I think the past is a lot more murky than that - there's a lot of evidence to suggest that "football" (before it was formalised in the Association Football rules) was so named because the game was played 'on foot', as opposed to on horseback. Don't fall in to the trap of thinking it's called football because you can only play at the ball with the foot, the very early Association Football rules allowed handling of the ball!

Try here: www.webcitation.org/5maXSkas8 Unfortunately the original article on rl1908.com isn't there anymore, I'm not sure why Sean decided to do that, he did send me a link to where a lot of his older content was still available but I seem to have lost it at the moment Tony Collins has also published a few books on the sports' history but can sometimes be either hard and/or expensive to get hold of.

Try here: www.webcitation.org/5maXSkas8 Unfortunately the original article on rl1908.com isn't there anymore, I'm not sure why Sean decided to do that, he did send me a link to where a lot of his older content was still available but I seem to have lost it at the moment Tony Collins has also published a few books on the sports' history but can sometimes be either hard and/or expensive to get hold of.

I can't recall the bit about the scrums. We played rugby union rules for a few years just as the northern union so depneds what they moved to after that. Find it hard to believe they went to scrums.
Must say in the 1895 and all that book.

If you're really interested in the history, get a copy of
"Rugby's Great Split: Class, Culture and the Origins of Rugby League Football" by Tony Collins.

It explores the origins of football, and the massive changes in society during the Victorian era that led to the codifying and organisation of sport, and what led to the formation of Northern Union (later to become RL).
One tip though, don't read the foreword where he deals with how he treated his sources, talk about dense academia. The rest of the book though is highly readable and fascinating.
Every rugby fan should read it!

Only 117 years today since Rugby League was first dying then!