ABSTRACT
The period between 1868 and 1873 witnessed four significant developments that served to establish the football culture that in many ways we still have today. In 1868 the FA at last began to resemble a credible body, possessing both members and purpose. To an extent, however, the very desire of the FA to define itself so rigorously in terms of rules ensured that it effectively denied a place within the Association to those clubs whose game was based on a model derived from the football of Rugby School. Thus, by 1871, in a desperate attempt to bring order to a game that had become increasingly anarchical due to the widely divergent interpretations of rules, the RFU was established. The sole purpose of the RFU was to regulate rugby and its creation effectively severed football into two separate, and to a certain extent adversarial, games – association and rugby football. While it could certainly be argued that such a state had existed de facto, since the split in December 1863, as late as 1867 it was possible that a reintegration of sorts might have occurred. In 1871, at almost the same time as the rugby game was establishing itself as a separate entity, the FA initiated its most adventurous project, the establishment of a cup competition, which would help to spread interest in the game beyond the London area. The project does seem to have enjoyed some success and in 1873 the Scottish FA was founded, effectively bringing the whole of the British mainland under the rubric of football associations of one type or another.
