Football
Cambridge birth
Philip Goodhart
Athe new Master of Trinity College, Cambridge was finishing his speech, at a dinner for graduates who had come up to the College 50 years before, the high table steward handed me a note: 'Decided on penalties: Argentina four, England three.' Should the Master break the news to the expectant diners? I consulted the former bursar who was sitting next to me. 'Every- one will know soon enough,' we agreed.
If the result had been different and Eng- land had gone on to win the World Cup, Trinity College, Cambridge could have become a Mecca for serious soccer pil- grims. For the first successful attempt to draw up the rules of soccer had been made almost exactly 150 years ago in a room in New Court, Trinity, from which you can just see the Hall's roof.
The 14 men who met in the room in New Court were not trying to invent a new game but they were attempting to bring order out of chaos. As H.C. Malden, who convened the meeting, had noted in 1848:
An attempt was made to get up some foot- ball in preference to the hockey then in vogue but the result was dire confusion, as every man played the rules he had been accustomed to at his public school. I remem- ber how Eton howled at the Rugby men for handling the ball, so it was agreed that two men should be chosen to represent each of the public schools and two who were not public school men, for the University. We were 14 men in all. Harrow, Eton, Rugby, Winchester and Shrewsbury were represent- ed. We met in my room after Hall which in those days was at 4 p.m. I cleared the tables and provided pens, ink and paper. Every man brought copies of his school rules or knew them by heart and our progress in forming new rules was slow. We broke up at five min- utes before midnight. The new rules were printed as 'The Cambridge Rules', copies were distributed and very satisfactorily they worked.
Fifteen years later the new Football Associ- ation adopted the Cambridge Rules with some minor changes.
The staircase to the room in New Court in which the rules of football were first drawn up has not changed much, but there is now hot and cold running water and a sort of scullery on the floor below. The room directly below the meeting room is now occupied by a woman undergraduate with a sign on her door which says: 'Only optimists can change the world.'
There is no notice anywhere in the Col- lege to show that the first rules, for the world's most popular sport, were first drawn up there and it is by no means cer- tain that this gap will be filled. The idea that the birth of Association Football should be recorded is not universally popu- lar with the Fellows.
`If we are going to remember Malden and his football committee,' it is argued, `are we going to ignore Sir Isaac Newton or Lord Byron and his bear and how about the 29 Trinity men who have won Nobel Prizes?'
There is, of course, plenty of room in the spacious entry to the College to recognise the work of both Newton and the Malden Committee. Indeed purists might argue that the Malden Committee had a stronger physical claim. They did their work within the College, while most of Newton's great- est earlier discoveries, including the law of universal gravitation, were made during an enforced absence from Cambridge because of the threat of plague.
Still, the odds on Trinity College agree- ing to recognise its own contribution to the world of sport must be only slightly better than the odds on England winning the World Cup in 2002 or staging the competi- tion in 2006.
Sir Philip Goodhart was Conservative MP for Beckenham 1957-1992.
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