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Oldest football clubs refers to the football clubs in all codes that are the earliest known to have been established.

The history of their formation is of interest to sport historians in tracing the origins of the modern codes of football from casual pastime to early organised competition and mainstream sport. Many early clubs did not use the word "football" in their name. Although the terms "football club" and "FC" are now strongly associated with association football (aka soccer), early rugby clubs also referred to themselves, or continue to refer to themselves, as simply a "football club", or as a "Rugby Football Club". Similarly, most Australian rules football teams also refer to themselves as football clubs. The title of the world's oldest football club, or the oldest club in a particular country, is often disputed, or is claimed by several different clubs, across several different codes of football. The oldest football club with a well-documented, continuous history is the Dublin University Football Club, a Rugby club founded in 1854 at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. The FA and FIFA, the UK and international governing bodies of Association Football, both officially recognise Sheffield F.C., to be the world's oldest Association Football club.[1] [2]

Defunct clubs

It is possible that football organisations existed in London as early as the fifteenth century. For example, the records of the Brewers' Company of London between 1421 and 1423 mention the hiring out of their hall "by the "football players" for "20 pence", under the heading "Trades and Fraternities".^[1] The listing of football players as a "fraternity" or a group of players meeting socially under this identity is the earliest allusion to what might be considered a football club.^[2] Other early sporting bodies dedicated to playing football include "The Gymnastic Society" of London which met regularly during the second half of the eighteenth century to pursue two sports: football and wrestling^[3] The club played its matches - for example between London-based natives of Cumberland and Westmoreland - at the Kennington Common from well before 1789 until about 1800.

The first documented club to bear the title "football club" is one in Edinburgh, Scotland, during the period 1824-41, and associated with a man named John Hope. Several documents relating to this "Foot Ball Club" exist.^[4] The only surviving club rules forbade tripping, but allowed pushing and holding and the picking up of the ball.^[5] Other documents describe a game involving 39 players and "such kicking of shins and such tumbling".

Other early clubs include the Great Leicestershire Cricket and Football Club present in 1840^[6] In 1841 two clubs are documented in a contemporary challenge to play "foot-ball" in Lancashire: "The Body-Guard club" (Rochdale) and the "Fear-noughts Club" ^[7] A club for playing "cricket, quoits and football" was established in Newcastle on Tyne in or before 1848.^[8] The Surrey Football Club was established in 1849 and published the first non-school football list of rules (which were probably based upon the eighteenth century Gymnastic Society cited above^[9])

Continuous Clubs

Drawing from the first football game played between Rutgers and Princeton.

It is has been claimed that the Barnes Club (later Barnes Rugby Football Club), from Barnes in London, was formed in 1839^[10]. However, this has not been conclusively documented. It is also argued, and supported by the Guinness Book of Records, that Guy's Hospital Football Club, founded by staff at Guy's Hospital in London in 1843, is the oldest club. While a rugby club still exists at Guy's Hospital, the connection between the present club and the one formed in 1843 is poorly-documented^[11].

The oldest football club with a well-documented, continuous history is the Dublin University Football Club, founded in 1854 at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. The club plays rugby union.

Sheffield Football Club, in Sheffield, England is the oldest documented non-university club, and was founded in 1857. It initially played a code of its own devising. The club joined the English Football Association (FA) in 1863 and is recognised by both the FA and FIFA as the world's oldest club now playing association football. The club's rules influenced the FA including handball, free kicks, corners and throw ins; it did not adopt the Association's code in full until 1877.

Cambridge University Association Football Club has been described by both the university and the BBC as the oldest club now playing Association football (soccer).^[12] Other sources take the foundation date back earlier. For example : "Salopians formed a club of their own in the late 1830s/early 1840s but that was presumably absorbed by the Cambridge University Football Club that they were so influential in creating in 1846"^[13] According to Charles Astor Bristed, in the early 1840s at Cambridge, there were games played between clubs from different colleges and houses.^[14] Cambridge rules dates from 1848 and football is documented as being played on the original club ground, Parkers Piece, as early as 1838.^[3] The earliest existing evidence of the Cambridge University Football Club comes from "The Laws of the University Football Club" dated 1856, and held at Shrewsbury School.^[15]

German side 1860 Munich was founded as a gymnastic and fitness club in the year indicated by its name. But it did not play football until 1899. English club Notts County, formed in 1862, is the world's oldest fully professional Association Football club.^[16]

The first football club in France was established in Paris in 1863 by English expatriates, as the following excerpt from a contemporary newspaper shows: "A number of English gentlemen living in Paris have lately organised a football club... The football contests take place in the Bois de Boulogne, by permission of the authorities and surprise the French amazingly ^[17]>

Gridiron football was not invented until the 1870s; Harvard University was the first to devise the game and it quickly spread, with innovations added by Yale University student Walter Camp. A few Canadian football teams predate the invention of the sport itself, though they began as rugby football teams and later converted. The oldest existing non-university semiprofessional football club is the Watertown Red & Black, which was founded in 1896. In 1899, the oldest professional football club was founded; it is now known as the Arizona Cardinals.

Timeline, 1824 – 1870

* = disputed, poorly documented or dormant for a period.

See also

• Sports clubs by year of establishment
• List of Australian rules football clubs by date of establishment

References

External links

• University of Manchester, "Local studies in the History of Sport England" (Bibliography)
• Clifton Rugby Football Club, "Oldest Rugby Clubs"