October 26 - Ezer is a geezer who likes to muscle in

IT all sounds so Dickensian: a cold, foggy autumn night in Victorian London, the Freemason’s Tavern in Great Queen Street, and the protagonist, Ebenezer Cobb Morley.

No this is not the beginning of Great Expectations or David Copperfield; this is the beginning of the Football Association.

As I wasn’t there I can only speculate at to the temperature or fogginess of the evening but what is certain is that it was on this day in 1863 that the first meeting of what would become the FA was held.

Up until then the rules of football differed at every school it was played at, and differed again up in Yorkshire where the Sheffield rules were used.

In the 1840s some boffins at Cambridge University had created a set of standard rules they thought should apply to everyone, and these formed the basis of the laws that the new association would adopt on that night in the Freemason’s.

Led by Ebenezer Cobb Morley eleven clubs and schools from the London agreed to a set of 14 laws under which they could all play, and football as we know it finally had a proper set of rules which everyone agreed on.

Well, nearly everyone. A twelfth club present on that first night, Blackheath, later withdrew from the FA after the rest agreed there should be no running with the ball in hand, or hacking down of players by the shins.

Several other fledgling clubs agreed with Blackheath which led to the creation of the Rugby Football Union in 1871.

Since that night in London, the essential laws of football remain largely unchanged, except for Sepp Blatter’s occasional tinkering with the offside rule and back-passes.

Pleased with what they had achieved, the new FA thought the best way to celebrate was to have a match of association football played under their new rules.

Morley (him again) brought along his Barnes team to play Richmond in mid-December. The game was hardly an advert for the new exciting game and ended 0-0. Richmond were so unimpressed they decided to change codes altogether and headed over the hill and yonder to the join the Rugby lot in 1871 - changing codes just because they didn’t win, imagine the sulk they would have been in if they lost.

Despite Richmond’s lack of enthusiasm, the game would never look back and clubs sprang up all over the country playing the new rules, while Ebenezer Cobb Morley went on the be the first ever FA secretary, and later its president.

Come up and see us tomorrow, and make yourself smile by reading about one of the smuggest men in the game.