Reclassifying history: a steady regression to nowhere – fast

The paper makes a further contribution to the ‘Origins of Football’ debate, seeking to defend the so-called ‘revisionist’ position in that debate by calling into question the reclassification, by some historians, of reports of football played outside of the public schools in the early and mid-nineteenth century. It does not, however, argue that the ‘revisionist’ position should be seen in direct opposition to the ‘traditionalist’ account of football’s origins but in addition to it, bipolar conceptual schemata not being useful in understanding the development and diffusion of the game. In that respect, more evidence is provided from the early 1860s of football playing outside of public school or public schoolboy influence arguing that this evidence ought to be added to other revisionist evidence, and some traditional evidence, to build a further refined, yet fluid, account of the history of football in the nineteenth century