ABSTRACT
1. Our first empirical task in this study is to examine the available data on the folk-games from which Rugby and soccer are descended. That is necessary in order to build up a picture of these folk-games and their differences from modern sports. It is also necessary because of a simple methodological point: namely, that if one wishes to establish the occurrence of a trend or the ‘direction’ of a social process, it is necessary to have firm knowledge of its ‘starting point’ or ‘base’. And that, in the case of Rugby and soccer, means the folk-games of pre-industrial Britain, even though they were, themselves, stages in an ongoing process.
