IT'S IN THE CAN

It has been a normal day! Nothing unusual; a car to Dodworth, bus to Barnsley, train to Sheffield, express choo-choo to St Pancras, travelling with a lovely American man who was carrying bone marrow, yes bone marrow in a refrigerated "can" to his home in the USA for his ailing daughter. He has found a match in England, Sheffield I guess? and so he was on his way home quickly. A perfect match!

I then walked through the northern streets of inner London to Smithfield EC1 and the Charterhouse where I helped with a documentary film directed by the charming Nick Fitzherbert, an Old Carthusian, who wanted to make his mark in Charterhouse history, as if he hadn't achieved that already! The film is about the development of football from its early roots.

The boys at the school midst the grimness of the meat market and central London, played a form of football in the Old Charterhouse cloisters; very much an indoor game, dangerous, but with many attributes associated with the modern game. There were two teams, with numbers dependent on who was free to play. The teams tossed a coin to choose ends and had to change ends when a goal was scored.

If the ball flew out of the cloister windows, the first boy to touch the ball threw it back in, presumably to the advantage of his own side, hence "touch". There were defenders, goalies of a sort, dribblers and an untidy ruck like rugby. The skill was to get the ball out of the "squash" or ruck and dribble down to the opponents goal (a door at the end of the cloister).

On occasion the game spread out onto the nearby recreation grass or Green. Here the game changed to a more modern form with more space, there was offside (three men not two) playing you onside. This of course changed to two eventually. Throw ins were more like the rugby line out, goal kicks occurred six yards out from the goal line, fouls were penalised and in stead of a door, there eventually were goalposts.

We went through the history of the Charterhouse football, a game that led the Old Carthusians being foremost in Association Football in the late 19th Century. They made their mark on soccer, as did many other schools. I came across several schools such as Harrow, Eton, Forest School in Snaresbrook that had contributed to the great game in differing ways, but also lesser known scholarly places such as Donington Grammar School in Lincolnshire and Ockbrook School in Derbyshire.