The First International Goals

Scotland at England, 1873

The First International Goals

I mentioned a few days ago that this was the first true international match in football history:

A few months later, the first true international goals were scored. This was in another England - Scotland match, though this one took place in England:

From Manchester Evening News, March 10, 1873, page 4

The 4-2 victory for England made for a much more entertaining match.

However, I should note that it’s very difficult to figure out which of these matches refers to which sport. Rugby was also colloquially known as “football” at the time, as evidenced by these snippets from the day before:

From Reynold’s Newspaper, March 9, 1873, page 2

From Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, March 9, 1873, page 3

It’s obvious from the context that this refers to rugby. The entire concept of touching the ball behind your own line in self defense was only in the game of rugby at the time — and, interestingly enough, turned into the “safety” in American football only a few years later. Meanwhile, a “touch-down” by this time was only a thing in rugby. However, there seems to have been no linguistic distinction between the two sets of rules.

Perhaps that is why the first association football international matches didn’t have much journalistic fanfare.