Football

Football, a field game played by two teams with a ball of various types, usually an inflated bladder or rubber bag in a leather or rubber cover (an increasing number of balls are plastic), which is spherical or ellipsoidal in shape. The object of the game is to score points by kicking the ball through, into, or over the opponents' goal, or by carrying the ball across the opponents' goal line and grounding it. There are seven main codes today: American football, association football, Australian Rules football, Canadian football, Gaelic football, Rugby League, and Rugby Union.

Football is an ancient game. Some 2,500 years ago the Chinese played a form of it called Tsu chu, in which they kicked a ball of stuffed leather. Natives of Polynesia are known to have played a variation of the game with a ball made of bamboo fibres, while the Inuit had another form using a leather ball filled with moss. However, much of the game's development came about in England where it was first known in the 12th century. It became so popular that kings, including Edward II and Henry VI, tried to ban it on the grounds that it distracted men from the necessary military duty of regular archery practice. Such edicts had little effect.

Varieties developed in England and in Europe (in 14th-century Florence there was a form called calcio). A traditional version in England was known as Shrovetide football, common in the Midlands and the north of England for centuries. Such games might involve hundreds of men on each side and were usually a free-for-all between sections of a town, villages, or adjoining parishes that would often develop into a brawl. Many schools played football and some, notably Eton, Harrow, Winchester, and Rugby, evolved codes of their own, particularly Rugby, which established a code from which others (American football, for example) developed. During the 19th century there were concerted efforts to organize and structure the different forms and provide acceptable rules.