The match also, it may be noticed, lasts for two hours or thereabouts on the first day, and is continued on subsequent occasions. Somewhere about the year 1835, therefore, the original game of football was having a hearty and healthy existence at Rugby School At no other public school, however, as far as we are aware, was the running and collaring game kept up. At many of the other chief schools there were games where more or less 'scrimmaging' was allowed, but at all of these the only method of propulsion allowed was kicking. Some schools allowed 'free-kicking' and catching, some allowed while others disallowed the stopping of the ball with the hands, some allowed 'off-side' play, and some forbade it. But until the revival of football came all the other public schools but Rugby played the game in which running with the ball was not allowed. Now as it was discovered as soon as attempts were made to codify and assimilate rules some quarter of a century ago, the essential distinction between the two entirely distinct games which are now played under the names of 'Rugby Union' and 'Association ' football, is that in the former running with the ball, and therefore tackling, is allowed; in the other it is entirely forbidden.

As soon as any running with the ball under however stringent conditions was permitted, the running became the important feature of the game, and no compromise between running and non-running games was possible. It is therefore not too much to say that the running game came entirely in its modern form from Rugby, although doubtless before it began to be followed by the public at large, other schools, such as Cheltenham and Marlborough, had adopted with more or less modification the game so lucidly described in 'Tom Brown's School-days.' The Association or 'kicking' game came before the world from Eton, Harrow, Westminster, Charterhouse, and other schools where something of the same style of game was played. All these schools had rules differing in many essential characteristics from one another, but all agreeing in forbidding any seizing of the ball and running with it.

It is of course difficult to trace in any detail the steps by which both games gradually spread from the chief schools to the smaller schools, and from both to the public at large. From enquiries we have instituted it appears that between 1850 and 1860, the same period in which 'Athletic Sports' were taking root in schools and colleges, all the schools adopted football as part of the regular athletic curriculum, and as the chief school game for the winter months. Gradually the old public school boys started the game again after they had left school, at the Universities and around the large towns. At Cambridge old members of the schools which played the dribbling game appear to have been indulging in matches as early as 1855: and about the same time the game was begun again regularly in Sheffield. Two clubs, the Sheffield and Hallam clubs, were founded simultaneously in 1857. We believe, however, that a club which played the dribbling game under the title of the 'Forest Club,' and existed near Epping Forest, claimed before its untimely decease the honour of being the first football club of modern times.

In 1858 some old Rugbeians and old boys of the Blackheath Proprietary School started the famous Blackheath Club to play the Rugby game, and in the following year their great rivals in the game, the Richmond Club, came into existence. Soon after 1860 there was a great football 'boom' at Sheffield, and several fresh clubs sprang up, and indeed from that time for the next fifteen years the Sheffielders could put an eleven into the field able to meet any other eleven in the kingdom. Meantime in London several dribbling clubs were being established, the Crystal Palace in 1861 and the Civil Service and Barnes in 1862. So far the dribbling clubs were decidedly in the majority, as besides Richmond and Blackheath and the Harlequins we believe there were no other regularly constituted clubs playing the Rugby rules before 1863. In 1863 the first move towards football organisation was made, and after much exposition in the columns of the press of the necessity for assimilation of rules, an attempt was made in the autumn of that year by the leading London clubs to settle a uniform code of rules for all players.

The suggested compromise between the essentially different games which were being played was to allow running either when the ball was caught on a fair catch, or caught on a bound, and it was even proposed before the committee which met to frame the 'compromise' rules that hacking and tripping should be allowed when the adversary was running with the ball. Before the discussion of the rules was over in London, however, some of the dribbling players at Cambridge had also elected a committee and drawn up a set of rules upon which the old players of Eton, Harrow, Westminster and Charterhouse could agree. The Cambridge rules naturally excluded all-running with the ball, and the 'hacking over,' 'tripping' and ' tackling' which were the means used by the Rugbeians to stop the runners. The next move was a joint conference of the London and Cambridge committees, and the dribbling players of the metropolis naturally cast their vote against the running and tackling which they reluctantly inserted in their draft of rules in order to conciliate the London players of the Rugby game.

The result was that the combined influence of the Cambridge and London dribblers was too strong for the London Rugbeians, who accordingly withdrew from the new combination which started in 1863 under the name of the Football Association, and has since worthily governed the dribbling game. Even from its formation, however, the question of how to deal with the off-side rule proved a stumbling block in the way of the Association. The Etonians in playing their field game had a rigorous-rule against 'sneaking' or playing off-side, and the Harrovians also favoured a strict - off-side' rule. The Westminster and Charterhouse boys, however, always played the game of ' passing forward,' and were not in favour of a strict off-side rule. For the time the Etonians had their way, and it was not until 1867 that the Association adopted its present off-side rule, which provides that no man can be 'off-side' unless there are less than three players of the opposite side in front of him when the ball is passed. The Sheffield Association, a body of associated clubs who played in the Sheffield district, went even further than the Association in their off-side rule, and only obliged one opponent to be between the players and the goal to prevent offside play.