ARCHAEOLOGISTS have found compelling evidence of the world's oldest known football pitch on the site of a former 17th-century farm in southern Scotland.
Ged O’Brien, the former president of the Association of Sports Historians and founder of the Scottish Football Museum, said people who believed the modern game originated in England would have to “rewrite everything they think they know”.
The Times reported that the newly-uncovered archaeological evidence, found a mile west of Gatehouse of Fleet near the Solway Firth, showed that modern football had originated in Anwoth, in Kirkcudbrightshire.
O’Brien’s discovery is due to be broadcast on BBC Scotland’s A View From The Terrace on Friday evening.
The historian told The Times that the first clues had come from Samuel Rutherford, a minister at Anwoth Old Kirk from 1627 to 1638 and later professor of divinity at St Andrews University.
The letter says there “was a piece of ground on Mossrobin farm where on Sabbath afternoon the people used to play at football”.
O’Brien told The Times: “This is one of the most important sentences I have ever read in football history, because it specifically identifies the exact place the football pitch was.”
He added: “I have always thought football has been played in Scotland for hundreds of years. Not mob-football, but proper football. Of course it has always been very hard to prove it because working people never kept records.
“Rutherford is enraged by the fact his parishioners played football every Sunday, and so one day he heads out after doing his preaching to remonstrate with them and say that ‘as the stones around him were his witness they were doing wrong’.”
O’Brien said that Rutherford had stones put across the pitch to stop the weekly games – and a team of historians set out to find them.
They found 14 large stones in a row across a flat area at the former Mossrobin farm, and soil tests suggest they had been arranged in place at around Rutherford’s time.
O’Brien said the common belief was that modern football originated in English public schools like Eton and Harrow in the later 1800s.
However, he told The Times: “If you’re playing football every Sunday of every year, you’ve got rules because you have to agree on rules. You couldn’t play violent football because you needed to work on Monday so you’re thinking about your football, you’re playing regular football.
“This is the ancestor, the grandparent, of modern world football, and it’s Scottish.”
He added: “In 1872, the minute international football started, Scottish clubs were absolutely destroying English teams.
“It’s absolutely no surprise because these people are 200 years in front of what England is doing.”
A View from the Terrace will be shown on BBC Scotland on April 25 at 10.30pm.
