In 1987, locally born Jonathan Dodd equalised for the Up’Ards when “Eight or 9 of us ran away with the ball late on over many miles and I got in and scored. I was the first to score in the river. I return from Eyam each year as it is in your blood. I enjoy it and when you see one of your mates score it’s great. Excitement keeps you moving for the 2 days. If you get tired you just keep going.” Dodd’s achievements then and since make him a local legend.

On the first day of the game this year the ball remained in the car park for a long time before it broke out, at one point entering the water and getting stuck again such that the game remained goalless with the ball not being goaled at either end.

The match dates back to at least 1667 but, because a fire destroyed the earliest records, its exact origins are unknown. This has parallels with the history of football more broadly in this country. Ancient historians were much more interested in revolutionary deeds and the dominant figures of kings and queens than the pastimes of common people, which they deemed unworthy of mention, so there is no certain record of when football was first played. It was instead left to modern writers to seek out minute references to football in order to piece together the history of the game that is now the most popular sport in the world.

There is no proof, for example, that football began in Chester during the Saxon period when locals gleefully kicked the severed heads of conquered Danes through the streets, but the ninth century Welsh monk and historian Nennius does make reference to a field, in the district of Glevesing, “where a party of boys were playing at ball”.

The earliest recorded Shrovetide game came after the Saxon period had ended and the Norman occupation was over a century old. Cleric William Fitzstephen, in 1175, noted that after dinner on Shrove Tuesday, “all the young men of the town go out into the [London] elds in the suburbs to play ball”. It is clear that this annual event had been going on for at least a generation and that the match took place on open fields and in rivers with the goals many miles apart.

Most people at Ashbourne were there to watch and cheer. It is difficult to calculate how many were playing for the Down’Ards – born on the south side of Henmore Brook, or the Up’Ards – born north side, but there were at least 400-500 players apiece. The figure doesn’t include the youngsters, whose schools are closed for the occasion and who try to get as close to the action as they can on the rare chance that the ball might miraculously come their way. It is a rite of passage.

One of those watching on was a highly familiar Unite member in Colin Hampton, whose heroic work over the decades has helped thousands who’ve visited the Chesterfield based Derbyshire Unemployed Workers Centre.

“I have got a week off and chosen to come and bring friends on both days to the match. I’ve attended for the last 15 years. It is something to behold that a ball gets thrown up in the middle of a town in medieval style.

“You get an impression of what life was like and this sort of game took place in a lot of towns all over the country including in Derby where it was banned in the 19^th century. It’s thought that the term local derby comes from the ancient game in Derby.

“I know locals take it very seriously and you see people in track suits, who look like they’ve been keeping fit, on the fringes of the fight for the ball ready to receive it and run off as quickly as possible.”

Also watching from a safe distance and enjoying some food and a beer and fresh air was Micola Ferrer and his son Luke who is wheelchair bound. “One year we had found what we thought was a safe spot by a big gate post. Then 4 big lads turned up and said we could not stay there as we would be killed and they all picked Luke up in his wheelchair up and took us 40-50 yards away.

“Half an hour later the post was flattened by the crowd as they wrestled for the ball,” laughs Micola who works in a kitchen.

It may be that amongst the crowd at the time was a long-time player at the game. Jack Godfrey from Derby, who for over a decade has made the short trip north with his Ashbourne born mum, Janet, who believes she was there when her mam was pregnant with her.

“I am just happy to get stuck in,” said Jack, “I was brought up round here although as I am not from Ashbourne, I won’t ever score a goal. I get by over the 16 hours on adrenalin. Like everyone I know it is a medieval tradition dating back 900 years.”

The tradition persists became locals fought for their rights. In 1860 a group of Ashbourne locals were convicted for “riotous assembly” for playing football on Shrove Tuesday, but the inhabitants of the town still reassembled for the event 12 months later and it has continued ever since. The game received royal approval in 1928 when the Prince of Wales – later King Edward VIII – started the match by dropping the ball into the crowd of eager footballers from a stone plinth in a field – now the town’s main car park.

It was a feat considering the long history of attempts by the authorities to suppress the ‘beautiful game’. In 1314 Edward II forbade football altogether due to “the evil that might arise through many people hustling together”. Edward was concerned that young men were more interested in chasing a ball made from a pig’s bladder than practicing archery in preparation for war. It was a theme that Rudyard Kipling returned to when he attacked the “muddied oafs” in his Boer War poem The Islanders in 1902.

In 1389 Richard II passed another Act forbidding football and these were later re-enforced by Henry IV and Henry VIII.

In Scotland, James III tried to banish the game, ordering it in 1458 to be “utterly put down”. In 1579 John Wonkell, of Durham County, was imprisoned for a week for playing football on a Sunday. Four years later the end of the world was predicted because football was being played on the Sabbath and was, according to authors Alfred Gibson and William Pickford, “causing necks, legs, backs and arms to be broken, eyes to start out, and noses to gush out with blood”.

The Puritans, a group of reformed Protestants, always viewed the game with great hostility, but Oliver Cromwell was a revolutionary who not only toppled the king and paved the way for parliamentary democracy – he also enjoyed football.

The game became even more popular after the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660 and the violence was renewed with additional vigour. Mass games were held regularly and in numerous locations but there were soon attempts to introduce rules, demanding an equal number of players on each side.

In 1829 the Metropolitan Police Act heralded the advent of modern policing and in 1835 Parliament banned football on the highways. The annual ritual football matches were successfully suppressed by the authorities, often by violent methods. In Dorking a determined effort by Surrey County Council ended a custom that was centuries old when they drafted in 100 police constables who, when the first ball was started by a notable townsman, made strenuous efforts to obtain possession. The game and the attempt of the police to prevent it went on for several hours with the large watching crowd jeering the police. Towards the end of the game a fight broke out, between some of the players and the crowd against the police, and there were injuries on both sides. Fifty Dorking townspeople were subsequently fined one shilling (5p) each for obstructing the highway, with the magistrate saying the match was “a danger to life”.

This historical event has yet to return to Dorking, and while the one at Ashbourne survives, and another in Workington which also takes place around Easter, most similar events elsewhere have ended. Instead, anyone interested in football must now turn their attentions to the innumerable clubs that have been established since Sheffield FC became the first official English (Hope Football Club was formed in Edinburgh in 1824 and lasted till 1841) club in 1857.

Sheffield has a strong claim to be the home of modern football as the city also played a major role in developing the rules that have made it possible for teams to face each other on a common front.