HUNTER, HEELEYfc, BOSTON ONEIDIASfc

The Summer this year, in South Yorkshire has brought football fans to gather in local pubs, clubs and friends houses to view the spectacle unfolding in American Stadiums, the very best of the FIFA World Cup, showing speed, skill and precision. The competition began in Sheffield, developed in Scotland and travelled across the oceans, especially to the USA. It was in Sheffield that the game developed from a casual kick around from Mob "Football" to a serious event between two teams of around eleven people.

Structure began to emerge on once muddy fields and then on to organised spaces, marked out, with goals and eventually a referee! Sheffield Norfolk was one of those organised clubs coming together with scientific play in the 1864-5 season. The Sheffield team was described as playing "scientifically" and "kicking the ball to one another, to get round their opponents". This was happening two years before the modern Scottish club, Queen's Park, was founded in Glasgow. The Scots pioneered the "pyramid" and triangle passing system, that has developed through the decades.

An Englishman, Jack Hunter, was one of the key English players who used tactical development, playing for Heeley FC in the 1870s. Some time before the "short-passing" system was developed, using "space" efficiently, a more expansive and deliberate style emerged, spread across the full width of the cricket pitch. The players were positioned over the space which was quite large, of course, and there was less running needed, the ball did the work! Sorry, not a great picture!

Jack Hunter moved across the Pennines to Lancashire, to Blackburn, where he became coach and player in a team of local tradesmen, that won the FA Cup in 1883, the first "working class" club to achieve this. The club was called Blackburn Olympic. The Sheffield style of long passes to the wings, long ball directly down the pitch and precise crosses was clearly effective! George Wilson of Swinton played in every round and scored in the first five. As English men (families) migrated to America, the passing game was spread abroad. 

In 1905 and again in 1909, a touring side known as "The Pilgrims" went on a "high profile" tour to the Americas and Canada, hoping to spread knowledge of the game further west! as soccer had fallen by the wayside as American Football began to appeal more to the Americans. 

Boston's Oneidias FC had been the first American to favour the "rugby/football" variant in 1862, in a team of Prep-school graduates. The first English Association rules match was played in 1866, nine years after Sheffield FC was founded, the oldest known cub in England.

The American Football Association and the National Association Football League both closed in 1898 as the "home grown" Americam Football gained more appeal. The Pilgrims, made up from amateurs were brought in to help popularise the "carpet" football game as Americans called it! 

Behind the scenes was Frederick Milnes from Wortley (a village near Sheffield and Barnsley), who organised tours and began to "advertise" the game. Helping was Jack Hudson another local from nearby Brightside. Across the Atlantic, cities mirrored South Yorkshire in grit and graft, and so football found new locations, such as Detroit, St Louis, Chicago and Philadelphia, industrial cities. The Pilgrims played 17 games there in 1905, with spectators numbering 15,000 a game. Such was the success of the tour, that the AFA reopened the following year, with a second tour in 1909. 21 games were arranged in the large industrial cities.