Createspace Independent Publishing Platform The world's first football club (1824): john hope and the edinburgh footballers: a story of sport, education and philanthropy, paperback/andy mitchell

This is the story of the world's very first club dedicated to football, founded in Scotland in 1824.

Football was played from medieval times in schools and villages throughout Britain and took on many forms before the Victorians embarked on the process of codification.

There were attempts in the 1840s to write down rules at Rugby School, Eton College and Cambridge University.

When footballers got together they formed organisations and a club was founded at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1854, while Scotland's oldest is now the Academical Football Club in Edinburgh, established in 1857.

Sheffield, also dating from 1857, makes a strong claim to be the oldest existing club now playing association football.

Yet to find the world's first football club one has to go back to 1824, when an Edinburgh student called John Hope established what he simply called The Foot-Ball Club.

No other contemporary football clubs are known to have existed, but this one thrived for almost 17 years, giving an outlet for organised football to a generation of young sportsmen.

The club's extraordinarily detailed records have survived intact, including membership lists, accounts, letters and personal reminiscences.

Many of these priceless items are reproduced in the book.

Thanks to this unique archive, we know the names of almost 300 men who played for the club.

The founding members might have been expected to leave football behind when they left school but by persisting with their juvenile activities and continuing to play this vigorous contact sport into adulthood, they were ahead of their time.

The authors show in this book that the Foot-Ball Club fitted perfectly into the vibrant sporting culture which existed among a particular social class in Edinburgh.

The city already had a wide range of clubs and societies devoted to physical exercise: Edinburgh sportsmen had already formed the world's first archery club, first golf club and first gymnastic club; they had written the first rules for golf, bowl.