ABSTRACT
In the early part of the twentieth century, an adage circulated among the European intelligentsia: ‘One Englishman, a fool; two Englishmen, a football match; three Englishmen; the British Empire.’2 Leaving aside the merits or otherwise of this assessment of the English male character, the maxim was soon overtaken by events. By 1930 – the date of soccer’s first World Cup in Uruguay – it could justifiably be said that wherever two or more European or Latin American young men gathered, a football match would take place, or at least be the topic of conversation. Yet soccer’s rise to become the world’s most popular sport had little to do with
the British Empire as it was formally constituted. Perhaps the greatest paradox in world sport is the fact that, despite being the major beneficiary of the sporting industrial revolution of the late nineteenth century, soccer was the last major British sport to to establish itself outside of the British Isles, Even today, soccer cannot claim to be the undisputed national winter sport of any English-speaking country beyond England and Scotland. Rugby was the first football code to spread beyond its original geographical
location. This should not be surprising in view of the tremendous popularity of Tom Brown’s Schooldays across the English-speaking world. As well as being a primer for schoolboys and schoolmasters alike, the book also offered an uplifting moral tale for those seeking to justify or emulate British rule around the world. This can be seen clearly in Australia, where a form of organised football was first consistently played in Melbourne, inspired to a greater or lesser extent by former Rugby School pupil Tom Wills. Although its aficionados later claimed that the
sport had sprung entirely from Australian sources, the laws of Victorian (later Australian) rules football were entirely drawn from the varying forms of football played in Britain.3
