Unpublished 2023 article for Landworker Unite magazine Spring 2023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.
All photographs are copyright Mark Harvey ⓒ
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 19th 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.
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