Shared Origins of Football, Rugby, and Soccer - by Christopher Rowley (Hardcover)

About the Book

What are the origins of all the modern day contact sports, from grid iron football to Aussie Rules, rugby, and soccer? In this book, Christopher Rowley reveals how ball games arose and took shape into what we know today as football, soccer, rugby, and others.

Book Synopsis

What are the origins of all the modern day contact sports, from grid iron football to Aussie Rules, rugby, and soccer? In this book, Christopher Rowley reveals how ball games arose and took shape into what we know today as football, soccer, rugby, and others.

Review Quotes

For football (or rugby or soccer) fans who [are] unfamiliar with the history of their favorite sports prior to the mid-19th century, the book is a quick and engaging read that offers a broad-strokes look at the history that led to the variety of modern football codes.

In this self-proclaimed nonacademic work, Rowley traces the origins of seven contemporary ball games--all variants of American football, soccer, and rugby--to a common beginning. He organizes the book chronologically but frequently digresses as he covers the history of these games from ancient to modern times. This span allows only a cursory description of the material, but Rowley's purpose is to provide not a detailed analysis of the history and significance of each game but rather a descriptive history that will give the fan a better understanding of each. Rowley is a journalist and novelist, and that background is evident in the writing style. He often places the reader as a spectator at a 're-creation' of the historical games, embellishing generally acknowledged facts into snapshots of history. . . .Rowley's account of commonalities of the games is entertaining.

The book is a rampage through history, pulling from Greek versions of ball games and earlier, before leaping oceans to chart Mayan and ancient Han Chinese games, then settling into the various versions of today's games involving inflated balls, or differing shapes, kicked or passed or somehow driven by teams across goal lines or into protected nets. Rowley explains the wild rural British and French variations of what we now see, involving entire villages, as well as the rule origins of American football, Canadian football, rugby, Australian rugby and associated football (soccer).

About the Author

Christopher Rowley is a journalist and reporter for a local newspaper in the Catskills region of New York. He is the author of twenty-three science fiction and fantasy novels.