The oldest world football field would have been found on an old Scottish farm. Located in Anwoth, in the south of Scotland, this forgotten plot of land was once the scene of regular football games from the XVIIe century. For Ged O’Brien, the former president of the association of sport historians and founder of the Scottish football museum, this find is revolutionary. She forces us to question the idea that modern football was born in England in the XIXe century.
Everything starts from a letter from the Reverend Samuel Rutherford, written between 1627 and 1638, explains the British daily The Times. In this correspondence, the Presbyterian pastor complains of the faithful of his parish who play football on Sunday, on a field located on the Mosrobin farm. Annoyed, he ordered them one day to stop their games by moving a line of stones through the field. It is precisely this line of fourteen large stones, recently found by a team of archaeologists, which revived the whole historical investigation.
The soil analyzes carried out by Phil Richardson, member of the Archaeology Scotland organization, are final. The stones were well placed at the time of the Reverend Rutherford and their arrangement does not correspond to agricultural walls or to delimitations of ownership. “It is a temporary barrier to prevent a particular event from taking place –In this case, football “explains Phil Richardson.
This 400 -year -old land gives off to Scotland a central place in the history of football. To the west of the city of Gatehouse of Fleet, the land has been bordered by five paths, proof of its importance in the region for centuries. Chosen by the inhabitants to play, this place embodies the origin of a sport today planetary.
Scottish roots
This ancient practice was nothing of the “Mob Football” Chaotic, medieval football described in books, explains Ged O’Brien. According to him, it was already a regular game, with shared rules: “If you play football every Sunday of each year, you have rules (…) you could not afford to play a violent game if you had to work on Monday.” He adds: “It is the ancestor of modern world football and he is Scottish.”
Archaeologist Kieran Manchip, who helped discovery, considers that the terrain is almost like a natural amphitheater. He believes that all the data overlaps perfectly, which brings total coherence to the discovery.
Ged O’Brien says: “In 1872, when international football started, Scottish clubs crushed the English teams. It is absolutely no surprise because they were 200 years ahead of England. ” According to him, Anwoth will become a pillar of the new history of world football. “You can be on the side of a mountain in the Himalayas, watching a football match, and the ghosts of Anwoth look at you”he concludes.
