ABSTRACT
As the game became more competitive and organized, the need for decisions on points of dispute became more apparent. And indeed in the first written rules of 1845, it was noted that such rules were 'to be regarded rather as a set of decisions on certain disputed points in football, than as containing all the Laws of the Game, which are too well known to render any explanation necessary to Rugbeians' .28 Much has been made of the fact that Rugby can claim the first written code of laws. Dunning and Sheard have used this as the basis for their argument that Eton footballers felt threatened by status rivalry and therefore published their own rules fairly shortly thereafter in 1847.29 With increasing numbers of boys in many of the schools following the rapid development of secondary education from the early 1840s onwards, it may have become a necessity to have a code of laws because no longer were there small stable groups of boys who moved through the schools together and learned the rules together. Boys now came and went far more frequently and in far greater numbers.30 They certainly came in increasing numbers to Rugby after Arnold's much-publicized success.31 Without a specified code of laws, boys who learned their football elsewhere would come to
Rugby and bring ideas from their former schools with them. The confusion that such a situation would have wrought might well have been the basis for the comment about 'certain disputed points' in the Rugby rules.
