Photo finish of a greyhound race in Tampa, Florida, USA on February 9, 1939.
Greyhound racing is the sport of racing greyhounds. The dogs chase a lure (an artificial hare or rabbit) on a track until they arrive at the finish line. The one that arrives first is the winner.
In many countries, greyhound racing is purely amateur and conducted for enjoyment. In other countries (particularly the US, UK, and Australia), greyhound racing is a popular form of parimutuel gambling, similar to horse racing. There is some popular concern in the latter countries regarding the well-being of the dogs; the effectiveness of industry efforts to address these concerns is controversial. A greyhound adoption movement has arisen to assist retired racing dogs in finding homes as pets.
Although the rules do not specify any positions whatsoever, they have evolved as part of basketball. During the first five decades of basketball’s evolution, two guards, two forwards, and one center were used. Since the 1980s, more specific positions have evolved, namely:
point guard: organizes the team’s offense by controlling the ball and making sure that it gets to the right player at the right time
shooting guard: creates a high volume of shots on offense; guards the opponent’s best perimeter player on defense
small forward: often primarily responsible for scoring points via cuts to the basket and dribble penetration; on defense seeks rebounds and steals, but sometimes plays more actively than that
power forward: plays offensively often with his back to the basket; on defense, plays under the basket (in a zone defense) or against the opposing power forward (in man-to-man defense)
center: uses size, either to score (on offense) or to protect the basket closely (on defense)
The above descriptions are flexible. On some occasions, teams will choose to use a three guard offense, replacing one of the forwards or the center with a third guard. The most commonly interchanged positions are point guard and shooting guard, especially if both players have good leadership and ball handling skills.
There are two main defensive strategies: zone defense and man-to-man defense. Zone defense involves players in defensive positions guarding whichever opponent is in their zone. In man-to-man defense, each defensive player guards a specific opponent and tries to prevent him from taking action. Variations of these two main structures are also used.
Offensive plays are more varied, normally involving planned passes and movement by players without the ball. A quick movement by an offensive player without the ball to gain an advantageous position is a cut. A legal attempt by an offensive player to stop an opponent from guarding a teammate, by standing in the defender’s way such that the teammate cuts next to him, is a screen or pick. The two plays are combined in the pick and roll, in which a player sets a pick and then “rolls” away from the pick towards the basket. Screens and cuts are very important in offensive plays; these allow the quick passes and teamwork which can lead to a successful basket. Teams almost always have several offensive plays planned to ensure their movement is not predictable. On court, the point guard is usually responsible for indicating which play will occur.
Defensive and offensive structures, and positions, are more emphasized in higher levels in basketball; it is these that a coach normally requests a time-out to discuss.
The squad in the field is the defensive team; they attempt to prevent the baserunners from scoring. There are nine defensive positions, however, only two of the positions have a mandatory location (pitcher and catcher), the locations of the other seven fielders is not specified by the rules, except that at the moment the pitch is delivered they must be positioned in fair territory and not in the space between the pitcher and the catcher. These fielders often shift their positioning in response to specific batters or game situations, and they may exchange positions with one another at any time. The nine positions most commonly used are: pitcher, catcher, first baseman, second baseman, third baseman, shortstop, left fielder, center fielder, and right fielder. Note that, in rare cases, teams may use dramatically differing schemes, such as switching an outfielder for an infielder. Scorekeepers label each position with a number starting with the pitcher (1), catcher (2), first baseman (3), second baseman (4), third baseman (5), shortstop (6), left fielder (7), center fielder (8), right fielder (9). This convention was established by Henry Chadwick. The reason the shortstop seems out of order has to do with the way fielders positioned themselves in the early years of the game.
The battery
The battery is composed of the pitcher, who stands on the rubber of the mound, and the catcher, who squats behind home plate. These are the two fielders who always deal directly with the batter on every pitch, hence the term “battery”, coined by Henry Chadwick and later reinforced by the implied comparison to artillery fire.
The pitcher’s main role is to pitch the ball toward home plate with the goal of getting the batter out. Pitchers also play defense by fielding batted balls, covering bases (for a potential tag out or force out on an approaching runner), or backing up throws. The catcher’s main role is to receive the pitch if the batter does not hit it. Together with the pitcher and coaches, the catcher plots game strategy by suggesting different pitches and by shifting the starting positions of the other fielders. Catchers are also responsible for defense in the area near home plate.
The infielders
The four infielders are the first baseman, second baseman, shortstop, and third baseman. Originally the first, second and third basemen played very near their respective bases, and the shortstop generally played “in” (hence the term), covering the area between second, third, and the pitchers box, or wherever the game situation required. As the game evolved, the fielding positions changed to the now-familiar “umbrella”, with the first and third baseman generally positioned a short distance toward second base from their bases, the second baseman to the right side of second base standing farther away from the base than any other infielder, and the shortstop playing to the left of second base, as seen from the batter’s perspective, filling in the gaps.
The first baseman’s job consists largely of making force plays at first base on ground balls hit to the other infielders. When an infielder picks up a ball from the ground hit by the batter, he must throw it to the first baseman who must catch the ball while maintaining contact with the base before the batter gets to the base for the batter to be out. The first baseman must be able to catch the ball very well and usually wears a specially designed mitt. The first baseman also fields balls hit near first base. The first baseman also has to receive throws from the pitcher in order to tag runners out who have reached base safely. The position is less physically challenging than the other positions, but there is still a lot of skill involved. Infielders don’t always make good throws to first base, so it is the first baseman’s job to field any ball thrown toward him cleanly. Older players who can no longer fulfill the demands of their original positions also often become first basemen. The second baseman covers the area to the first-base side of second base and provides backup for the first baseman in bunt situations. He also is a cut-off for the outfield. This is when the outfielder doesn’t have to throw the full distance from him/her to the base, but just to the cut-off. The shortstop fills the critical gap between second and third bases—where right-handed batters generally hit ground balls—and also covers second or third base and the near part of left field. This player is also a cut-off for the outfield. This position is the most demanding defensively, so a good shortstop doesn’t need to necessarily be a good batter. The third baseman’s primary requirement is a strong throwing arm, in order to make the long throw across the infield to the first baseman. Quick reaction time is also important for third basemen, as they tend to see more sharply hit balls than the other infielders, thus the nickname for third base as the “hot corner.”
The outfielders
The three outfielders, left fielder, center fielder, and right fielder, are so named from the catcher’s perspective looking out onto the field. The right fielder generally has the strongest arm of all the outfielders due to the need to make throws on runners attempting to take third base. The center fielder has more territory to cover than the corner outfielders, so this player must be quick and agile with a strong arm to throw balls in to the infield; as with the shortstop, teams tend to emphasize defense at this position. Also, the center fielder is considered the outfield leader, and left- and right-fielders often cede to his direction when fielding fly balls. Of all outfielders, the left fielder often has the weakest arm, as they generally do not need to throw the ball as far in order to prevent the advance of any baserunners. The left fielder still requires good fielding and catching skills, and tends to receive more balls than the right fielder due to the fact that right-handed hitters, who are much more common, tend to “pull” the ball into left field. The left fielder also backs up third base on pick-off attempts from the catcher.
Defensive strategy
Pitching
Effective pitching is vitally important to a baseball team, as pitching is the key for the defensive team to retire batters and to preventing runners from getting on base. A full game usually involves over one hundred pitches thrown by each team. However, most pitchers begin to tire before they reach this point. In previous eras, pitchers would often throw up to four complete games (all nine innings) in a week. With new advances in medical research and thus a better understanding of how the human body functions and tires out, starting pitchers tend more often to throw fractions of a game (typically 6 or 7 innings depending on their performance) about every five days (though a few complete games do still occur each year).
Multiple pitchers are often needed in a single game, including the starting pitcher and relief pitcher(s). Pitchers are substituted for one another like any other player (see below), and the rules do not limit the number of pitchers that can be used in a game; the only limiting factor is the size of the squad, naturally. In general, starting pitchers are not used in relief situations except sometimes during the post-season when every game is vital. If a game runs into many extra innings, a team may well empty its bullpen. If it then becomes necessary to use a “position player” as a pitcher, major league teams generally have certain players pre-designated as emergency relief pitchers, to avoid the embarrassment of using a less skillful player. In baseball’s early years, squads were smaller, and relief pitchers were relatively uncommon, with the starter normally remaining for the entire game unless he was either thoroughly ineffective or became injured; today, with a much greater emphasis on pitch count (100 being the “magic number” in general), over the course of a single game each team will frequently use from two to five pitchers. In the 2005 ALCS, all four of the Chicago White Sox victories were complete games by the starters, a highly noteworthy event in the modern game.
Although a pitcher can only take one step backward and one forward while delivering the ball, the pitcher has a great arsenal at his disposal in the variation of location, velocity, movement, and arm location. Most pitchers attempt to master two or three types of pitches; some pitchers throw up to 6 types of pitches with varying degrees of control. Common pitches include a fastball, which is the ball thrown at just under maximum velocity; a curveball, which is made to curve by rotation imparted by the pitcher; and a change-up, which seeks to mimic the delivery of a fastball but arrives at significantly lower velocity.
To illustrate pitching strategy, consider the “fastball/change-up” combination: The average major-league pitcher can throw a fastball around 90 miles per hour (145 km/h), and a few pitchers have even exceeded 100 miles per hour (161 km/h). The change-up is thrown somewhere between 75 to 85 miles per hour (121 to 137 km/h). Since the batter’s timing is critical to hitting a pitch, a batter swinging to hit what looks like a fastball, would be terribly fooled (swing and miss, hopefully) when the pitch turns out to be a much slower change-up.
Some pitchers choose to throw using the ‘submarine style,’ a very efficient sidearm or near-underhand motion. Pitchers with a submarine delivery are often very difficult to hit because of the angle and movement of the ball once released. Walter Johnson, who threw one of the fastest fast balls in the history of the game, threw sidearm (though not submarine) rather than a normal overhand. True underhanded pitching is not illegal in Major League Baseball. However, it is difficult to generate enough velocity and movement with the underhand motion.
Fielding strategy
Only the pitcher’s and catcher’s locations are fixed, and then only at the beginning of each pitch. Thus, the players on the field move around as needed to defend against scoring a run. Many variations of this are possible, as location depends upon the situation. Circumstances such as the number of outs, the count (balls and strikes) on the batter, the number and speed of runners, the ability of the fielders, the ability of the pitcher, the type of pitch thrown, and the inning cause the fielders move to more strategic locations on the field. Common defensive strategies include: playing for the bunt, trying to prevent a stolen base, moving to a shallow position to throw out a runner at home, playing at “double play depth”, and moving fielders to locations where hitters are most likely to hit the ball.
Numerous great players played in the days before tennis’s Open era, many of whom are unknown by modern sports fans. Among them, chronologically, are:
“Big Bill” Tilden – winner of 21 amateur Grand Slam titles, 7 consecutive Davis Cups, 4 professional Grand Slam titles, the professional doubles title at age 52; was for 7 years the World No. 1 player
Jean Borotra, Henri Cochet, René Lacoste – the three best of the “Four Musketeers”, won 46 amateur Grand Slam titles amongst them, 6 consecutive Davis Cups, 1 professional Grand Slam title; one was for 5 years the World No. 1 player
Ellsworth Vines – winner of 6 amateur Grand Slam titles, 4 professional Grand Slam titles; was world #1 professional player, 1933-1937; had a tremendous flat, hard service; was for 3 years the World No. 1 player
Fred Perry – won 13 amateur Grand Slam titles including 3 consecutive Wimbledons; was the first to win 4 consecutive Grand Slam titles; won 2 professional Grand Slam titles; was for 4 consecutive years the World No. 1 player
Don Budge – winner of 14 amateur Grand Slam titles; was the first to win 4 Grand Slam titles in a single year, 4 professional Grand Slam titles; is widely viewed as having had the best backhand of all time before Rosewall; was for 6 consecutive years the World No. 1 player
Bobby Riggs – winner of 6 amateur Grand Slam titles, 4 professional Grand Slam titles and 7 times a finalist; was world #1 professional player 1946-1947 and for those 2 years the World No. 1 player
Jack Kramer – won 10 amateur Grand Slam titles and 2 professional Grand Slam titles; was the first great player to play serve-volley on all serves; beat Gonzales badly in the 1949-1950 tour; was for 5 years the World No. 1 player
Pancho Segura – winner of 3 professional Grand Slam titles, including 2 victories over Gonzales, and 7 times a finalist; was for 1 year the World No. 1 player; Kramer called Segura’s two-handed forehand “the single best shot ever produced in tennis.”
Frank Sedgman – won 22 amateur Grand Slam titles, 3 professional Grand Slam titles and 4 times a finalist; winner of 3 consecutive Davis Cups
Pancho Gonzales – winner of 4 amateur Grand Slam titles, 12 professional Grand Slam titles and 6 times a finalist; world #1 amateur in 1949; was still world #6 player in 1969 and #9 American in 1972 at 44; was for 8 consecutive years the World No. 1 player, an unequalled 9 times overall
Ken Rosewall – won 18 Grand Slam titles, first 11 as an amateur, then 7 in the Open era, plus another 18 professional Grand Slam titles and was 5 times a finalist; winner of 3 consecutive Davis Cups; was for 2 years the World No. 1 player
Lew Hoad – won 11 amateur Grand Slam titles and 7 times a finalist in the professional Grand Slam; Gonzales said of him: “I think his game was the best game ever. Better than mine.”
Other fine players of the pre-Open era include Maurice McLoughlin, “Little Bill” Johnston, Vinnie Richards, Jack Crawford, Gottfried von Cramm, Ted Schroeder, Vic Seixas, and Tony Trabert.
Among women the top two pre-Open era players are considered to be Suzanne Lenglen and Helen Wills Moody. Maureen Connolly was the first female player to win a Grand Slam in 1953. Doris Hart was the first player to win all 12 possible singles, doubles and mixed doubles Grand Slam titles
Among the greatest male players of the Open era, with the number of career Grand Slam singles titles in parenthesis, are: Pete Sampras (14), Rod Laver (11), Björn Borg (11), Jimmy Connors (8), Ivan Lendl (8), Andre Agassi (8), John Newcombe (7), Roger Federer (7), John McEnroe (7), Mats Wilander (7), Boris Becker (6), Stefan Edberg (6), Jim Courier (4), Guillermo Vilas (4), Arthur Ashe (3), Gustavo Kuerten(3), Stan Smith (2), Lleyton Hewitt (2), Yevgeny Kafelnikov (2), Patrick Rafter (2), Marat Safin (2), and Rafael Nadal (2).
The greatest women players, again with the number of career Grand Slam singles titles in parenthsis for each, are: Margaret Smith Court (24), Steffi Graf (22), Chris Evert (18), Martina Navrátilová (18), Billie Jean King (12), Monica Seles (9), Serena Williams (7), Maria Bueno (7), Evonne Goolagong (7), Martina Hingis (5), Venus Williams (5), Justine Henin-Hardenne (5), Hana Mandlíková (4), Arantxa Sánchez Vicario (4),Lindsay Davenport (3), Jennifer Capriati (3), and Mary Pierce (2)
Suzanne Lenglen and Bill Tilden
The Greatest Player of All Time
Roger Federer
Until the mid-1950s, Bill Tilden was generally considered the greatest player ever, his only rivals being Vines, Budge, and Kramer. For much of the 1950s and 1960s, many thought Gonzales had claimed that title. Since then, first Laver, then more recently Borg, McEnroe, and Sampras, were widely regarded by many of their contemporaries as the greatest ever. Roger Federer is now considered by many observers to have the most “complete” game in modern tennis, with the potential to challenge the achievements of these past greats. Even among experts, however, no consensus exists as to who has been the greatest of all. Kramer, for instance, still believes that Budge was the best ever on a consistent basis, while Vines was the best at the top of his game. Segura opts for Gonzales, and Gonzales himself considered Hoad, at the height of his game, to be the best.
It frequently appears to be the case when trying to decide who is the best of all time that comptemporaries over-value the worth of great players of their own time. Each time that a great new player such as Tilden, Vines, Budge, Kramer, or Gonzales came on the scene and dominated it for several years, many observers at that time would then declare him to be the best of all time. A clear example of this occurred in early 1986 when Inside Tennis, a magazine edited in Northern California, devoted parts of four issues to a lengthy article called “Tournament of the Century”, an imaginary tournament to determine the greatest of all time. They asked 37 tennis notables such as Kramer, Budge, Perry, and Riggs and observers such as Bud Collins to list the 10 greatest players in order. This was probably as prestigious and knowledgeable a group of tennis experts as has ever been assembled. Nevertheless, there appears to be a clear predilection for choosing their near-contemporaries as the best player ever.
Twenty-five players in all were named by the 37 experts in their lists of the 10 best. The magazine then ranked them in descending order by total number of points assigned. The top eight players in overall points, with their number of first-place votes, were:
Rod Laver (9),
John McEnroe (3),
Don Budge (4),
Jack Kramer (5),
Bjorn Borg (6),
Pancho Gonzales (1),
Bill Tilden (6), and
Lew Hoad (1).
Sculpture depicting Rod Laver outside the Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne.
McEnroe was still an active player and Laver, Borg, and Gonzales had only recently retired. In the imaginary tournament Laver beat McEnroe in the finals in 5 sets.
Among the women, Lenglen and Wills Moody vie for the distinction of greatest of all time, along with several modern players: Court, Navratilova, Evert, Graf, and Seles.
The Great Doubles Players
Doubles is no longer as important to spectator tennis as it was in the first half of the 20th Century, when its attraction, particularly in Davis Cup rounds, was nearly equal to that of singles. George Lott, who himself won 5 U.S. doubles titles as well as 2 at Wimbledon, wrote an article in the May, 1973, issue of Tennis Magazine in which he ranked the great doubles teams and the great players. The teams, in descending order, were:
John Newcombe and Tony Roche
R. Norris Williams and Vinnie Richards
Bill Talbert and Gardnar Mulloy
Frank Sedgman and Ken McGregor
Adrian Quist and John Bromwich
Roy Emerson and Rod Laver
Bill Tilden and Vinnie Richards
Jacques Brugnon and Henri Cochet
Wilmer Allison and John Van Ryn
Lew Hoad and Ken Rosewall
John Newcombe and Tony Roche
Other great teams would include George Lott and Les Stoefen, Bob Lutz and Stan Smith, John McEnroe and Peter Fleming, and The Woodies (Todd Woodbridge and Mark Woodforde).
Lott also wrote: “It is frequently said that a doubles team is as good as its weakest link…. I believe a really great doubles player can solidify that weak link.” His list of the greatest doubles players is:
John Bromwich, Jack Kramer, and Don Budge, tied for 1st
Frank Sedgman, Adrian Quist, and Roy Emerson tied for 4th
Vinnie Richards
Jacques Brugnon
Marty Riessen, Bill Talbert, and Gardnar Mulloy tied for 10th
Olympic (or Amateur) boxing is found at the Olympic Games and Commonwealth Games. Olympic boxing prizes point scoring rather than physical damage or knockouts. Bouts comprise four rounds of two minutes in Olympic and Commonwealth and three rounds of two minutes in a national ABA (Amateur Boxing association) bout each with a one minute interval between rounds.
Competitors wear protective headgear and gloves with a white strip across the knuckle. A punch is considered a scoring punch only when the boxers connect with the white portion of the gloves. Each punch that lands on the head or torso is awarded a point. A referee monitors the fight to ensure that competitors use only legal blows (a belt worn over the torso represents the lower limit of punches – any boxer repeatedly landing “low blows” is disqualified). Referees also ensure that the boxers don’t use holding tactics to prevent the opponent from swinging (if this occurs, the referee separates the opponents and orders them to continue boxing. Repeated holding can result in a boxer being penalized, or ultimately, disqualified).
Referees will stop the bout if a boxer is seriously injured, if one boxer is significantly dominating the other or if the score is severely imbalanced.
Olympic (amateur) boxing history
The Queensberry Amateur Championships continued from 1867 to 1885, and so, unlike their professional counterparts, Olympic boxers did not deviate from using gloves once the Queensberry Rules had been published. In the United Kingdom, the Amateur Boxing Association (A.B.A.) was formed in 1880 when twelve clubs affiliated. It held its first championships the following year. Four weight classes were contested, Featherweight (9 stone), Lightweight (10 stone), Middleweight (11 stone, 4 pounds) and Heavyweight (no limit). (A stone is equal to 14 pounds). By 1902, American boxers were contesting the titles in the A.B.A. Championships, which, therefore, took on an international complexion. By 1924, the A.B.A. had 105 clubs in affiliation.
Boxing first appeared at the Olympic Games in 1904 and, apart from the Games of 1912, has always been part of them. From 1972 through 2004, Cuba and the United States have won the most Gold Medals, 29 for Cuba and 21 for the U.S. Internationally, Olympic boxing spread steadily throughout the first half of the 20th century, but when the first international body, the Federation Internationale de Boxe Olympic (International Olympic Boxing Federation) was formed in Paris in 1920, there were only five member nations. In 1946, however, when the International Amateur Boxing Association (A.I.B.A.) was formed in London, twenty-four nations from five continents were represented, and the A.I.B.A. has continued to be the official world federation of Olympic boxing ever since. The first World Amateur Boxing Championships were staged in 1974.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, Olympic boxing was encouraged in schools, universities and in the armed forces, but the champions usually came from among the urban poor.
Women’s boxing first appeared in the Olympic Games at a demonstration bout in 1904. For most of the 20th century, however, it was banned in most nations. Its revival was pioneered by the Swedish Amateur Boxing Association, which sanctioned events for women in 1988. The British Amateur Boxing Association sanctioned its first boxing competition for women in 1997. The first event was to be between two thirteen-year-olds, but one of the boxers withdrew because of hostile media attention. Four weeks later, an event was held between two sixteen-year-olds.
The A.I.B.A. accepted new rules for Women’s Boxing at the end of the 20th century and approved the first European Cup for Women in 1999 and the first World Championship for women in 2001. Women’s boxing will be an exhibition sport at the 2008 Olympics, but it won’t become an official Olympic sport until the 2012 Olympics.
A new scoring system was invented for Olympic boxing: using a computer, judges must press a button every time they think a boxer landed a punch. When three or more of the five judges press the button within a second of each other, the punch counts as a “point” for the fighter that landed it. Punches to the head or face of an opponent usually score the most points for a competitor. At any point of the fight in which a fighter is leading by twenty points (or sometimes more), the referee is indicated and the fight is stopped, the leading fighter winning by “mercy”, and credited with a knockout.
Measurements and time limits discussed in this section often vary among tournaments and organizations; international and NBA rules are used in this section.
The object of the game is to outscore one’s opponents by throwing the ball through the opponents’ basket from above while preventing the opponents from doing so on their own. An attempt to score in this way is called a shot. A successful shot is worth two points, or three points if it is taken from beyond the three-point arc which is 6.25 meters (20 ft 6 in) from the basket in international games and 23 ft 9 in (7.24 m) in NBA games.
Playing regulations
Games are played in four quarters of 10 (international) or 12 minutes (NBA). Fifteen minutes are allowed for a half-time break, and two minutes are allowed at the other breaks. Overtime periods are five minutes long. Teams exchange baskets for the second half. The time allowed is actual playing time; the clock is stopped while the play is not active. Therefore, games generally take much longer to complete than the allotted game time, typically about two hours.
Five players from each team may be on the court at one time. Teams can have up to seven substitutes. Substitutions are unlimited but can only be done when play is stopped. Teams also have a coach, who oversees the development and strategies of the team, and other team personnel such as assistant coaches, managers, statisticians, doctors and trainers.
For both men’s and women’s teams, a standard uniform consists of a pair of shorts and a tank top with a clearly visible number, unique within the team, printed on both the front and back. Players wear high-top sneakers that provide extra ankle support. Typically, team names, players’ names and sometimes sponsors are printed on the uniforms.
A limited number of time-outs, clock stoppages requested by a coach for a short meeting with the players, are allowed. They generally last no longer than one minute unless, for televised games, a commercial break is needed.
The game is controlled by the officials consisting of the referee, one or two umpires and the table officials. The table officials are responsible for keeping track of each teams scoring, timekeeping, individual and team fouls, player substitutions, team possession arrow, and the shot clock.
Equipment
A basketball.
A diagram of a FIBA basketball court.
The only essential equipment in basketball is the ball and the court: a flat, rectangular surface with baskets at opposite ends. Competitive levels require the use of more equipment such as clocks, scoresheets, scoreboards, alternating possession arrows, and whistle-operated stop-clock systems.
The men’s ball’s circumference is about 30 inches (76 cm) and weighs about 1 lb 5 oz (600 g). The women’s ball’s circumference is about 29 inches (73 cm) and weighs about 1 lb 3 oz (540 g). A regulation basketball court in international games is 28 by 15 meters (approx. 92 by 49 ft) and in the NBA is 94 by 50 feet (29 by 15 m). Most courts are made of wood.
A cast-iron basket with net and backboard hang over each end of the court. At almost all levels of competition, the top of the rim is exactly 10 feet (3.05 m) above the court and 4 feet (1.2 m) inside the endline. While variation is possible in the dimensions of the court and backboard, it is considered important for the basket to be the correct height; a rim that is off by but a few inches can have an adverse effect on shooting.
Violations
The ball may be advanced toward the basket by being shot, passed between players, thrown, tapped, rolled or dribbled (bouncing the ball while running).
The ball must stay within the court; the last team to touch the ball before it travels out of bounds forfeits possession. The ball-handler may not move both feet without dribbling, known as traveling, nor may he dribble with both hands or catch the ball in between dribbles, a violation called double dribbling. A player’s hand must remain on top of the ball while dribbling, failure to do so is known as carrying the ball. A team, once having established ball control in the front half of the court, may not return the ball to the backcourt. The ball may not be kicked nor struck with the fist. A violation of these rules results in loss of possession, or, if committed by the defense, a reset of the shot clock.
There are limits imposed on the time taken before progressing the ball past halfway (8 seconds in international and NBA), before attempting a shot (24 seconds), holding the ball while closely guarded (5 seconds), and remaining in the restricted area (the lane, or “key”) (3 seconds). These rules are designed to promote more offense.
No player may interfere with the basket or ball on its downward flight to the basket, or while it is on the rim (or, in the NBA, while it is directly above the basket), a violation known as goaltending. If a defensive player goaltends, the attempted shot is considered to have been successful. If a teammate of the shooter goaltends, the basket is cancelled and the team loses possession.
Fouls
The referee signals that a foul has been committed.
An attempt to unfairly disadvantage an opponent through personal contact is illegal and is called a foul. These are most commonly committed by defensive players; however, they can be committed by offensive players as well. Players who are fouled either receive the ball to pass inbounds again, or receive one or more free throws if they are fouled in the act of shooting, depending on whether the shot was successful. One point is awarded for making a free throw, which is attempted from a line 4.5 metres (15 feet) from the basket.
There is some discretion with the referee when calling a foul — referees consider if there was unfair advantage gained, e.g. if a player were to gain possession unfairly, sometimes making fouls controversial calls. The calling of a foul can vary between games, leagues and even between referees.
A player or coach who shows poor sportsmanship, for instance, by arguing with a referee or by fighting with another player, can be charged with a technical foul. The penalty involves free throws and varies between leagues. Repeated incidents can result in disqualification. Blatant fouls with excessive contact or that are not an attempt to play the ball are called unsportsmanlike fouls (or flagrant fouls in the NBA) and incur a harsher penalty; in some rare cases a disqualifying foul will require the player to leave the playing area, known as an ejection.
If a team surpasses a preset limit of team fouls in a given period (quarter or half) – four for international and NBA games – the opposing team is awarded one or two free throws on all subsequent fouls for that period, the number depending on the league. A player who commits five fouls, including technical fouls, in one game (six in some professional leagues, including the NBA) is not allowed to participate for the rest of the game, and is described as having “fouled out”.
A simplified version of the rules of baseball is at simplified baseball rules. The complete Official Rules can be found www.mlb.com, the official web site of Major League Baseball in the United States.
General structure
Baseball is played between two teams of nine players each on a baseball field, under the authority of one or more officials, called umpires. There are usually four umpires in major league games; up to six (and as few as one) may officiate depending on the league and the importance of the game. There are four bases. Numbered counter-clockwise, first, second and third bases are cushions (sometimes informally referred to as bags) shaped as 15 in (38 cm) squares which are raised a short distance above the ground; together with home plate, the fourth “base,” they form a square with sides of 90 ft (27.4 m) called the diamond. Home base (plate) is a pentagonal rubber slab known as simply home. The field is divided into two main sections:
The infield, containing the four bases, is for defensive and offensive purposes bounded by the foul lines and the grass line (see figure). However, the infield technically consists of only the area within and including the bases and foul lines.
The outfield is the grassed area beyond the infield grass line (for general purposes; see above under infield), between the foul lines, and bounded by a wall or fence. Again, there is a technical difference; properly speaking, the outfield consists of all fair ground beyond the square of the infield and its bases. The area between the foul lines, including the foul lines (the foul lines are in fair territory), is fair territory, and the area outside the foul lines is foul territory.
The game is played in nine innings (although it can be played with fewer, such as it is in little league) in which each team gets one turn to bat and try to score runs while the other pitches and defends in the field. An inning is broken up into two halves in which the away team bats in the top (first) half, and the home team bats in the bottom (second) half. In baseball, the defense always has the ball — a fact that differentiates it from most other team sports. The teams switch every time the defending team gets three players of the batting team out. The winner is the team with the most runs after nine innings. If the home team is ahead after the top of the ninth, play does not continue into the bottom half. In the case of a tie, additional innings are played until one team comes out ahead at the end of an inning. If the home team takes the lead anytime during the bottom of the ninth or of any inning thereafter, play stops and the home team is declared the winner.
A batter follows through after swinging at a pitched ball.
The basic contest is always between the pitcher for the fielding team, and a batter. The pitcher throws—pitches—the ball towards home plate, where the catcher for the fielding team waits (in a crouched stance) to receive it. Behind the catcher stands the home plate umpire. The batter stands in one of the batter’s boxes and tries to hit the ball with a bat. The pitcher must keep one foot in contact with the top or front of the pitcher’s rubber—a 24″ x 6″ (~ 61 cm x 15 cm) plate located atop the pitcher’s mound—during the entire pitch, so he can only take one step backward and one forward in delivering the ball. The catcher’s job is to receive any pitches that the batter does not swing at or swings at and misses and to “call” the game by a series of hand movements that signal to the pitcher what pitch to throw and where. If the pitcher disagrees with the call, he will “shake off” the catcher by shaking his head; he accepts the sign by nodding. The catcher’s role becomes more crucial depending on how the game is going, and how the pitcher responds to a given situation. Each pitch begins a new play, which might consist of nothing more than the pitch itself.
Each half-inning, the goal of the defending team is to get three members of the other team out. A player who is out must leave the field and wait for his next turn at bat. There are many ways to get batters and baserunners out; some of the most common are catching a batted ball in the air, tag outs, force outs, and strikeouts. After the fielding team has put out three players from the opposing team, that half of the inning is over and the team in the field and the team at bat switch places; there is no upper limit to the number that may bat in rotation before three outs are recorded. Going through the entire order in an inning is referred to as “batting around”. It is indicative of a high scoring inning. A complete inning consists of each opposing side having a turn (three outs) on offense.
The goal of the team at bat is to score more runs than the opposition; a player may do so only by batting, then becoming a base runner, touching all the bases in order (via one or more plays), and finally touching home plate. To that end, the goal of each batter is to enable baserunners to score or to become a baserunner himself. The batter attempts to hit the ball into fair territory—between the baselines—in such a way that the defending players cannot get them or the baserunners out. In general, the pitcher attempts to prevent this by pitching the ball in such a way that the batter cannot hit it cleanly or, ideally, at all.
A baserunner who successfully touches home plate after touching all previous bases in order scores a run. In an enclosed field, a fair ball hit over the fence on the fly is normally an automatic home run, which entitles the batter and all runners to touch all the bases and score. A home run hit with all bases occupied (‘bases loaded’) is called a grand slam.
Tennis has a long history (deriving from the ‘jeu de paume’), but its establishment as the modern sport can be dated to two separate roots. In 1856, Alex Ryden, a solicitor, and his friend Batista Pereira, a Spanish merchant, who both lived in Birmingham, England played a game they named “pelota”, after a Spanish ball game. The game was played on a lawn in Edgbaston. In 1872 both men moved to Leamington Spa, and with two doctors from the Warneford Hospital, played pelota on the lawn behind the Manor House Hotel (now residential apartments). Pereira joined with Dr. Frederick Haynes and Dr. A. Wellesley Tomkins to found the first lawn tennis club in the world, and played the game on nearby lawns. In 1874 they formed the Leamington Tennis Club, setting out the original rules of the game. The Courier of 23 July 1884 recorded one of the first tennis tournaments, held in the grounds of Shrubland Hall (demolished 1948).
In December 1873, Major Walter Clopton Wingfield devised a similar game for the amusement of his guests at a garden party on his estate at Nantclwyd, Wales. He based the game on the older sport of indoor tennis or real tennis (“royal tennis”), which had been invented in 12th century France and was played by French aristocrats down to the time of the French Revolution.
According to most tennis historians, modern tennis terminology also derives from this period, as Wingfield borrowed both the name and much of the French vocabulary of royal tennis and applied them to his new game:
Tennis comes from the French tenez, the imperative form of the verb tenir, to hold: This was a cry used by the player serving in royal tennis, meaning “I am about to serve!” (rather like the cry “Fore!” in golf).
Racquet comes from raquette, which derives from the Arabic rakhat, meaning the palm of the hand.
Deuce comes from à deux le jeu, meaning “to both is the game” (that is, the two players have equal scores).
Love may come from l’oeuf, the egg, a reference to the egg-shaped zero symbol; however, since “un oeuf” is more commonly used, the etymology remains in question.
The convention of numbering scores “15″, “30″ and “40″ comes from quinze, trente and quarante, which to French ears makes a euphonious sequence.
Seeing the commercial potential of the game, Wingfield patented it in 1874, but never succeeded in enforcing his patent. Tennis spread rapidly among the leisured classes in Britain and the United States. It was first played in the U.S. at the home of Mary Ewing Outerbridge on Staten Island, New York in 1874.
In 1881 the desire to play tennis competitively led to the establishment of tennis clubs. The first championships at Wimbledon, in London were played in 1877. In 1881 the United States National Lawn Tennis Association (now the United States Tennis Association) was formed to standardize the rules and organize competitions. The comprehensive I.L.T.F. rules promulgated in 1924 have remained remarkably stable in the ensuing eighty years, the one major change being the addition of the tie-breaker system designed by James Van Alen. U.S. National Men’s Singles Championship, now the U.S. Open, was first held in 1881 at Newport, Rhode Island. The U.S. National Women’s Singles Championships were first held in 1887. The Davis Cup, an annual competition between national teams, dates to 1900.
Tennis was for many years predominantly a sport of the English-speaking world, dominated by the United States, Britain and Australia. It was also popular in France, where the French Open dates to 1891. Thus Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, the French Open and the Australian Open (dating to 1905) became and have remained the most prestigious events in tennis. Together these four events are called the Grand Slam (a term borrowed from bridge). Winning the Grand Slam, by capturing these four titles in one calendar year, is the highest ambition of most tennis players.
In 1926 promoter C.C. (“Cash and Carry”) Pyle established the first professional tennis tour with a group of American and French tennis players playing exhibition matches to paying audiences. The most notable of these early professionals were the American Vinnie Richards and the Frenchwoman Suzanne Lenglen. For 42 years professional and amateur tennis remained strictly separate. Once a player turned pro he or she could not compete in the major (amateur) tournaments. In 1968, commercial pressures led to the abandonment of this distinction, inaugurating the Open era, in which all players could compete in all tournaments, and top players were able to make their living from tennis.
With the beginning of the Open era, the establishment of an international professional tennis circuit, and revenues from the sale of television rights, tennis has spread all over the world and has lost its upper-class English-speaking image. Since the 1970s great champions have emerged from Germany (Boris Becker, Steffi Graf), the former Czechoslovakia (Ivan Lendl, Martina Navrátilová, and Hana Mandlíková), Sweden (Björn Borg, Stefan Edberg and Mats Wilander), Brazil (Gustavo Kuerten), Russia (Yevgeny Kafelnikov and Marat Safin), Belgium (Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin-Hardenne), Spain (Juan Carlos Ferrero, Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, Carlos Moya, and Rafael Nadal), Switzerland (Martina Hingis and Roger Federer) and from many other countries.
In 1954 James Van Alen founded the International Tennis Hall of Fame, a non-profit museum in Newport, Rhode Island. The building contains a large collection of tennis memorabilia as well as a hall of fame honoring prominent members and tennis players from all over the world. Each year, a grass-court tournament is hosted on the grounds that are home to the Tennis Hall of Fame, as well as an induction ceremony honoring new Hall of Fame members.
Earliest evidence suggests that boxing was prevalent in North Africa during 4000 BC and the Mediterranean in 1500 BC.
A Greek ruler named Thesus, who ruled around 900 B.C., was entertained by men who would be seated in front of each other and beat another with their fists until one of them was killed. In time, the fighters fought on their feet and wore gloves (not padded) and wrappings on their arms below the elbows, but were otherwise naked when competing. First accepted as an Olympic sport (the ancient Greeks called it Pygme/ Pygmachia) in 688 BC, participants in the ancient games trained on punching bags (called a korykos). Keeping their fingers free, fighters then wore leather straps (called himantes) on their hands, wrists, and sometimes lower arms, to protect them from injury.
Boxer of Quirinal resting after contest (Bronze sculpture, 3rd century BC)
In Ancient Rome, fighters were usually criminals and slaves. They hoped to become champions and gain their freedom. However, free men also fought. Eventually, fist fighting became so popular that even aristocrats started fighting, but that was banned by the ruler Augustus. In 500 A.D., the sport was banned by Theodoric the Great.
The right boxer signals giving up by raising his finger high (ca. 500 BC)
London Prize Ring rules (1743)
The beginnings of the modern right cross demonstrated in Edmund Price’s The Science of Self Defense: A Treatise on Sparring and Wrestling, 1867
Records of boxing activity disappeared after the fall of the Roman Empire. The sport would later resurface in England during the early 18th century in the form of bare-knuckle prizefighting. The first documented account of a bare-knuckle fight in England appeared in 1681 in the “London Protestant Mercury,” and the first English bare-knuckle champion was James Figg in 1719. This is also the time when the word “boxing” first came to be used.
Early bare-knuckle fighting was crude with no written rules. There were no weight divisions, round limits and no referee. Modern rules banning gouging, grappling, biting, headbutting, fish-hooking and blows below the belt were absent.
The first boxing rules, called the London Prize Ring rules, were introduced by heavyweight champion Jack Broughton in 1743 to protect fighters in the ring where deaths sometimes occurred. Under these rules, if a man went down and could not continue after a count of 30 seconds, the fight was over. Hitting a downed fighter and grasping below the waist were prohibited. Broughton also invented “mufflers” (padded gloves), which were used in training and exhibitions.
In 1838, the London Prize Ring rules were expanded in detail. Later revised in 1853, they stipulated the following:
Fights occurred in a 24-foot-square ring surrounded by ropes.
If a fighter was knocked down, he had to rise within 30 seconds of his own power to be allowed to continue.
Biting, headbutting and hitting below the belt were declared fouls.
Marquess of Queensberry rules (1867)
In 1867, the Marquess of Queensberry rules were drafted by John Chambers for Olympic championships held at Lillie Bridge in London for Lightweights, Middleweights and Heavyweights. The rules were published under the patronage of the Marquess of Queensberry, whose name has always been associated with them.
There were twelve rules in all, and they specified that fights should be “a fair stand-up boxing match” in a 24-foot-square ring. Rounds were three minutes long with one minute rest intervals between rounds. Each fighter was given a ten-second count if he was knocked down and wrestling was banned.
The introduction of gloves of “fair-size” also changed the nature of the bouts. An average pair of boxing gloves resembles a bloated pair of mittens and are laced up around the wrists. Gloves protected the hands of both fighters but their considerable size and weight made knock-out victories more difficult to achieve. Resultantly, bouts became longer and more strategic with greater importance attached to defensive maneuvers such as slipping, bobbing, countering and angling.
The English case of R v. Coney in 1882 found that a bare-knuckle fight was an assault occasioning actual bodily harm, despite the consent of the participants. This marked the end of widespread public bare-knuckle contests in England.
The first world heavyweight champion under the Queensberry Rules was “Gentleman Jim” Corbett, who defeated John L. Sullivan in 1892 at the Pelican Athletic Club in New Orleans.
With the gradual acceptance of formalised rules, two distinct branches of boxing emerged; Professional and Olympic. The boxing rules enforced by governing bodies worldwide today at the local, national and international level are all derived in some way from the Marquess of Queensberry Rules.
Basketball is unique in that it was invented by one person, rather than evolving from a different sport. In early December 1891, Dr. James Naismith, a Canadian-born physician of McGill University and minister on the faculty of a college for YMCA professionals (today, Springfield College) in Springfield, Massachusetts, sought a vigorous indoor game to keep young men occupied during the long New England winters. Legend has it that, after rejecting other ideas as either too rough or poorly suited to walled-in gymnasiums, he wrote the basic rules, and nailed a peach basket onto the 10 foot (3.05 m) elevated track. In contrast with modern basketball nets, this peach basket retained its bottom. Therefore balls scored into the basket had to be poked out with a long dowel each time. Women’s basketball began in 1892, at Smith College, when Senda Berenson, a physical education teacher, modified Naismith’s rules for women. The first official basketball game was played in the YMCA gymnasium on January 20, 1892 with nine players, on a court just half the size of a present-day NBA court. “Basket ball”, the name suggested by one of Naismith’s students, was popular from the beginning.
Basketball’s early adherents were dispatched to YMCAs throughout the United States, and it quickly spread through the country. By 1896, it was well established at several women’s colleges. While the YMCA was responsible for initially developing and spreading the game, within a decade, it discouraged the new sport, as rough play and rowdy crowds began to detract from the YMCA’s primary mission. However, other amateur sports clubs, colleges, and professional clubs quickly filled the void. In the years before World War I, the Amateur Athletic Union and the Intercollegiate Athletic Association (forerunner of the NCAA) vied for control over the rules for the game.
Basketball was originally played with a soccer ball. The first balls made specifically for basketball were brown, and it was only in the late 1950s that Tony Hinkle, searching for a ball that would be more visible to players and spectators alike, introduced the orange ball that is now in common use.
Interestingly, basketball, netball, volleyball and lacrosse are the only ball games which have been identified as being invented by North Americans. Other ball games, such as baseball and football, have British Commonwealth or European connections.
College basketball and early leagues
Kent Benson of Indiana University Bloomington takes a hook shot.
Naismith and Berenson were instrumental in establishing college basketball. Naismith coached at University of Kansas for six years before handing the reins to renowned coach Phog Allen. Naismith’s disciple Amos Alonzo Stagg brought basketball to the University of Chicago, while Adolph Rupp, a student of Naismith’s at Kansas, enjoyed great success as coach at the University of Kentucky. In 1892, University of California and Miss Head’s School, played the first women’s inter-institutional game. Berenson’s freshmen played the sophomore class in the first women’s collegiate basketball game at Smith College, March 21, 1893. The same year, Mount Holyoke and Sophie Newcomb College (coached by Clara Gregory Baer) women began playing basketball. By 1895, the game had spread to colleges across the country, including Wellesley, Vassar and Bryn Mawr. The first intercollegiate women’s game was on April 4, 1896. Stanford women played Berkeley, 9-on-9, ending in a 2-1 Stanford victory. In 1901, colleges, including the University of Chicago, Columbia University, Dartmouth College, University of Minnesota, the U.S. Naval Academy, the University of Utah and Yale University began sponsoring men’s games. By 1910, frequent injuries on the men’s courts prompted President Roosevelt to suggest that college basketball form a governing body. And the Intercollegiate Athletic Association (IAA) was created.
Teams abounded from through the 1920s. There were hundreds of men’s professional basketball teams in towns and cities all over the United States and little organization of the professional game. Players jumped from team to team and teams played in armories and smoky dance halls. Leagues came and went. And barnstorming squads such as the Original Celtics and two all African American teams, the New York Renaissance Five (“Rens”) and (still in existence as of 2006) the Harlem Globetrotters played up to two hundred games a year on their national tours. Women’s basketball was more structured. In 1905, the National Women’s Basketball Committee’s Executive Committee on Basket Ball Rules was created by the American Physical Education Association. These rules called for six to nine players per team and 11 officials. The International Women’s Sports Federation (1924) included a women’s basketball competition. 37 women’s high school varsity basketball or state tournaments were held by 1925. And in 1926, the Amateur Athletic Union backed the first national women’s basketball championship, complete with men’s rules. The first women’s AAU All-America team was chosen in 1929. Women’s industrial leagues sprang up throughout the nation, producing famous athletes like Babe Didrikson of the Golden Cyclones and the All American Red Heads Team who competed against men’s teams, using men’s rules. By 1938, the women’s national championship changed from a three-court game to two-court game with six players per team. The first men’s national championship tournament, the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) in New York, was organizied in 1938.
College basketball was rocked by gambling scandals from 1948 to 1951, when dozens of players from top teams were implicated in match fixing and point shaving. Partially spurred by an association with cheating, the NIT lost support to the NCAA national tournament. Today, the NCAA men’s and women’s “March Madness” tournaments are rivaled only by the MLB World Series and the NFL Super Bowl in the American sports psyche.
U.S. high school basketball
Before widespread school district consolidation, most United States high schools were far smaller than their present day counterparts and during the first decades of the 20th century basketball quickly became the ideal interscholastic sport due to its modest equipment and personnel requirements. In the days before widespread television coverage of professional and college sports, the popularity of high school basketball was unrivaled in many parts of America.
Today virtually every high school in the United States fields a basketball team in varsity competition, and its popularity remains high, both in rural areas where they carry the identification of the entire community, as well as at some larger schools known for their basketball teams where many players go on to participate at higher levels of competition after graduation. In the 2003–04 season, 1,002,797 boys and girls represented their schools in interscholastic basketball competition, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. The states of Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky are particularly well known for their residents’ devotion to high school basketball; the critically acclaimed film Hoosiers shows high school basketball’s depth of meaning to these rural communities. In fact, the term “March Madness” was first used to describe the Illinois high school basketball tournament.
National Basketball Association
In 1946, the National Basketball Association (NBA) was formed, organizing the top professional teams and leading to greater popularity of the professional game. An upstart organization, the American Basketball Association, emerged in 1967 and briefly threatened the NBA’s dominance until the rival leagues merged in 1976. Today the NBA is the top professional basketball league in the world in terms of notoriety, salaries, talent, and level of competition.
The NBA has featured many famous players, including George Mikan, the first dominating “big man”; ball-handling wizard Bob Cousy and defensive genius Bill Russell of the Boston Celtics; Wilt Chamberlain, who originally played for the barnstorming Harlem Globetrotters; all-around stars Oscar Robertson and Jerry West; more recent big men Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Walton; playmaker John Stockton; and the four players who many credit with ushering the professional game to its highest level of popularity: Julius Erving, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, and Michael Jordan.
The NBA-backed Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) began 1997. Though it had an insecure opening season, several marquee players (Sheryl Swoopes, Lisa Leslie and Sue Bird among others) helped the league’s popularity and level of competition. Other professional women’s basketball leagues in the United States, such as the American Basketball League (1996-1998), have folded in part because of the popularity of the WNBA.
In 2001, the NBA formed a developmental league, the NBDL. The league currently has 8 teams, but will add 7 more for the 2006-2007 season.
International basketball
A basketball game at Edwards Air Force Base
The International Basketball Federation was formed in 1932 by eight founding nations: Argentina, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal, Romania and Switzerland. At this time, the organization only oversaw amateur players. Its acronym, in French, was thus FIBA; the “A” standing for amateur.
Basketball was first included in the Olympic Games in 1936, although a demonstration tournament was held in 1904. This competition has usually been dominated by the United States, whose team has won all but three titles, the first loss in a controversial final game in Munich in 1972 against the Soviet Union. In 1950 the first Basketball World Championship for men was held in Argentina. Three years later, the first World Championships for women were held in Chile. Women’s basketball was added to the Olympics in 1976, with teams such as Brazil and Australia rivaling the American squads.
FIBA dropped the distinction between amateur and professional players in 1989, and in 1992, professional players played for the first time in the Olympic Games. The United States’ dominance continued with the introduction of their Dream Team. However, with developing programs elsewhere, other national teams are starting to catch up with the United States. A team made entirely of NBA players finished sixth in the 2002 World Championships in Indianapolis, behind Yugoslavia, Argentina, Germany, New Zealand and Spain. In the 2004 Summer Olympics, the United States suffered its first Olympic loss while using professional players, falling to the Puerto Rican national basketball team and eventually came in third after Argentina and Italy. Although it should be noted that only two of the tweleve players originally selected by the NBA, Tim Duncan and Allen Iverson, choose to play in the 2004 Olympics and the team was cobbled from second and third choices.
Worldwide, basketball tournaments are held for boys and girls of all age levels, from five- and six-year-olds (called biddy-biddy), to high school, college, and the professional leagues.
The global popularity of the sport is reflected in the nationalities represented in the NBA. Players from all over the globe can be found in NBA teams. Steve Nash, who won the 2005 and 2006 NBA MVP award as the Most Valuable Player in the NBA, is a Canadian player. Dallas Mavericks superstar Dirk Nowitzki is German. All-Star Pau Gasol of the Memphis Grizzlies is from Spain The San Antonio Spurs feature three stars from outside the United States: Tim Duncan of the Virgin Islands, Manu Ginobili of Argentina, and Tony Parker of France. (Duncan competes for the United States internationally.)
The all-tournament team at the most recent Basketball World Championship held in 2002 in Indianapolis demonstrates the globalization of the game equally dramatically. The team featured Nowitzki, Ginobili, Peja Stojakovic of Yugoslavia, Yao Ming of China, and Pero Cameron of New Zealand; all except Cameron were or became NBA players.
In the NBA men get paid a great deal more than women playing in the WNBA but that is slowly changing.
The distinct evolution of baseball from among the various bat-and-ball games is difficult to pin down. However, it is mainly agreed that modern baseball is an American development from earlier British games, such as rounders, with possible influences from cricket.
The earliest known mention of the sport is in a 1744 British publication, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book by John Newbery. It contains a wood-cut illustration of boys playing “base-ball” (showing a similar set-up to the modern game, yet significantly different) and a rhymed description of the sport.
Alexander Cartwright had a hand in compiling and publishing an early list of rules in 1845 (the so-called Knickerbocker Rules) to meet the demands of the already popular sport, and today’s rules of baseball have evolved from them.
History of baseball in the United States
As far back as the 1870s, American newspapers were referring to baseball as “The National Pastime” or “The National Game.” An award-winning account of the origins of the game is David Block’s Baseball Before We Knew It: A Search for the Roots of the Game (University of Nebraska Press, 2005). The publisher’s description of the book notes that “David Block looks into the early history of the game and of the 150-year-old debate about its beginnings. He tackles one stubborn misconception after another, debunking the enduring belief that baseball descended from the English game of rounders and revealing a surprising new explanation for the most notorious myth of all—the Abner Doubleday–Cooperstown story.” In short, the debate on the game’s origins may never be settled to everyone’s satisfaction.
Another early mention of the game can be found in an 1886 edition of Sporting Life magazine, in a letter from Dr. Matthew Harris of Boston, Massachusetts, formerly of St. Marys, Ontario, who details a base ball game played in Beachville, Ontario, on June 4, 1838 — Militia Muster Day.
Professional baseball began in the United States around 1865, and the National League was founded in 1876 as the first true major league, quickly producing famous players such as Cap Anson. Several other major leagues formed and failed, but the American League, established in 1901 as a major league and originating from the minor Western League (1893), did succeed. While the two leagues were rivals who actively fought for the best players, often disregarding one another’s contracts and engaging in bitter legal disputes, a modicum of peace was established in 1903, and they began playing a World Series that year. The next year however, John McGraw, manager of the National League Champion New York Giants refused to participate in the World Series against the American League champion Boston Pilgrims, as McGraw refused to recognize the American League. The following year, McGraw relented and the Giants played the Philadelphia Athletics in the World Series.
Compared to modern times, games in the early part of the 20th century were lower scoring and pitchers were more successful. The “inside game”, whose nature was to “scratch for runs”, was played rather more violently and aggressively than it is today. Ty Cobb said of his era especially, “Baseball is something like a war!” This period, which has since become known as the “dead-ball era”, ended in the 1920s with several rule changes that gave advantages to hitters and the rise of the legendary baseball player Babe Ruth, who showed the world what power hitting could produce and thus changed the nature of the game.
During the first half of the 20th century, a “gentlemen’s agreement” in the form of the baseball color line effectively barred African-American players from the major leagues (though not Native Americans, oddly enough), resulting in the formation of several Negro Leagues. Finally in 1947, Major League Baseball’s color barrier was broken when Jackie Robinson was signed by the National League’s Brooklyn Dodgers. Although it was not instantaneous, baseball has since become fully integrated.
The middle of the century led major league baseball to the West of the United States and also became a time when pitchers dominated. Scoring became so low in the American League, due to pitching dominance, that the designated hitter was introduced; this rule now constitutes the primary difference between the two leagues.
Despite the popularity of baseball, and the attendant high salaries relative to those of average Americans, the players have become unsatisfied from time to time, as they believed the owners had too much control. Various job actions have occurred throughout the game’s history. Players on specific teams occasionally attempted strikes, but usually came back when their jobs were sufficiently threatened. The throwing of the 1919 World Series, the “Black Sox scandal”, was in some sense a “strike” or at least a rebellion by the ballplayers against a perceived stingy owner. But the strict rules of baseball contracts tended to keep the players “in line” in general.
This began to change in the 1960s when former United Steelworkers president Marvin Miller became the Baseball Players Union president. The union became much stronger than it had been previously, especially when the reserve clause was effectively nullified in the mid-1970s. A series of strikes and lockouts began in baseball, affecting portions of the 1972 and 1981 seasons and culminating in the infamous 1994 baseball strike that led to the cancellation of the World Series and carried over into 1995 before it was finally settled.
The players typically got what they demanded, but the popularity of baseball diminished greatly as a result of the players’ actions, and fans were slow to return. Cal Ripken’s record-breaking 2131st consecutive game in 1995 was a feel-good moment that helped boost interest in the sport. The great home run race of 1998 between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa really turned things around, captivating fans all summer. As with other times when adversity threatened the game, positive on-field events triggered a renewed surge in baseball’s popularity in America.
Professional baseball leagues began to form in countries outside of America in the 1920s and 1930s, including the Netherlands (formed in 1922), Japan (1936), and Australia (1934). Today, Venezuela (1945), the whole of Europe (1953), Italy (1948), Korea (1982), Taiwan (1990), and mainland China (2003) all have professional leagues as well (however, the leagues in Australia], Italy and the United Kingdom have generally had a niche appeal compared to the leagues in Asia and Venezuela and only now is the sport beginning to broaden in scope in those nations, most notably in Australia, who won a surprise silver medal in the 2004 Olympic Games). Israel is trying to form a professional baseball league with the help of American emigres. Canada has a franchise in Major League Baseball as well. Competition between national teams, such as in the World Cup of Baseball and the Olympic baseball tournament, has been administered by the International Baseball Federation since its formation in 1938. As of 2004, this organization has 112 member countries. The new World Baseball Classic, first held in March 2006, seems likely to have a much higher profile than previous tournaments, owing to the participation for the first time of a significant number of players from the United States Major Leagues.
The 117th meeting of the International Olympic Committee, held in Singapore in July 2005, voted not to hold baseball and softball tournaments at the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, but they will remain Olympic sports during the 2008 Summer Olympic Games and will be put to vote again for each succeeding Summer Olympics. The elimination of baseball and softball from the 2012 Olympic program enabled the IOC to consider adding two other sports to the program instead, but no other sport received a majority of votes favoring its inclusion. While baseball’s lack of major appeal in a significant portion of the world was a factor, a more important factor was the unwillingness of Major League Baseball to have a break during the Games so that its players could participate, something that the National Hockey League now does during the Winter Olympic Games. Because of the seasonal nature of baseball and the high priority baseball fans place on the integrity of major-league statistics from one season to the next, however, it would be more difficult to accommodate such a break in MLB.
A competent tennis player has eight basic shots in his or her repertoire: the serve, forehand, backhand, volley, half-volley, overhead smash, drop shot, and lob.
Serve
A serve (or, more formally, a “service”) in tennis is a shot to start a point. The serve is initiated by tossing the ball into the air and hitting it (usually near the apex of its trajectory) into the diagonally opposite service box without touching the net. The serve may be hit under- or overhand.
Tim Henman preparing to hit a serve. The left arm is extended, having just launched the ball into the air. The right arm will be raised up and forward at speed so that the racket connects with the ball.
Experienced players strive to master the conventional overhand serve to maximize its power and placement. The server may employ different types of serve:
Flat Serve
Topspin Serve (Sometimes called a “Kick/Kicker” serve. Often times confused with the “American Twist” serve, since both types of serves are called “Kick/Kicker” serves.)
American Twist/Twist Serve (Also, sometimes called a “Kick/Kicker” serve, which can confuse people, since “Topspin” serves are also called the same thing. Furthermore, this serve is often times confused with the “Topspin-Slice” serve as well.)
Slice/Slider/Sidespin Serve
Topspin-Slice Serve (Often times confused to be the same as the American Twist/Twist, though it’s not. The serves are very different from one another.)
A reverse type of spin serve is hit in a manner that spins the ball opposite the natural spin of the server, the spin direction depending upon right- or left-handedness.
Some servers are content to use the serve simply to initiate the point; advanced players often try to hit a winning shot with their serve. A winning serve that is not touched by the opponent is called an ace; if the receiver manages to touch it but fails to successfully return it, it is called a service winner.
Forehand
Roger Federer preparing to hit a forehand. Much can be learned from this photograph. Note how he is “loading” his body weight on his back (right) foot and coiling his shoulders with the help of his left hand. From this position, he will “uncoil” his body beginning with his legs, progressing to his hips and then on to his arms. This is how the “modern” forehand utilizing the open stance is executed.
For a right-handed player, the forehand is a stroke that begins on the right side of his body, continues across his body as contact is made with the ball, and ends on the left side of his body. There are various grips for executing the forehand and their popularity has fluctuated over the years. The most important ones are the continental, the eastern, “semi-western” and the western. For a number of years the small, apparently frail 1920s player Bill Johnston was considered by many to have had the best forehand of all time, a stroke that he hit shoulder-high using a western grip. Few top players used the western grip after the 1920s, but in the latter part of the 20th century, as shot-making techniques and equipment changed radically, the western forehand made a strong comeback and is now used by many modern players. No matter which grip is used, most forehands are generally executed with one hand holding the racquet, but there have been fine players with two-handed forehands. In the 1940s and 50s the Ecuadorian/American player Pancho Segura used a two-handed forehand to devastating effect against larger, more powerful players, and many females and young players use the two-handed grips today.
Backhand
Li Na hitting a two-handed backhand
For right-handed players, the backhand is a stroke that begins on the left side of their body, continues across their body as contact is made with the ball, and ends on the right side of their body. It can be executed with either one hand or with both and is generally considered more difficult to master than the forehand. For most of the 20th Century it was performed with one hand, using either an eastern or a continental grip. The first notable players to use two hands were the 1930s Australians Vivian McGrath and John Bromwich, but they were lonely exceptions. The two-handed grip gained popularity in the 1970s as Björn Borg, Chris Evert, Jimmy Connors, and later Mats Wilander used it to great effect, and it is now used by a large number of the world’s best players, including Andre Agassi. Andy Roddick, uses the “extreme western” grip to create massive amounts of top spin. It is difficult to do this and also causes injuries when done incorrectly. Two hands give the player more power, while one hand can generate a slice shot, applying backspin on the ball to produce a low trajectory bounce. The player long considered to have had the best backhand of all time, Don Budge, had a very powerful one-handed stroke in the 1930s and ’40s that imparted topspin onto the ball. Ken Rosewall, another player noted for his one-handed backhand, used a deadly accurate slice backhand with underspin through the 1950s and ’60s. A small number of players, notably Monica Seles, use two hands on both the backhand and forehand sides.
Other shots
Rafael Nadal performing a backhand volley
A volley is made in the air before the ball bounces, generally near the net, and is usually made with a stiff-wristed punching motion to hit the ball into an open area of the opponent’s court. The half volley is made by hitting the ball on the rise just after it has bounced, once again generally in the vicinity of the net. From a poor defensive position on the baseline, the lob can be used as either an offensive or defensive weapon, hitting the ball high and deep into the opponent’s court to either enable the lobber to get into better defensive position or to win the point outright by hitting it over the opponent’s head. If the lob is not hit deeply enough into the other court, however, the opponent may then hit an overhead smash, a hard, serve-like shot, to try to end the point. Finally, if an opponent is deep in his court, a player may suddenly employ an unexpected drop shot, softly tapping the ball just over the net so that the opponent is unable to run in fast enough to retrieve it.
Use of the word “football” in English-speaking countries
The word “football“, when used in reference to a specific game can mean any one of those described above. Because of this, much friendly controversy has occurred over the term football, primarily because it is used in different ways in different parts of the English-speaking world. Most often, the word “football” is used to refer to the code of football that is considered dominant within a particular region.
In some English-speaking countries, the word “football” usually refers to Association football, also known as “soccer” (the name was originally a slang abbreviation of Association). Of the 45 national FIFA affiliates in which English is an official or primary language, only three (Canada, Samoa and the United States) use “soccer” in their name, while the rest use football (although the Samoan Federation actually uses both). New Zealand Soccer changed its name to Football New Zealand in May 2006. [5] In Australia, the governing body’s renaming and increased usage of “football” rather than “soccer” (the name used by most Australians) has caused controversy as the word football has traditionally been used to refer to Australian rules football and rugby league. It should be noted, however, that members of the Australian association football team are still known as the “Socceroos”.
The different codes are listed below and are described more fully in their own articles.
Games descended from the FA rules of 1863
Association football, also known as football, soccer, footy and footie.
Indoor varieties of Association football:
Five-a-side football – played throughout the world under various rules including:
Futsal – the FIFA-approved Five-a-side indoor game.
Indoor soccer – the six-a-side indoor game as played in North America.
Paralympic Football – modified association football for disabled competitors.
Beach soccer – football played on sand, also known as sand soccer.
Street football – encompasses a number of informal varieties of football.
Rush goalie is a variation of football in which the role of the goalkeeper is more flexible than normal.
Keepie uppie is the art of juggling with a football using feet, knees, chest, shoulders, and head.
Footbag is a small bean bag or sand bag used as a ball in a number of keepie uppie variations such as hacky sack.
Freestyle Football a modern take on Keepie uppie where freestylers are graded for their entertainment value and expression of skill.
Games descended from Rugby School rules
Rugby football
Rugby league – usually known simply as “football” or “footy” in the Australian states of New South Wales and Queensland, and by some followers of the game in England. Also often referred to simply as “league”.
Rugby Union
Rugby Sevens
Touch Rugby – a name used for various forms of rugby union and rugby league which do not feature tackles.
Touch football (rugby league) – a non-contact version of rugby league; the best-known and most popular form of touch rugby worldwide. In Australia this code is often referred to as touch football or Touch. In South Africa it is known as six down.
Tag Rugby – generic name for non-contact forms of rugby league and rugby union, in which a velcro tag is taken to indicate a tackle.
American football – called “football” in the United States and Canada, and “gridiron” in Australia and New Zealand.
Arena football – an indoor version of American football.
Touch football (American) – non-tackle American football.
Flag football – non-tackle American football, like touch football, in which a flag that is held by velcro on a belt tied around the waist is pulled by defenders to indicate a tackle.
Canadian football – called simply “football” in Canada; “football” in Canada can mean either Canadian or American football depending on context.
Canadian flag football – non-tackle Canadian football.
Australian and Irish varieties of football
Australian rules football – usually known simply as “football” by fans; although officially Australian football, and informally as “Aussie rules” or “footy”. In some areas (erroneously) referred to as “AFL”, which is the name of the main organising body and competition.
Auskick – a version of Australian rules designed by the AFL for young children.
Metro Footy (or Metro rules footy) – a modified version invented by the USAFL, for use on gridiron fields in North American cities (which often lack grounds large enough for conventional Australian rules matches).
-a-side Footy – a more open, running variety of Australian rules, requiring 18 players in total and a proportionally smaller playing area. (Includes contact and non-contact varieties.)
Rec Footy – “Recreational Football”, a modified non-contact touch variation of Australian rules, created by the AFL, which replaces tackles with tags.
Samoa Rules – localised version adapted to Samoan conditions, such as the use of rugby fields.
Masters Australian Football (Superules) – reduced contact version introduced for competitions limited to players over 30 years of age.
Women’s Footy – reduced contact version introduced for women’s competition.
Austus – a compromise between Australian rules and American football, invented in Melbourne during World War II.
Gaelic football – played almost exclusively in Ireland. Often referred to as “football” or “gaah”.
International rules football – a compromise code used for games between Gaelic and Australian Rules players.
Universal football – A hybrid of Australian rules and rugby league, trialled at the Sydney Showground in 1933.[6]
Surviving Mediæval ball games
Traditional Shrove Tuesday matches in the UK – annual town- or village-wide football games with their own rules. Alternative names include mob football, Shrovetide football and folk football.
Alnwick in Northumberland
Ashbourne in Derbyshire (known as Royal Shrovetide Football)
Atherstone in Warwickshire
Corfe Castle in Dorset – The Shrove Tuesday Football Ceremony of the Purbeck Marblers.
Haxey in Lincolnshire (the Haxey Hood, actually played on Epiphany)
Hurling the Silver Ball takes place at St Columb Major in Cornwall
Sedgefield in County Durham
In Scotland the Ba game (“Ball Game”) is still popular around Christmas and Hogmanay at:
Duns, Berwickshire
Scone, Perthshire
Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands
Outside the UK other Mediæval games include:
Calcio Fiorentino – a modern revival of Renaissance football from 16th century Florence.
Other surviving public school games
Eton Field Game
Eton Wall Game
Harrow Football
Winchester Football
More recent inventions and derivations
Based on Mediæval football:
Murder Ball
Based on FA rules:
Cubbies
Three sided football
Triskelion
Keepie uppie is the art of juggling with a football using feet, knees, chest, shoulders, and head.
Footbag is a small bean bag or sand bag used as a ball in a number of keepie uppie variations such as hacky sack.
Freestyle Football a modern take on Keepie uppie where freestylers are graded for their entertainment value and expression of skill.
Based on Rugby:
Scuffleball
Force em’ Backs
Hybrid games
Speedball (American) – a combination of American football, soccer, and basketball, devised by Elmer D. Mitchell at the University of Michigan in 1912.
Wheelchair Rugby – previously known as Murderball. Invented in Canada in 1977 and initially derived from ice hockey and basketball rather than rugby football.
Wheelchair power tag rugby
Wheelchair rugby league
Tabletop games and other recreations
Based on FA rules:
Category:Football (soccer) computer and video games
Subbuteo
Blow football
Foosball (also known as table football/soccer, babyfoot, bar football or gettone)
Fantasy football (soccer)
Button football (also known as Futebol de Mesa; Jogo de Botões)
The earliest evidence that games resembling football were being played at English public schools — mainly attended by boys from the upper, upper-middle and professional classes — comes from the Vulgaria by William Horman in 1519. Horman had been headmaster at Eton and Winchester Colleges and his Latin textbook includes a translation exercise with the phrase “We wyll playe with a ball full of wynde”.
There is evidence that sophisticated games resembling the modern codes were being played in Britain by the early 17th century. In 1633, David Wedderburn, a teacher from Aberdeen, described one such match: “Let’s pick sides. Those who are on the outside, come over here. Kick off, so that we can begin the match… Pass it here.”[4]
The first specific mention of football at public schools can be found in a Latin poem by Robert Matthew, a Winchester scholar from 1643 to 1647. He describes how “…we may play quoits, or hand-ball, or bat-and-ball, or football; these games are innocent and lawful…”. Nugae Etonenses (1766) by T. Frankland also mentions the “Football Fields” at Eton.
By the early 19th century, (before the Factory Act of 1850), most working class people in Britain had to work six days a week, often for over twelve hours a day. They had neither the time nor the inclination to engage in sport for recreation and, at the time, many children were part of the labour force. Feast day football on the public highway was at an end. Thus the public school boys, who were free from constant toil, became the inventors of organised football games with formal codes of rules. These gradually evolved into the modern football games that we know today.
Football had come to be adopted by a number of public schools as a way of encouraging competitiveness and keeping youths fit. Each school drafted their own rules to suit the dimensions of their playing field. The rules varied widely between different schools and were changed over time with each new intake of pupils. Soon, two schools of thought about how football should be played emerged. Some schools favoured a game in which the ball could be carried (as at Rugby, Marlborough and Cheltenham), whilst others preferred a game where kicking and dribbling the ball was promoted (as at Eton, Harrow, Westminster and Charterhouse). The division into these two camps was partly the result of circumstances in which the games were played. At Charterhouse and Westminster the boys were confined to playing their ball game within the cloisters making the rough and tumble of the handling game difficult.
William Webb Ellis, a pupil at Rugby school, is said to have “showed a fine disregard for the rules of football, as played in his time” by picking up the ball and running to the opponents’ goal in 1823. This act is popularly said to be the beginnings of Rugby football, but the evidence for this bold act does not stand up to close examination and most sports historians believe the story to be apocryphal. Nevertheless, by 1841 (some sources say 1842), running with the ball had become acceptable at Rugby, as long as a player gathered the ball on the full or from a bounce, he was not offside and he did not pass the ball.
The boom in rail transport in Britain during the 1840s meant that people were able to travel further and with less inconvenience than they ever had before. Inter-school sporting competitions became possible. While local rules for athletics could be easily understood by visiting schools, it was nearly impossible for schools to play each other at football, as each school played by its own rules.
During this period, the Rugby school rules appear to have spread at least as far, perhaps further, than the other schools’ games. For example, two clubs which claim to be the world’s first and/or oldest football club, in the sense of one which is not part of a school or university, are both stongholds of rugby football: the Barnes Club, said to have been founded in 1839, and Guy’s Hospital Football Club, reportedly founded in 1843. Neither date nor the variety of football played is well-documented, but such claims nevertheless allude to the popularity of rugby before other modern codes emerged.
In 1845, three boys at Rugby school were tasked with codifying the rules then being used at the school. These were the first set of written rules (or code) for any form of football. This further assisted the spread of the Rugby game.
The Cambridge Rules
In 1848 at Cambridge University, Mr. H. de Winton and Mr. J.C. Thring, who were both formerly at Shrewsbury School, called a meeting at Trinity College, Cambridge with 12 other representatives from Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester and Shrewsbury. An eight-hour meeting produced what amounted to the first set of modern rules, known as the Cambridge Rules. No copy of these rules now exists, but a revised version from circa 1856 is held in the library of Shrewsbury School. The rules clearly favour the kicking game. Handling was only allowed for a player to take a clean catch entitling them to a free kick and there was a primitive offside rule, disallowing players from “loitering” around the opponents’ goal. However, the Cambridge Rules were not widely adopted.
Other developments in the 1850s
The increasing interest and development of the various English football games was shown in 1851, when William Gilbert, a shoemaker from Rugby, exhibited both round and oval-shaped balls at the Great Exhibition in London.
Dublin University Football Club — founded at Trinity College, Dublin in 1854 and later famous as a bastion of the Rugby School game — is arguably the world’s oldest football club in any code.
Sheffield Football Club also has a claim to be the world’s oldest football club, in the sense of a club not attached to a school or university. It was founded by former Harrow School pupils Nathaniel Creswick and William Prest, in 1857. Creswick and Prest devised their own version of football: the Sheffield Rules. There were some similarities to the Cambridge Rules, but players were allowed to push or hit the ball with their hands, and there was no offside rule at all, so that players known as ‘kick throughs’ could be permanently positioned near the opponents’ goal. In 1867 the Sheffield Football Association was formed by a number of clubs in the local area and the Sheffield clubs continued to play by their own rules until they agreed to fall in with the FA rules in 1877.
By the end of the 1850s, many clubs had been formed throughout the English-speaking world, to play various codes of football.
Australian rules football
An Australian rules football match at the Richmond Paddock, Melbourne, in 1866. (A wood engraving by Robert Bruce.)
Tom Wills began to develop Australian football in Melbourne during 1858. Wills had been educated in England, at Rugby School and had played cricket for Cambridge University. The extent to which Wills was directly influenced by British and Irish football games is unknown, but there were similarities between some of them and his game. There were pronounced similarities between Wills’s game and Gaelic football (as it would be codified in 1887). It appears that Australian football also has some similarities to the Indigenous Australian game of Marn Grook (see above).
The Melbourne Football Club was also founded in 1858 and is the oldest surviving Australian football club, but the rules it used during its first season are unknown. The club’s rules of 1859 are the oldest surviving set of laws for Australian Rules. They were drawn up at the Parade Hotel, East Melbourne on 17 May, by Wills, W.J. Hammersley, J.B. Thompson and Thomas Smith (some sources include H.C.A. Harrison). These men had similar backgrounds to Wills and their code also had pronounced similarities to the Sheffield rules, most notably in the absence of an offside rule (although the similarities were probably coincidental). A free kick was awarded for a mark (clean catch). However, running while holding the ball was allowed and although it was not specified in the rules, an oval ball (like those later used in rugby) was used. The club had a strong and long-standing association with the Melbourne Cricket Club and cricket ovals — which vary in size and are much larger than the fields used in other forms of football — became the standard playing field. The 1859 rules did not include some elements which would soon become important to the game, such as the requirement to bounce the ball while running.
Australian rules is sometimes said to be the first form of football to be codified but — as was the case in all kinds of football at the time, there was no official body supporting the rules — and play varied from one club to another. By 1866, however, several other clubs in the Colony of Victoria had agreed to play an updated version of the Melbourne FC rules, which were later known as “Victorian Rules” and/or “Australasian Rules”. The formal name of the code later became Australian rules football (and, more recently, Australian football).
The Football Association
The first football international, Scotland versus England. Once kept by the Rugby Football Union as an early example of rugby football.
During the early 1860s, there were increasing attempts in England to unify and reconcile the various public school games. In 1862, J. C. Thring, who had been one of the driving forces behind the original Cambridge Rules, was a master at Uppingham School and he issued his own rules of what he called “The Simplest Game” (these are also known as the Uppingham Rules). In early October 1863 another new revised version of the Cambridge Rules was drawn up by a seven member committee representing former pupils from Harrow, Shrewsbury, Eton, Rugby, Marlborough and Westminster.
On the evening of October 26, 1863, representatives of several football clubs in the Greater London area met at the Freemason’s Tavern in Great Queen Street. This was the first meeting of The Football Association (FA). It was the world’s first official football body. Charterhouse was the only school which accepted invitations to attend. The first meeting resulted in the issuing of a request for representatives of the public schools to join the association. With the exception of Thring at Uppingham, most schools declined. In total, six meetings of the FA were held between October and December 1863. After the third meeting, a draft set of rules were published by the FA. However, at the beginning of the fourth meeting, attention was drawn to the recently-published Cambridge Rules of 1863. The Cambridge rules differed from the draft FA rules in two significant areas; namely running with (carrying) the ball and hacking (kicking opposing players in the shins). The two contentious FA rules were as follows:
IX. A player shall be entitled to run with the ball towards his adversaries’ goal if he makes a fair catch, or catches the ball on the first bound; but in case of a fair catch, if he makes his mark he shall not run.
X. If any player shall run with the ball towards his adversaries’ goal, any player on the opposite side shall be at liberty to charge, hold, trip or hack him, or to wrest the ball from him, but no player shall be held and hacked at the same time.
At the fifth meeting a motion was proposed that these two rules be removed from the FA rules. Most of the delegates supported this suggestion but F. W. Campbell, the representative from Blackheath and the first FA treasurer, objected strongly. He said, “hacking is the true football”. The motion was carried nonetheless and — at the final meeting — Campbell withdrew his club from the FA. After the final meeting on 8 December the FA published the “Laws of Football”, the first comprehensive set of rules for the game later known as Association football (later known in some countries as soccer).
These first FA rules still contained elements that are no longer part of Association football, but which are still recognisable in other games: for instance, a player could make a fair catch and claim a mark, which entitled him to a free kick, and; if a player touched the ball behind the opponents’ goal line, his side was entitled to a free kick at goal, from 15 yards in front of the goal line.
Rugby football
1871 engraving of the game
In Britain, by 1870, there were about 75 clubs playing variations of the Rugby school game, including Blackheath (founded in 1858 and arguably the world’s oldest surviving, non-university rugby club). There were also “rugby” clubs in Ireland, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. However, there was no generally accepted set of rules for rugby until 1871, when 21 clubs from London came together to form the Rugby Football Union (RFU). (Ironically, Blackheath now lobbied to ban hacking.) The first official RFU rules were adopted in June 1871. These rules allowed passing the ball. They also included the try, where touching the ball over the line allowed an attempt at goal, though drop-goals from marks and general play, and penalty conversions were still the main form of contest.
North American football
As was the case in Britain, by the early 19th century, North American schools and universities played their own local games, between sides made up of students. By the 1820s, a game known as Ballown was being played at the College of New Jersey (later known as Princeton University) and Old Division Football was being played at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. In 1827, a Harvard University student composed a humorous epic poem called The Battle of the Delta, one of the first accounts of football in American universities.
The first documented football match in Canada was a game played at University College, University of Toronto on November 9, 1861. A football club was formed at the university soon afterwards, although its rules of play at this stage are unclear: it is not known whether they played a kicking or handling game, or both, and its members mostly played against each other.
The first “football club” in the USA was the short-lived Oneida Football Club in Boston, Massachusetts, founded in 1862. It has often been said that this club was the first to play soccer outside Britain. However, the rules that the Oneida club used are also unknown, and it was formed before the FA rules were formulated. The club may have invented the “Boston Game”, a running code which was being played several years later in Massachusetts.
In 1864, at Trinity College, Toronto, F. Barlow Cumberland and Frederick A. Bethune devised rules based on the Rugby school game. However, the first game of “rugby” in Canada is generally said to have taken place in Montreal, in 1865, when British Army officers played local civilians. The game gradually gained a following, and the Montreal Football Club was formed in 1868, the first recorded football club in Canada.
The first match generally said to have occurred under English FA (soccer) rules in the USA was a game between Princeton and Rutgers in 1869. This is also often considered to be the first US game of college football, in the sense of a game between colleges (although the eventual form of American football would come from rugby, not soccer).
Rutgers College Football Team, 1882
Modern American football grew out of a match between McGill University of Montreal, and Harvard University in 1874. At the time, Harvard students are reported to have played the “Boston Game” — a running code — rather than the FA-based kicking games favored by US universities. This made it easy for Harvard to adapt to the rugby-based game played by McGill and the two teams alternated between their respective sets of rules. Within a few years, however, Harvard had both adopted McGill’s rugby rules and had persuaded other US university teams to do the same. In 1876, at the Massasoit Convention, it was agreed by these universities to adopt most of the Rugby Football Union rules. However, a touch-down (as it was also known in rugby football at the time) only counted toward the score if neither side kicked a field goal. The convention decided that, in the US game, four touchdowns would be worth one goal; in the event of a tied score, a goal converted from a touchdown would take precedence over four touch-downs.
Princeton, Rutgers and others continued to compete using soccer-based rules for a few years before switching to the rugby-based rules of Harvard and its competitors. US colleges did not generally return to soccer until the early twentieth century.
In 1880, Yale coach Walter Camp, devised a number of major changes to the American game, beginning with the reduction of teams from 15 to
1 players, followed by reduction of the field area by almost half, and; the introduction of the scrimmage, in which a player heeled the ball backwards, to begin a game. These were complemented in 1882 by another of Camp’s innovations: a team had to surrender possession if they did not gain five yards after three downs (i.e. successful tackles).
Over the years Canadian football absorbed some developments in American football, but also retained many unique characteristics. One of these was that Canadian football, for many years, did not officially distinguish itself from rugby. For example, the Canadian Rugby Football Union, founded in 1884 was the forerunner of the Canadian Football League, rather than a rugby union body. (The Canadian Rugby Union was not formed until 1965.) American football was also frequently described as “rugby” in the 1880s.
Gaelic football
In the mid-19th century, various traditional football games, referred to collectively as caid, remained popular in Ireland, especially in County Kerry. One observer, Father W. Ferris, described two main forms of caid during this period: the “field game” in which the object was to put the ball through arch-like goals, formed from the boughs of two trees, and; the epic “cross-country game” which took up most of the daylight hours of a Sunday on which it was played, and was won by one team taking the ball across a parish boundary. “Wrestling”, “holding” opposing players, and carrying the ball were all allowed.
By the 1870s, Rugby and Association football had started to become popular in Ireland. Trinity College, Dublin was an early stronghold of Rugby (see the Developments in the 1850s section, above). The rules of the English FA were being distributed widely. Traditional forms of caid had begun to give way to a “rough-and-tumble game” which allowed tripping.
There was no serious attempt to unify and codify Irish varieties of football, until the establishment of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in 1884. The GAA sought to promote traditional Irish sports, such as hurling and to reject “foreign” (particularly English) imports. The first Gaelic football rules were drawn up by Maurice Davin and published in the United Ireland magazine on February 7, 1887. Davin’s rules showed the influence of games such as hurling and a desire to formalise an Irish code of football distinct from Rugby and Association football. The prime example of this differentiation was the lack of an offside rule (an attribute which, for many years, was shared only by other Irish games like hurling, and by Australian rules football).
The split in rugby football
The International Rugby Football Board (IRFB) was founded in 1886, but rifts were beginning to emerge in the code. Professionalism was beginning to creep into the various codes of football.
In Britain, by the 1890s, a long-standing Rugby Football Union ban on professional players was causing regional tensions within rugby football, as many players in northern England were working class and could not afford to take time off to train, travel, play and recover from injuries. This was not very different from what had occurred ten years earlier in soccer in Northern England but the authourities reacted very differently in the RFU, attempting to alienate the working class support in Northern England. In 1895, following a dispute about a player being paid broken time payments, which replaced wages lost as a result of playing rugby, representatives of the northern clubs met in Huddersfield to form the Northern Rugby Football Union (NRFU). The new body initially permitted only various types of player wage replacements. However, within two years, NRFU players could be paid, but they were required to have a job outside sport.
The demands of a professional league dictated that rugby had to become a better “spectator” sport. Within a few years the NRFU rules had started to diverge from the RFU, most notably with the abolition of the line-out. This was followed by the replacement of the ruck with the “play-the-ball ruck”, which allowed a two-player ruck contest between the tackler at marker and the player tackled. Mauls were stopped once the ball carrier was held, being replaced by a play-the ball-ruck. The separate Lancashire and Yorkshire competitions of the NRFU merged in 1901, forming the Northern Rugby League, the first time the name rugby league was used officially in England.
Over time, the RFU form of rugby, played by clubs which remained members of national federations affiliated to the IRFB, became known as rugby union.
The globalisation of association football
The need for a single body to oversee the worldwide game became apparent at the beginning of the 20th century with the increasing popularity of international fixtures. The Football Association had chaired many discussions on setting up an international body, but was perceived as making no progress. It fell to Football Associations the seven other European countries, France, Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland, to band together to form an international association. The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) was founded in Paris on May 21, 1904 — the French name and acronym persist to this day, even outside French-speaking countries. Its first president was Robert Guérin.
The reform of American football
Both forms of rugby and American football were noted at the time for serious injuries, as well as the deaths of a significant number of players. By the early 20th century in the USA, this had resulted in national controversy and American football was banned by a number of colleges. Consequently, a series of meetings was held by 19 colleges in 1905–06. This occurred reputedly at the behest of President Theodore Roosevelt. He was considered a fancier of the game, but he threatened to ban it unless the rules were modified to reduce the numbers of deaths and disabilities. The meetings are now considered to be the origin of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
One proposed change was a widening of the playing field. However, Harvard University had just built a concrete stadium and therefore objected to widening, instead proposing legalisation of the forward pass. The report of the meetings introduced many restrictions on tackling and two more divergences from rugby: the banning of mass formation plays, as well as the forward pass. The changes did not immediately have the desired effect, and 33 American football players were killed during 1908 alone. However, the number of deaths and injuries did gradually decline.
The two rugby codes diverge further
Rugby league rules diverged significantly from rugby union in 1906, with the reduction of the team from 15 to 13 players. In 1907, a New Zealand professional rugby team toured Australia and Britain, and as a result the New South Wales Rugby League was formed. However the rules of professional rugby varied from one country to another, and negotiations between various national bodies were required to fix the exact rules for each international match. This situation endured until 1948, when at the instigation of the French league, the Rugby League International Federation (RLIF) was formed at a meeting in Bordeaux.
In the late 20th century, the rules changed further. In 1966, rugby league officials borrowed the American football concept of downs: a team could retain possession of the ball for no more than four tackles. The maximum number of tackles was later increased to six (in 1971), and in rugby league this became known as the six tackle rule.
With the advent of full-time professionals in the early 1990s, and the consequent speeding up of the game, the five metre off-side distance between the two teams became 10 metres, and the replacement rule was superseded by various interchange rules, among other changes.
The rules of rugby union also changed significantly and became very complex and technical during the 20th century. In addition, rucks and mauls became homogenised, and in line-outs players began to be lifted by their teammates to contest their opponents. The advent of professionalism has also helped to complicate rules further.
In 1995, Rugby Union became an “open” game allowing professionalism throughout the affiliate members. Although the original source of dispute between the two codes and despite the fact that ARU officials like John O’Neill have sometimes suggested the idea, the rules of both codes and their culture of football have seemingly diverged so far that such a union does not seem likely to be on the horizon within the foreseeable future.
Throughout the history of mankind the urge to kick at stones and other such objects is thought to have led to many early activities involving kicking and/or running with a ball. Football-like games predate recorded history in all parts of the world, though the earliest forms of football are not known.
Ancient games
Documented evidence of what is possibly the oldest organized activity resembling football can be found in a Chinese military manual written during the Han Dynasty in about 2nd century BC.
It describes a practice known as cuju (Traditional Chinese: 蹴鞠; Simplified Chinese: 蹴踘; Pinyin: cù jū) which involved kicking a leather ball through a hole in a piece of silk cloth strung between two 30 foot poles. Another Asian ball-kicking game, which may have been influenced by cuju, is kemari. This is known to have been played within the Japanese imperial court in Kyoto from about 600 AD. In kemari several individuals stand in a circle and kick a ball to each other, trying not to let the ball drop to the ground (much like keepie uppie). The game survived through many years but appears to have died out sometime before the mid 19th century. In 1903 in a bid to restore ancient traditions the game was revived and it can now be seen played for the benefit of tourists at a number of festivals.
The Greeks and Romans are known to have played many ball games some of which involved the use of the feet. The Roman writer Cicero describes the case of a man who was killed whilst having a shave when a ball was kicked into a barbers shop. The Roman game of Harpastum is believed to have been adapted from a team game known as “επισκυρος” (episkyros) or pheninda that is mentioned by Greek playwright, Antiphanes (388-311BC) and later referred to by Clement of Alexandria. The game appears to have vaguely resembled rugby.
There are a number of less well-documented references to prehistoric, ancient or traditional ball games, played by indigenous peoples all around the world. For example, William Strachey of the Jamestown settlement is the first to record a game played by the Native Americans called Pahsaheman, in 1610. In Victoria, Australia, Indigenous Australians played a game called Marn Grook. An 1878 book by Robert Brough-Smyth, The Aborigines of Victoria, quotes a man called Richard Thomas as saying, in about 1841, that he had witnessed Aboriginal people playing the game: “Mr Thomas describes how the foremost player will drop kick a ball made from the skin of a possum and how other players leap into the air in order to catch it.” It is widely believed that Marn Grook had an influence on the development of Australian Rules Football (see below). In northern Canada and/or Alaska, the Inuit (Eskimos) played a game on ice called Aqsaqtuk. Each match began with two teams facing each other in parallel lines, before attempting to kick the ball through each other team’s line and then at a goal. The ancient Aztec game of ollamalitzli also involved kicking a ball, but it generally had more similarities to basketball.
These games and others may well far back into antiquity and have influenced football over the centuries. However, the route towards the development of modern football games appears to lie in Western Europe and particularly England.
Mediæval football
The Middle Ages saw a huge rise in popularity of annual Shrovetide football matches throughout Europe, particularly in England. The game played in England at this time may have arrived with the Roman occupation, but there is little evidence to indicate this. Reports of a game played in Brittany, Normandy and Picardy, known as Choule or Soule, suggest that some of these football games could have arrived in England as a result of the Norman Conquest.
These archaic forms of football would be played between neighbouring towns and villages, involving an unlimited number of players on opposing teams, who would clash in a heaving mass of people struggling to drag an inflated pig’s bladder by any means possible to markers at each end of a town (sometimes instead of markers, the teams would attempt to kick the bladder into the balcony of the opponents’ church). A legend that these games in England evolved from a more ancient and bloody ritual of kicking the “Dane’s head” is unlikely to be true. Shrovetide games survive in a number of English towns (see below).
The first description of football in England was given by William FitzStephen (c. 1174-1183). He described the activities of London youths during the annual festival of Shrove Tuesday.
After lunch all the youth of the city go out into the fields to take part in a ball game. The students of each school have their own ball; the workers from each city craft are also carrying their balls. Older citizens, fathers, and wealthy citizens come on horseback to watch their juniors competing, and to relive their own youth vicariously: you can see their inner passions aroused as they watch the action and get caught up in the fun being had by the carefree adolescents.[1]
Most of the early references to the game speak simply of “ball play” or “playing at ball”. This reinforces the idea that the games played at the time did not necessarily involve a ball being kicked. The first clear reference to football was not recorded until 1409, when King Henry IV of England issued an edict to ban it. In 1424, King James I of Scotland also attempted to ban the playing of “fute-ball”. However, the first clear reference to a ball being used did not occur until 1486.[2]
The first reference to football in Ireland occurs in the Statute of Galway of 1527, which allowed the playing of football and archery but banned “hokie’ — the hurling of a little ball with sticks or staves” as well as other sports. (The earliest recorded football match in Ireland was one between Louth and Meath, at Slane, in 1712.)
Calcio Fiorentino
In the 16th century, the city of Florence celebrated the period between Epiphany and Lent by playing a game known as “o Calcio storico” (“kickball in costume”) in the Piazza della Novere or the Piazza Santa Croce. The young aristocrats of the city would dress up in fine silk costumes and embroil themselves in a violent form of football. For example, calcio players could punch, shoulder charge, and kick opponents. Blows below the belt were allowed. The game is said to have originated as a military training exercise. The most famous match took place on February 17, 1530. While the troops of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor were besieging Florence, a game of calcio was organised as a show of defiance. In 1580, Count Giovanni de’ Bardi di Vernio wrote Discorso sopra ‘l giuoco del Calcio Fiorentino. This is sometimes credited as the earliest known published rules of any football game. The game was not played between January 1739 and May 1930, when it was revived to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the match mentioned above. Calcio is still played, mostly as a tourist attraction.
Official disapproval and attempts to ban football
Numerous attempts have been made to ban football games, particularly the most rowdy and disruptive forms. This was especially the case in England and in other parts of Europe, during the Middle Ages and early modern period. Between 1324 and 1667, football was banned in England alone by more than 30 royal and local laws. The need to repeatedly proclaim such laws demonstrated the difficulty in enforcing bans on popular games.
King Edward II was so troubled by the unruliness of football in London that on April 13, 1314 he issued a proclamation banning it: “Forasmuch as there is great noise in the city caused by hustling over large balls from which many evils may arise which God forbid; we command and forbid, on behalf of the King, on pain of imprisonment, such game to be used in the city in the future.”
The reasons for the ban by Edward III, on June 12, 1349, were explicit: football and other recreations distracted the populace from practicing archery, which was necessary for war.
By 1608, the local authorities in Manchester were complaining that: “With the ffotebale…[there] hath beene greate disorder in our towne of Manchester we are told, and glasse windowes broken yearlye and spoyled by a companie of lewd and disordered persons …”[3] That same year, the word “football” was used disapprovingly by William Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s play King Lear contains the line: “Nor tripped neither, you base football player” (Act I Scene 4). Shakespeare also mentions the game in A Comedy of Errors (Act II Scene 1):
Am I so round with you as you with me,
That like a football you do spurn me thus?
You spurn me hence, and he will spurn me hither:
If I last in this service, you must case me in leather.
“Spurn” literally means to kick away, thus implying that the game involved kicking a ball between players.
However the game of hurling (where players use a curved wooden stick to play a small ball) played in Ireland, was considered so violent that the Galway City authorities would rather the people played football. In 1527 they stated “At no time to use ne occupy ye hurling of ye litill balle with the hookie sticks or staves, nor use no hand balle to play without the walls, but only the great foot balle.”
Football is the name given to a number of different, but related, team sports. By far the most popular of these worldwide is Association football, which also goes by the name of soccer. The English language word football is also applied to Rugby football (Rugby union and Rugby league), North American football (American and Canadian), Australian rules football, and Gaelic football.Some of the many different codes of football.
While it is widely believed that the word football, or “foot ball”, originated in reference to the action of a foot kicking a ball, there is a rival explanation, which has it that football originally referred to a variety of games in medieval Europe, which were played on foot.[1] These games were usually played by peasants, as opposed to the horse-riding sports often played by aristocrats. While there is no conclusive evidence for this explanation, the word football has always implied a variety of games played on foot, not just those that involved kicking a ball. In some cases, the word football has been applied to games which have specifically outlawed kicking the ball.
All football games involve scoring with a spherical or ellipsoidal ball (itself called a football), by moving the ball into, onto, or over a goal area or line defended by the opposing team. Many of the modern games have their origins in England, but many peoples around the world have played games which involved kicking and/or carrying a ball since ancient times.
The object of all football games is to advance the ball by kicking, running with, or passing and catching, either to the opponent’s end of the field where points or goals can be scored by, depending on the game, putting the ball across the goal line between posts and under a crossbar, putting the ball between upright posts (and possibly over a crossbar), or advancing the ball across the opponent’s goal line while maintaining possession of the ball.
In all football games, the winning team is the one that has the most points or goals when a specified length of time has elapsed.
References
Mandelbaum, Michael (2004); The Meaning of Sports; Public Affairs, ISBN 1586482521
Green, Geoffrey (1953); The History of the Football Association; Naldrett Press, London
Williams, Graham (1994); The Code War; Yore Publications, ISBN 1874427658
The recognised international governing body of football (and associated games, such as futsal and beach soccer) is the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). The FIFA headquarters are located in Zurich, Switzerland.
Six regional confederations are associated with FIFA; these are:
Asia: Asian Football Confederation (AFC)
Africa: Confederation of African Football (CAF)
Central/North America & Caribbean: Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF; also known as The Football Confederation)
Europe: Union of European Football Associations (UEFA)
Oceania: Oceania Football Confederation (OFC)
South America: Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol (South American Football Confederation; CONMEBOL)
The recognised various national associations oversee football within their jurisdictions. These are affiliated both with FIFA directly and also with their respective continental confederations.
The Laws of the Game are not maintained by FIFA itself; rather they are maintained by the International Football Association Board, as discussed in the history and development section above.
Major international competitions
The major international competition in football is the World Cup, organised by FIFA. This competition takes place over a four-year period. More than 190 national teams compete in qualifying tournaments within the scope of continental confederations for a place in the finals. The finals tournament, which is held every four years, now involves 32 national teams (increased in 1998 from the 24 of 1994) competing over a four-week period. The 2006 FIFA World Cup is currently taking place in Germany; in 2010 it will be held in South Africa.
There has been a football tournament at the Summer Olympic Games since 1900, except at the 1932 games in Los Angeles. Prior to the inception of the World Cup, the Olympics (especially during the 1920s) had the same status as the World Cup. Originally, the event was for amateurs only, however, since the 1984 Summer Olympics professionals have been permitted as well, albeit with certain restrictions which effectively prevent countries from fielding their strongest sides. Currently, the Olympic men’s tournament is played at Under-23 level. In the past the Olympics have allowed a restricted number of over-age players per team; but that practice will cease in the 2008 Olympics. The Olympic competition is not generally considered to carry the same international significance and prestige as the World Cup. A women’s tournament was added in 1996; in contrast to the men’s event, the women’s Olympic tournament is played by full international sides without age restrictions. It thus carries international prestige considered comparable to that of the FIFA Women’s World Cup.
After the World Cup, the most important football competitions are the continental championships, which are organised by each continental confederation and contested between national teams. These are the European Championship (UEFA), the Copa América (CONMEBOL), African Cup of Nations (CAF), the Asian Cup (AFC), the CONCACAF Gold Cup (CONCACAF) and the OFC Nations Cup (OFC). The most prestigious competitions in club football are the respective continental championships, which are generally contested between national champions, for example the UEFA Champions League in Europe and the Copa Libertadores in South America.
Domestic competitions
The governing bodies in each country operate leagues, themselves normally comprised of several divisions, in which the teams gain points throughout the season depending on results. Teams are placed into tables, placing them in order according to points accrued. Most commonly, each team plays every other team in its league at home and away in each season. At the end of a season, the top team are declared to be the champions, and the top few teams may be promoted to a higher division; and one or more of the teams finishing at the bottom are relegated to a lower division. The teams finishing at the top of a country’s league may be eligible also to play in international club competitions in the following season. The main exceptions to this system occur in some South American leagues, which divide football championships into two sections named Apertura and Clausura, awarding a champion for each.
In addition to a league system, most countries operate one or more cup competitions during the season. These are organised on a knock-out basis, the winner of each match proceeding to the next round; the loser takes no further part in the competition. For a full list of the most important football competitions in each country.
Names of the game
A football
The rules of football were codified in England by the Football Association in 1863, and the name association football was coined to distinguish the game from the other forms of football played at the time, specifically rugby football. The term soccer first appeared in the 1880s as a slang abbreviation of Association football, often credited to Charles Wreford-Brown.
Today the sport is known by a number of names throughout the English-speaking world, the most common being football and soccer. The term used depends largely on the need to differentiate the sport from other codes of football followed in a community. Football is the term used by FIFA, the sport’s world governing body, and the International Olympic Committee. For more details of naming throughout the world, please refer to the main articles above.
Football is popular among children as well as adults.
Overview of the Laws
There are seventeen Laws in the official Laws of the Game. The same Laws are designed to apply to all levels of football, although certain modifications for groups such as juniors, seniors or women are permitted. The Laws are often framed in broad terms, which allow flexibility in their application depending on the nature of the game. In addition to the seventeen Laws, numerous IFAB decisions and other directives contribute to the regulation of football. The Laws can be found on the official FIFA website.
Players, equipment and officials
Each team consists of a maximum of eleven players (excluding substitutes), one of whom must be the goalkeeper. Competition rules may state a minimum number of players required to constitute a team; this is usually seven. Goalkeepers are the only players allowed to play the ball with their hands or arms, but they are only allowed to do so within the penalty area in front of their own goal. Though there are a variety of positions in which the outfield (non-goalkeeper) players are strategically placed by a manager or coach, these positions are not defined or required by the Laws.
The basic equipment players are required to wear includes a shirt, shorts, socks, footwear and adequate shin guards. Players are forbidden to wear or use anything that is dangerous to themselves or another player (including jewellery or watches). The goalkeeper must wear clothing that is easily distinguishable from that worn by the other players and the match officials.
A number of players may be replaced by substitutes during the course of the game. The maximum number of substitutions permitted in most competitive international and domestic league games is three, though the number permitted may be varied in other leagues or in friendly matches. Common reasons for a substitution include injury, tiredness, ineffectiveness, a tactical switch, or as a defensive ploy to use up a little time at the end of a finely poised game. In standard adult matches, a player who has been substituted may not take further part in the match.
A game is officiated by a referee, who has “full authority to enforce the Laws of the Game in connection with the match to which he has been appointed” (Law 5), and whose decisions are final. The referee is assisted by two assistant referees. In many high-level games there is also a fourth official, who assists the referee and may replace another official should the need arise.
Playing field
Standard pitch measurements (Metric version)
Due to the original formulation of the Laws in England and the early supremacy of the four British football associations within IFAB, the standard dimensions of a football pitch were originally expressed in imperial units. The Laws now express dimensions with approximate metric equivalents (followed by traditional units in brackets), though popular use tends to continue to use traditional units.
The length of the rectangular field (pitch) specified for international adult matches is in the range 100-110m (110-120 yards) and the width is in the range 65-75m (70-80 yards). Fields for non-international matches may be 100-130 yards length and 50-100 yards in width. The longer boundary lines are touchlines or sidelines, while the shorter boundaries (on which the goals are placed) are goal lines. On the goal line at each end of the field a rectangular goal is centered. The inner edges of the vertical goal posts must be 8 yards (7.32m) apart, and the lower edge of the horizontal crossbar supported by the goal posts must be 8 feet (2.44m) above the ground. Nets are usually placed behind the goal, but are not required by the Laws.
In front of each goal is an area of the field known as the penalty area (colloquially “penalty box”, “18 yard box” or simply “the box”). This area is marked by the goal-line, two lines starting on the goal-line 18 yards (16.5m) from the goalposts and extending 18 yards into the pitch perpendicular to the goal-line, and a line joining them. This area has a number of functions, the most prominent being to mark where the goalkeeper may handle the ball and where a penal foul by a defender becomes punishable by a penalty kick.
The field has other field markings and defined areas; these are described in the main article above.
Duration and tie-breaking methods
A standard adult football match consists of two periods of 45 minutes each, known as halves. There is usually a 15-minute break between the halves, known as half time. The end of the match is known as full-time.
The referee is the official timekeeper for the match, and may make an allowance for time lost through substitutions, injured players requiring attention, or other stoppages. This added time is commonly referred to as stoppage time or injury time. The amount of time is at the sole discretion of the referee, and the referee alone signals when the match has been completed. In matches where a fourth official is appointed, towards the end of the half the referee will signal how many minutes remain to be played, and the fourth official then signals this to players and spectators by holding up a board showing this number.
In league competitions games may end in a draw, but in some knockout competitions if a game is tied at the end of regulation time it may go into extra time, which consists of two further 15-minute periods. If the score is still tied after extra time, some competitions allow the use of penalty shootouts (known officially in the Laws of the Game as “kicks from the penalty mark”) to determine which team will progress to the next stage of the tournament. Goals scored during extra time periods count towards the final score of the game, but kicks from the penalty mark are only used to decide the team that progresses to the next part of the tournament (with goals scored in a penalty shootout not making up part of the final score).
Competitions held over two legs (in which each team plays at home once) may use the away goals rule to attempt to determine which team progresses in the event of an equal aggregate scoreline. If the result is still equal following this calculation kicks from the penalty mark are usually required, though some competitions may require a tied game to be replayed.
In the late 1990s, the IFAB experimented with ways of making matches more likely to end without requiring a penalty shootout, which was often seen as an undesirable way to end a match. These involved rules ending a game in extra time early, either when the first goal in extra time was scored (golden goal), or if one team held a lead at the end of the first period of extra time (silver goal). Golden goal was used at the World Cup in 1998 (France) and 2002 (Japan-South Korea). The first World Cup game decided by a golden goal was France’s victory over Paraguay in 1998. In the 1996 European Championships Germany was the first nation to score a golden goal in a major competition, beating Czech Republic in the final. Silver goal was used in Euro 2004 (Portugal). Both these experiments have been discontinued by IFAB.
Ball in and out of play
Under the Laws, the two basic states of play during a game are ball in play and ball out of play. From the beginning of each playing period with a kick-off (a set kick from the centre-spot by one team) until the end of the playing period, the ball is in play at all times, except when either the ball leaves the field of play, or play is stopped by the referee. When the ball becomes out of play, play is restarted by one of eight restart methods, the method used depending on the reason for the ball going out of play:
A direct free kick taken by IFK Göteborg.
Kick-off: following a goal by the opposing team, or to begin each period of play.
Throw-in: when the ball has wholly crossed the touchline; awarded to opposing team to that which last touched the ball.
Goal kick: when the ball has wholly crossed the goal line without a goal having been scored and having last been touched by an attacker; awarded to defending team.
Corner kick: when the ball has wholly crossed the goal line without a goal having been scored and having last been touched by a defender; awarded to attacking team.
Indirect free kick: awarded to the opposing team following “non-penal” fouls, certain technical infringements, or when play is stopped to caution/send-off an opponent without a specific foul having occurred.
Direct free kick: awarded to fouled team following certain listed “penal” fouls.
Penalty kick: awarded to the fouled team following a “penal” foul occurring in their opponent’s penalty area.
Dropped-ball: occurs when the referee has stopped play for any other reason (e.g. a serious injury to a player, interference by an external party, or a ball becoming defective). This restart is uncommon in adult games.
Fouls and misconduct
Players are cautioned with a yellow card, and sent off with a red card.
A foul occurs when a player commits a specific offence listed in the Laws of the Game when the ball is in play. The offences that constitute a foul are listed in Law 12. Handling the ball, tripping an opponent, or pushing an opponent, are examples of “penal fouls”, punishable by a direct free kick or penalty kick depending on where the offence occurred. Other fouls are punishable by an indirect free kick.
The referee may punish a player or substitute’s misconduct by a caution (yellow card) or sending-off (red card). Misconduct may occur at any time, and while the offences that constitute misconduct are listed, the definitions are broad. In particular, the offence of “unsporting behaviour” may be used to deal with most events that violate the spirit of the game, even if they are not listed as specific offences.
Rather than stopping play, the referee may allow play to continue when its continuation will benefit the team against which an offence has been committed. This is known as “playing an advantage”. The referee may “call back” play and penalise the original offence if the anticipated advantage does not ensue within a short period of time, typically taken to be four to five seconds. Even if an offence is not penalised because the referee plays an advantage, the offender may still be sanctioned for any associated misconduct at the next stoppage of play.
Offside
The most complex of the Laws is the offside Law, which limits the ability of attacking players to remain forward (i.e. closer to the opponent’s goal-line) of both the ball and the second-last defending player. It is often assumed that the purpose of this Law is to prevent “goal scrounging” or “cherry picking”, but in fact the offside law has similar roots to the offside Law in rugby. The details and application of this Law are complex, and often result in controversy.
Games revolving around the kicking of a ball have been played in many countries through history. The earliest documented version is the Chinese game Cuju, mentioned in military manuals from the time of the Qin Dynasty (255–206 BCE). Other ancient ball games include kemari in Japan and the Roman game Harpastum. Various forms of mob football were played in mediæval Europe, though rules varied greatly by both period and location.
The rules of football as they are codified today are based on mid-19th century efforts to standardise the widely varying forms of football played at the public schools of England. The first set of rules resembling the modern game were produced at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1848, at a meeting attended by representatives from Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester and Shrewsbury schools, but they were not universally adopted. During the 1850s, many clubs unconnected to schools or universities were formed throughout the English-speaking world to play various forms of football. Some came up with their own distinct codes of rules, most notably the Sheffield Football Club (formed by former pupils from Harrow) in 1857, which led to formation of a Sheffield FA in 1867. In 1862, John Charles Thring of Uppingham School also devised an influential set of rules.
These efforts contributed to the formation of The Football Association (The FA) in 1863 which first met on the morning of 26 October 1863 at the Freemason’s Tavern in Great Queen Street, London. The only school to be represented on this occasion was Charterhouse. The Freemason’s Tavern was the setting for five more meetings between October and December, which eventually produced the first comprehensive set of rules. At the final meeting, the first FA treasurer, the representative from Blackheath, withdrew his club from the FA over the removal of two draft rules at the previous meeting, the first which allowed for the running with the ball in hand and the second, obstructing such a run by hacking (kicking an opponent in the shins), tripping and holding. Other English rugby clubs followed this lead and did not join the FA but instead in 1871 formed the Rugby Football Union. The eleven remaining clubs, under the charge of Ebenezer Cobb Morley, went on to ratify the original fourteen rules of the game. Despite this, the Sheffield FA played by its own rules until the 1870s.
Today the laws of the game are determined by the International Football Association Board (IFAB). The Board was formed in 1886 after a meeting in Manchester of The Football Association, the Scottish Football Association, the Football Association of Wales, and the Irish Football Association. The world’s oldest football competition is the FA Cup, which has been contested by English teams since 1872. England is also home to the world’s first football league, which was founded in 1888 by Aston Villa director William McGregor. The original format contained 12 clubs from the Midlands and the North of England. The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the international football body, was formed in Paris in 1904 and declared that they would adhere to Laws of the Game of the Football Association. The growing popularity of the international game led to the admittance of FIFA representatives to the IFAB in 1913. The board currently consists of four representatives from FIFA and one representative from each of the four British associations.
Today, football is played at a professional level all over the world, and millions of people regularly go to football stadia to follow their favourite team, whilst billions more watch the game avidly on television. A very large number of people also play football at an amateur level. According to a survey conducted by FIFA and published in the spring of 2001, over 240 million people regularly play football in more than 200 countries in every part of the world. Its simple rules and minimal equipment requirements have no doubt aided its spread and growth in popularity.
In many parts of the world football evokes great passions and plays an important role in the life of individual fans, local communities, and even nations; it is therefore often claimed to be the most popular sport in the world. ESPN has spread the claim that the Côte d’Ivoire national football team helped secure a truce to the nation’s civil war in 2005. By contrast, however, football is widely considered to be the final proximate cause in the Football War in June 1969 between El Salvador and Honduras. The sport also exacerbated tensions at the beginning the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, when a Red Star Belgrade-at-Dinamo Zagreb match devolved into rioting in March 1990.
The striker (wearing the red shirt) is past the defence (in the white shirts) and is about to take a shot at the goal. The goalkeeper will attempt to stop the ball from entering the goal.
Association football, soccer, or simply football, is a team sport played between two teams each consisting of 11 players and is the most popular sport in the world. It is a ball game played on a rectangular grass field (or occasionally on an artificial pitch) with a goal at each end. The object of the game is to score by manoeuvring the ball into the opposing goal. The predominant feature of the sport is that players other than the goalkeepers may not use their hands or arms to propel the ball in general play. The winner is the team that has scored more goals at the end of the match.
The modern game developed in England following the formation of the Football Association, whose 1863 set of rules created the foundations for the way the sport is played today. Football is governed internationally by Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). The most prestigious international football competition is the World Cup, which is also the most widely-viewed sporting event in the world.
Nature of the game
A goalkeeper dives to stop the ball from entering his goal.
Football is played in accordance with a set of rules, known as the Laws of the Game. The game is played using a single round ball (the football), and two teams of eleven players each compete to get the ball into the other team’s goal, thereby scoring a goal. The team that has scored more goals at the conclusion of the game is the winner; if both teams have scored an equal number of goals then the game is a draw.
The primary rule is that the players (other than the goalkeepers) may not intentionally touch the ball with their hands or arms during play (though they do use their hands during a throw-in restart). Although players mainly use their feet to move the ball around, they may use any part of their bodies other than their hands or arms.
In typical game play, players attempt to propel the ball towards their opponents’ goal through individual control of the ball, such as by dribbling (running with the ball close to their feet), passing the ball to a team-mate, and by taking shots at the goal, which is guarded by the opposing goalkeeper. Opposing players may try to regain control of the ball by intercepting a pass or through tackling the opponent who controls the ball; however, physical contact between opponents is restricted. Football is generally a free-flowing game, with the ball in play at all times except when it has left the field of play, or when play has been stopped by the referee. After a stoppage, play recommences with a specified restart.
At a professional level, most matches produce only a few goals. For example, during the English 2005-06 season of the FA Premier League, an average of 2.48 goals per match were scored.
The Laws of the Game do not specify any player positions other than goalkeeper, but a number of player specialisations have evolved. Broadly, these include three main categories: strikers, or forwards, whose main task is to score goals; defenders, who specialise in preventing their opponents from scoring; and midfielders, who dispossess the opposition and keep possession of the ball in order to pass it to the forwards. These positions are further differentiated by which side of the field the player spends most time in. For example, there are central defenders, and left and right midfielders. While players may spend most of the game in a specific position, there are few restrictions on player movement, and players can switch positions at any time. The layout of the players on the pitch is called the team’s formation, and defining the team’s formation and tactics is usually the prerogative of the team’s manager.
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Photo finish of a greyhound race in Tampa, Florida, USA on February 9, 1939.
Basketball positions in the offensive zone
Suzanne Lenglen and Bill Tilden
Roger Federer
Sculpture depicting Rod Laver outside the Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne.
John Newcombe and Tony Roche 
Bromwich as a junior in the 1930s
A basketball.
A diagram of a FIBA basketball court.
The referee signals that a foul has been committed.
A batter follows through after swinging at a pitched ball.
Boxer of Quirinal resting after contest (Bronze sculpture, 3rd century BC)
The right boxer signals giving up by raising his finger high (ca. 500 BC)
The beginnings of the modern right cross demonstrated in Edmund Price’s The Science of Self Defense: A Treatise on Sparring and Wrestling, 1867
The first basketball court: Springfield College.
Kent Benson of Indiana University Bloomington takes a hook shot.
A basketball game at Edwards Air Force Base
Tim Henman preparing to hit a serve. The left arm is extended, having just launched the ball into the air. The right arm will be raised up and forward at speed so that the racket connects with the ball.
Li Na hitting a two-handed backhand
Rafael Nadal performing a backhand volley
Match at Winchester College around 1840.
An Australian rules football match at the Richmond Paddock, Melbourne, in 1866. (A wood engraving by Robert Bruce.)
The first football international, Scotland versus England. Once kept by the Rugby Football Union as an early example of rugby football.
1871 engraving of the game
Rutgers College Football Team, 1882
Some of the many different codes of football.
A football
Football is popular among children as well as adults.
Standard pitch measurements (Metric version)
A direct free kick taken by IFK Göteborg.
Players are cautioned with a yellow card, and sent off with a red card.
The striker (wearing the red shirt) is past the defence (in the white shirts) and is about to take a shot at the goal. The goalkeeper will attempt to stop the ball from entering the goal.
A goalkeeper dives to stop the ball from entering his goal.
