SKILL OVER FORCE

Close inspection of the newish monument on Parker's Piece, a green space in Cambridge, reveals the first official set of "Football Laws", decided by students at Cambridge University in the 19th Century. When students met, having moved on from school, the undergraduates found out that there were many students who had come from a variety of football playing schools each of which had a different code of rules to follow. The most obvious difference would be Rugby v Charterhouse!

In 1848 the students who fancied more foot than hand put their heads together and formulated a set of rules that they could all follow and pinned them to trees around Parker's Piece. "Skill over force" was a major theme!
With some flexibility there was an agreement and so the game got going without little confusion!

The earliest record of football in the county of Cambridgeshire is noted in the University records in 1579, when a match was played at Chesterton (a local village), between the village folk and students. It ended in a brawl. The university authorities proclaimed that there should be no football played between the students and the local folk, but that did not prevent matches from taking place. There are various diaries recording matches played on Parker's Piece, notably that of Dr G.C.Corrie Master of Jesus College in December 1838. By 1856 Cambridge University had a football team that played to these rules. Note that Sheffield still claim the oldest club dated 1857.

Many other meetings nation wide no doubt, were held until 1863, when the Cambridge rules were well established and used as a base along with others codes to formulate the "Association" rules (or Laws) in the Freemason's Tavern, Great Queen's Street, Lincoln Inn Fields, London. This event was commemorated recently.

With funds raised to the sum of £115,000, nine pieces of granite taken from a quarry near Porto FC's stadium, were brought to England and inscribed with the "laws" and sited on Parker's Piece, a public park on the edge of the city centre.
Five of the granite pieces have been transported to the five continents leaving four to be adorned by supporters' flags and possibly used as a climbing wall.....not everyone likes the style.


Football flourished at the university town with the main aim to play old foes Oxford in the annual Varsity Match, once held at Wembley stadium in front of 20,000 people. These days, whilst the "Varsity Match" is still valued, the various student teams, males and females, both from Oxford and Cambridge compete in the British Universities Competitions, Midlands Division.
The university teams now play at either Grange Road, the university rugby venue, or on Fenners, the outfield of the university cricket pitch.There are of course many other college fields where "soccer" is played as enthusiastically as in the days of yore.