{"id":66949,"date":"2025-05-01T23:43:11","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T23:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/66949\/"},"modified":"2025-05-01T23:43:11","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T23:43:11","slug":"boffins-reckon-the-beautiful-game-was-invented-in-scotland-after-huge-discovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/66949\/","title":{"rendered":"Boffins reckon the beautiful game was invented in Scotland after huge discovery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some experts reckon football – a game widely understood to be English – was actually started by the Scots, after they discovered the first ever football pitch north of Hadrian’s wall\"TheThe groundbreaking claim was made this week (Image: BBC Scotland\/YouTube)<\/p>\n

Forget claims England created the beautiful game – boffins reckon football first originated in Scotland<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The groundbreaking claim was made this week after boffs uncovered the first ever football pitch in the country. Historian and sports archaeologist Ged O\u2019Brien says he has found the first hallowed ground the game was ever played on – and it definitely is not in England<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Instead he claims to have discovered a 17th century football pitch in Kirkcudbrightshire county. And it predates England\u2019s claim to have formally recognised the game by decades \u2013 and more than two centuries before the formation of the Football Association (FA)<\/a>. Mr O\u2019Brien, the former president of the Association of Sports Historians, said his discovery will force those who believe modern football was invented in England to \u201crewrite everything they think they know\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"unblaneDunblane (Scotland) Football club, 1889(Image: Public Domain)<\/p>\n

He said the first clues emerged in a letter from the Reverend Samuel Rutherford, minister at Anwoth Old Kirk dated between 1627 and 1638. The letter reveals his dismay at finding parishioners playing \u2018foot-ball\u2019 on Sabbath afternoons at the nearby Mossrobin Farm.<\/p>\n

Archaeologist Phil Richardson, of Archaeology Scotland, said: \u201cThis is the ancestor, the grandparent, of modern world football, and it\u2019s Scottish.\u201d The letters detail how Rev Rutherford tried to ban the games from being played and ordered a line of stones to be placed across the field.<\/p>\n

Mr O\u2019Brien and his team of archaeologists set out to find the stones \u2013 and discovered a line of 14 large rocks cutting across a flat area at the former Mossrobin farm. Tests of the soil beneath the stones suggest they were put there around the time of Rutherford\u2019s order.<\/p>\n

\"HistorianHistorian and sports archaeologist Ged O\u2019Brien (Image: BBC Scotland\/YouTube)<\/p>\n

Archaeologist Phil, who conducted the tests, said: \u2018This backs up the story that a barrier was put across an open space.\u201d He added that it proves the beautiful game was not started by posh institutions such as Eton, as first thought.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe traditional view of modern football is that it started in 1863 with a group of ex-public schoolboys from places like Eton and Harrow,\u201d he said. \u201cNow, this is entirely and utterly mistaken because, for hundreds of years, the Scots have been regularly playing football in Anwoth and places like it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some experts reckon football – a game widely understood to be English – was actually started by the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5009],"tags":[748,4884,1232,101,70,712,413,53,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-66949","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scotland","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-money","11":"tag-premier-league","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-space","15":"tag-technology","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114435234555133060","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}