The F.A Timeline

By DanielNunan
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    The F.A Timeline

  • The F.A Starts

  • Ebenzer Morley

    Ebenzer Morley, a london solicitor who formed Barnes FC in 1862, could be called the 'Father' of the Association.

  • The League Begins

    Southern Amateur League's Senior Division Onwe was the first league and it was made up of 12 teams, they played every Monday Evening.

  • The First Rules Of The Game

    ‘Football’, they thought, would be a blend of handling and dribbling. Players would be able to handle the ball: a fair catch accompanied by ‘a mark with the heel’ would win a free kick. The sticking point was ‘hacking’, or kicking an opponent on the leg, which Blackheath FC wanted to keep.

  • The First Rules Brought in

    The laws originally drafted by Morley were finally approved at the sixth meeting, on 8 December, and there would be no hacking. They were published by John Lillywhite of Seymour Street in a booklet that cost a shilling and sixpence. The FA was keen to see its laws in action and a match was played between Barnes and Richmond at Limes Field in Barnes on 19 December. It was a 0-0 draw.

  • The First UnOffical Match Between England And Scotland

    England’ won this unofficial international 1-0 and all the players, English and Scottish, lived in London.

  • The First Official 15 Team In The Cup

    Barnes, Civil Service, Crystal Palace, Clapham Rovers, Hitchin, Maidenhead, Marlow, Queen’s Park (Glasgow), Donington Grammar School (Spalding), Hampstead Heathens, Harrow Chequers, Reigate Priory, Royal Engineers, Upton Park and Wanderers.

  • The Challenge Cup

    The move which probably did most to broaden the outlook of The FA and spread its influence over a wider field was made at a meeting at the office of The Sportsman newspaper on 20 July 1871. The announcement of the birth of ‘The Football Association Challenge Cup’ ran to just 29 words: “That it is desirable that a Challenge Cup should be established in connection with the Association for which all clubs belonging to the Association should be invited to compete”.

  • England VS Scotland Officially

    The Scottish FA hadn’t yet been formed but the Queen’s Park club agreed to organise the first official international between England and Scotland. It took place at Hamilton Crescent, the Partick home of the West of Scotland Cricket Club, on 30 November 1872. The admission fee, as it had been for the first Cup Final, was a shilling. A 4,000 crowd, including a good number of ladies, was present for a 0-0 draw that Bell’s Life saw as “one of the jolliest, one of the most spirited and most pleasant.

  • County and District Associations

    County and District Associations, charged with fostering the game and organising clubs in their own areas, sprang into life all over the country between 1875 and 1885. They ran their own Cup competitions, inspired enthusiasm and provided the framework for hundreds of new teams. The FA was now truly a national body.

  • Money Profit

    Some clubs in the north, enamoured with The FA Cup, saw nothing wrong in profit and success or in paying a man for doing his job.

  • The Football League Created

    He wrote to some of those clubs about a league format for football and a ‘Football League’ with 12 clubs came into being after just two meetings in 1888. The FA was still the ultimate authority but the League would live as a self-contained body within it.

  • The F.A Goes Abroad

    The FA appeared quite indifferent to the growth of football abroad. In 1902 the Netherlands FA suggested European unity, an international championship and uniformity of the laws in all countries.

  • Amateur Split

    The professionals’ contribution to the popularity and development of the game continued to grow and this was openly resented by the diehard amateurs. The FA directed County Associations to affiliate the professional clubs within their areas and this was the final straw for Surrey and Middlesex who refused to accept them. There was an ‘amateur split’, lasting from 1906 to 1913, and an ‘Amateur Football Association’ was formed to make a stand against the ‘corruption’ of the game.

  • The Home Of The F.A

    Wembley, a north-west London suburb, had been chosen as the site for a British Empire Exhibition. The FA were advised that the centrepiece would be ‘a great national sports ground’ and a quickly convened ‘Ground Committee’ signed an agreement in May 1921 to stage The FA Cup Final there for the next 21 years.

  • The First Wembley Final

    The stadium took 300 working days to build and was completed just four days before the 1923 Final between Bolton Wanderers and West Ham United.

  • The First Official World Cup

    The first World Cup was held in Uruguay in 1930 but The FA didn’t enter a team. England had only played against the other Home Associations before making a tour of Austria, Hungary and Bohemia in 1908. The World Cup might have provided a useful examination of the strength of the British teams but they had withdrawn from FIFA, the competition’s organisers, over the thorny question of ‘broken time’ payments to amateur players.

  • Disprectful England

    Four years later, with war only 16 months away, England met Germany in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium and beat them 6-3. On the British ambassador’s advice the England team controversially gave the Nazi salute during the playing of the German national anthem.

  • 17 New Laws

    Rous, the former master at Watford Grammar School who had already introduced the ‘diagonal system’ of refereeing, also used his expertise to rewrite the laws of the game. They were a little disjointed and Rous’s clearer version of the 17 laws of football was accepted by the International Board in 1938.

  • Coaches Now Available

    The FA looked to the future. In 1946 it offered help to clubs and associations at all levels with coaches, courses, text books, publicity and – as and when funds became available – loans and grants. The decision was also taken to rejoin FIFA, a decision made easier by a new sense of European unity after the war. At Rous’s suggestion a Great Britain team played a celebration match against the Rest of Europe in Glasgow, with the £30,000 proceeds going to the impoverished FIFA.

  • England's Stars

    England were one of the top teams in the world. With a star-studded forward line of Stanley Matthews, Stan Mortensen, Tommy Lawton, Wilf Mannion and Tom Finney they rattled in ten goals against Portugal in Lisbon and then beat the powerful Italians 4-0 in Turin. They were one of the favourites to lift the Jules Rimet Trophy at the 1950 World Cup in Brazil.

  • England's World Cup Win

    England won their first-ever World Cup Finals match, 2-0 against Chile in Rio’s huge Maracana Stadium.

  • Stanley Matthews

    The year of The FA’s 90th anniversary, 1953, saw two Wembley matches that would live long in the memory. Stanley Matthews, the ‘Wizard of the Dribble’ and a genuine sporting hero, finally collected his FA Cup winners’ medal after Blackpool’s 4-3 win over Bolton Wanderers in what, arguably, is still the competition’s most exciting Final. Matthews, who had appeared on the losing side in two previous Finals, was then 38.

  • Hungary VS England

    Six months later England were humbled 6-3 at Wembley by Hungary, the Olympic champions who hadn’t lost a match for three years. They were the first Continental team to beat England at home, the manner of their victory proving beyond doubt that the country which had ‘invented’ football was now struggling to understand its finer points. The Hungarians showed their superior skill and teamwork again as they crushed England 7-1 in Budapest in 1954.

  • England Win The World Cup

    Ramsey, who won 32 caps and was England’s right-back against Hungary in ’53, had declared soon after his appointment that England would win the World Cup. He was proved right on 30 July, a day of sunshine and showers, as England beat West Germany 4-2 after a highly eventful two hours’ football. HM The Queen handed the trophy to Moore, England’s unflappable skipper.

  • Can England Retain The World Cup?

    Sir Alf Ramsey’s England team went to Mexico in 1970 with a realistic chance of retaining the World Cup, despite the heat, the altitude and a lot of Mexicans who wanted Brazil to win it (after Mexico, of course). But they lost bizarrely to West Germany in their Leon quarter final, 3-2 after being 2-0 in front. It was one of those days when everything went wrong. Almost inconceivably, it turned out to be England’s last World Cup Finals match for 12 years.

  • Hillsborough Tragedy (R.I.P)

    In the late ‘80s English football suffered the horrors of Bradford, Heysel and Hillsborough. Lord Justice Peter Taylor’s report after the Hillsborough tragedy of 1989, when 96 supporters died at an FA Cup Semi-Final, was a plan for the radical modernisation of grounds which signalled, amongst other things, the coming of ‘all-seater’ stadiums. The report also emphasised the essential role of the Government and local authorities in redeveloping the national game.

  • Positive World Cup 1990

    England had a positive World Cup in Italy in 1990, reaching the semi-finals for their best-ever performance on foreign soil. The whole country had been gripped by the same kind of fever which afflicts some towns before a big FA Cup tie. English clubs were allowed back into European competition, Bobby Robson went to PSV Eindhoven in Holland and Graham Taylor, the new England manager, said that our good showing at Italia 90 was “something to build on”.

  • Pass Back Rule

    In 1992, FIFA, soccer’s highest governing body, introduced a new rule to prevent players from playing a cynical and overly defensive game. Called the back pass rule, it prohibits the goalkeeper from handling the ball under the following circumstances:
    •when the ball is intentionally kicked to him by a teammate
    •when receiving it directly from a throw-in
    •when he has already released the ball to the ground after a save

  • The 126th FA Cup Final, Featuring Chelsea And Manchester United

    But we have a world-class stadium at Wembley, completed in 2007 at a cost of around £800m. The 126th FA Cup Final, featuring Chelsea and Manchester United, was the first Final to be played there. A capacity crowd inside the stadium, 12.9m viewers on UK television and about 450m worldwide, saw a parade of Wembley winners from the last 50 years before the kick-off.

  • St. George's Park

    St. George’s Park, The FA’s new National Football Centre in Burton upon Trent, was opened in 2012. It will be a centre for coach education, a leading centre of sports medicine and science, and provide a training home for Club England and its 24 representative sides. An elite training pitch has been graded to exactly match the current surface at Wembley Stadium.