It is amazing how 'stick and ball' games played by kids and simple incidents led to the creation of these modern sports.
1. Football
China
While the contemporary format of football came much later, the first football-like game was recorded in China as early as second or third century B.C. In a military manual from the period, an exercise called ‘Tsu-Chu’ has been described in which opponents had to get a leather ball, filled with feathers and hair, into a small net fixed on to bamboo canes.
The opening to the net is believed to have been really small in width, 30-40cm. The players could not use their hands but could use their heads, back, shoulders, feet and chest to hit the ball into the target while avoiding opponents’ attacks. FIFA, the Federation Internationale de Football Association, accredits this as the earliest form of the game which has scientific evidence to prove its existence.
2. Rugby
England
When we talk about sports’ origins, we rarely expect any of them to be a result of a singular incident. A student named William Webb Ellis from Rugby School in Rugby, Warwickshire, England is believed to have invented the distinctive style of the game.
In 1823, he is said to have had a “fine disregard for the rules of football as played in his time, first took the ball in his arms and ran with it". Though this story was dismissed as a myth in 1895, the Rugby School, to which the sport owes its name, has a plaque (pictured above) remembering William Web Ellis’s contribution to inventing the sport.
3. Golf
Scotland
In Scottish the game, which involved using a club to hit balls across great distances, was called ‘gowf’ which is believed to be an alteration of the Dutch ‘colf’ or ‘colve’ meaning stick, club or bat. The first official account of the game in Scotland is from an edict passed by King James II of Scotland in 1457 banning the game of golf to decrease the distraction from archery, played as a sport for military purposes.
This ban was imposed again in 1471 and 1491 as it was ‘an unprofitable sport’ and it was also on the list of prohibited activities for Sabbath (one day of the week to be devoted to rest and prayer according to Christians, usually Sundays) in 1592.
4. Cricket
Northern Europe/Surrey, England
The origin of cricket is believed to have been sometime in the Dark Ages in Northern Europe and was probably just a simple pastime game with one person throwing an object (piece of wood or ball) which would then be hit far by someone holding a bat-shaped piece of wood.
Research proves that cricket with its contemporary rules and complexities took shape in the 15th to 16th century which coincides with the Tudor dynasty’s rule in England. It was in 1550 that evidence of cricket being played in Surrey was recorded.
5. Field Hockey
Egypt/Ethiopia
A crude form of the game is believed to have been played in Egypt almost 4,000 years ago and in Ethiopia around one thousand years ago. Federation Internationale de Hockey (FIH), formed in 1924, talks about how the modern form of the game was first played in England in mid-18th century.
FIH also mentions that evidence from various museums show that some form of hockey was played long before the 15th century by Romans, Greeks (pictured above in tablet dated to 510 B.C in Greece) and Aztecs.
