Fair Catches And Touchdowns In Soccer
The forgotten past
Fair Catches And Touchdowns In Soccer
Concepts such as a “fair catch” and a “touchdown” are more closely connected with American football these days than association football. But, interestingly enough, it wasn’t always this way.
These concepts come from rugby, as many of you undoubtedly already know. A try in rugby was known as a “touch down” as recently as the early 1880s, and the fair catch familiar to fans of American football comes from the same place as a mark in rugby.
But the fascinating thing here isn’t how American football originally stems from rugby. It’s the fact that the association game also originally had these elements.
This comes from the 1863 Football Association laws of the game:
If a player makes a fair catch he shall be entitled to a free kick, provided he claims it by making a mark with his heel at once; and in order to take such a kick he may go back as far as he pleases, and no player on the opposite side shall advance beyond his mark until he has kicked.
This is almost exactly the same wording that you’ll find in contemporary list of rugby rules.
And the old touchdown or try is the rule right before:
In case the ball goes behind the goal line, if a player on the side to whom the goal belongs first touches the ball, one of his side shall be entitled to a free kick from the goal line at the point opposite the place where the ball shall be touched. If a player of the opposite side first touches the ball, one of his side shall be entitled to a free kick (but at the goal only) from a point 15 yards from the goal line opposite the place where the ball is touched. The opposing side shall stand behind their goal line until he has had his kick.
Note that the wording here also conforms to how rugby was played at the time. A touch down itself did not give a point: it merely granted the side a free kick at a point parallel to the place where the ball was touched down.
The phrase “touch down” appears to have fallen out of favor in rugby usage over time, but the concept still remains. “Touchdown” remains a basic concept in modern American football, though most people forget that the whole point of the touchdown was the kick afterwards — a kick that is mostly an afterthought in the modern American game.
But the craziest thing of all is that association football also had these rules.
It’s also apparent from these rules that association football originally required kicking the ball above the crossbar:
A goal shall be won when the ball passes between the goal posts or over the space between the goal posts (at whatever height), not being thrown, knocked on, or carried.
By 1866, the touch down and fair catch had been removed from the laws of the game, as well as the free kick itself. Free kicks returned in 1867 as a punishment for handling the ball. And the 1867 rules also stipulate that a goal is scored by kicking the ball under the crossbar, not over it.