In mediaeval Chester, the drapers used a pig's bladder enclosed in a leather ball during the Festival of Shrove Tuesday, kicking the ball between the Hall of Rodehee and the Common Hall of the city. Due to its violent nature a running match replaced this game.

In Midlothian, Scotland, a similar Shrove Tuesday football game was played between the spinsters (unmarried women) and the married women of the parish. Records tell us that the married women usually won, but with such violence that the game was more a battle than a festivity.

By 1600 football as a mass participation sport had spread to other parts of the land and no festival was complete without a mammoth game. In Cornwall six parishes hurled themselves back and forth between two sets of goals set 4 miles apart. There are still some places in the country that continues the Shrove Tuesday festival to this day.

By 1800 the game began to bear similarities to the modern game with pitches being marked out and sticks set 3 feet apart were driven in the centre of each end. Teams were made up of equal numbers but this could be as many as thirty and had the appearance of local 'wars' between the stalwart citizens on each side.

The games were so violent that a Frenchman recorded his impression of one by saying: "If Englishmen call this playing, then it is impossible to imagine what they would call fighting!"

The word goal is said to have originated about this time, due to the number of the toughest players being ex-prisoners who, having used a goal or cell gateway as a target when kicking around a cloth ball, placed the sticks at the same width as the cell or prison-yard door posts.

By the mid-1800's football was settling into a skilled sport. Basic rules fixing eleven players a side on average-sized pitch, with larger goals, agreed length of playing time and such things as penalties for hacking, kicking or fisticuffing an opponent were accepted. Of the eleven players only three were in set positions: one between the goalposts, one back of the main players and one mid-distant from them. The other eight roamed the field in a more or less solid pack. From these positions come the terms still used today, goalkeeper, full-back, half-back and forward.

1863 saw the foundation of the Football Association and most towns had at least one football team who regularly had fixtures against other local town teams. In 1871, the Football Association organised a series of knock-out competitions with a cup as the winners' prize. This was the now famous FA Cup, but at first the idea had a lukewarm reception, indeed less than that of the Scottish Football Association Cup, first competed for in 1874. By the 1880's the FA recognised that a new breed of player, the football professional, was being used by many top clubs and introduced special rules for these professional players.

In 1888, William McGregor, known as the Father of the League, proposed the formation of a league of the strongest professional clubs, player a game home and away. Twelve teams were in this first league competition but this grew to sixteen in 1892.

Changes have been made over the years to include promotion and relegation, the introduction of substitutes, changes in the awarded of the number of points but in essence the game is still as was at this time. The Sheffield Club, founded in 1857, is considered the oldest, but Notts County, founded in 1862, is the oldest league club. Queens Park, founded in 1867, is the oldest Scottish club.

The first recorded organised game of women's football took place on 23rd March 1895, between a team from the north of England against a team from the south, the north won 7-1. In 1902 the FA issued a warning to its member clubs not to play matches against ladies teams as it was considered unsuitable for the fairer sex.

There was a huge growth in women's football during the First World War, with the most famous team of all being Dick, Kerr Ladies, taking their names from W.B. Dick and John Kerr's engineering works in Preston. Many of the matches that the ladies played in raised money for charity and played in front of crowds that many in the men's Premier League would envy today. Dick, Kerr Ladies also played international matches against France as England's unofficial national side.

In 1921 the team were booked for an average of two games a week all over Britain and played 67 matches with a total of over 900,000 spectators. During this period it was estimated that there were approximately 150 women's teams in England, mostly in the North and Midlands. However there was a growing resentment to the women's game and on 5th December 1921 the FA Council passed the unanimous resolution, that due to complaints levied at the game played by women, the appropriation of the receipt's from the games that were not to charitable objects and the absorption of such funds in expenses, that the council request all member clubs of the association to refuse the use of their grounds for such matches. In affect 'banning' the women's game in England.

On 10th December 1921, 25 women's football teams took matters into their own hands and formed the English Ladies Football Association. At the second meeting another 35 clubs attended. In September 1922 Dick, Kerr Ladies were invited to visit America and Canada and although there was plenty of female interest there were insufficient players to form teams so the ladies played against men.

The women's game in England stayed in the shadows until 1966 when ironically the success of the mens team in the World Cup regenerated the interest and as a result in 1969 the Women's Football Association was formed. This organisation controlled the game until 1993 when the FA took control.