🌅 Scotland May Be the True Home of “Foot-Ball”

SOURCE

Scottish Football Museum

WHAT TO KNOW

• Archaeologists in Scotland have identified what they believe to be the world’s oldest soccer pitch, located on a former 17th-century farm in the town of Anwoth on the country’s southern coast. If correct, the finding suggests people in Scotland were playing football more than 200 years before the British.

WHY IT MATTERS

• The site, formerly known as Mossrobin Farm, was mentioned in a letter written by Presbyterian Reverend Samuel Rutherford, who served as pastor at Anwoth Old Kirk (Church) from 1627 to 1638. In the letter, Rutherford expressed frustration with parishioners playing “Foot-Ball” at Mossrobin Farm on Sabbath afternoons, directing members of his congregation to place a line of stones across the field to prevent the game from being played. The archaeologists discovered 14 large rocks lined up across a flat expanse that measured 147 feet wide by 280 feet long, uncovering what they believe to be Rutherford’s wall placed across the pitch.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• England has long claimed to be the home of football, with British historians theorizing the modern game evolved from a spectacle known as “mob football,” a violent game popular in the Middle Ages that reportedly had no set time limit or rules. By the late 18th century, members of the British aristocracy began organizing formal matches, eventually resulting in an organized game under a uniform set of rules adopted by the Football Association in London (founded in 1863).