The World's First Football Club (1824): John Hope and the Edinburgh footballers: a story of sport, education and philanthropy

This is the story of the world’s very first club dedicated to football, founded in Scotland in 1824.

Football was played from medieval times in schools and villages throughout Britain and took on many forms before the Victorians embarked on the process of codification. There were attempts in the 1840s to write down rules at Rugby School, Eton College and Cambridge University. When footballers got together they formed organisations and a club was founded at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1854, while Scotland’s oldest is now the Academical Football Club in Edinburgh, established in 1857. Sheffield, also dating from 1857, makes a strong claim to be the oldest existing club now playing association football.

Yet to find the world’s first football club one has to go back to 1824, when an Edinburgh student called John Hope established what he simply called The Foot-Ball Club. No other contemporary football clubs are known to have existed, but this one thrived for almost 17 years, giving an outlet for organised football to a generation of young sportsmen.

The club's extraordinarily detailed records have survived intact, including membership lists, accounts, letters and personal reminiscences. Many of these priceless items are reproduced in the book.

Thanks to this unique archive, we know the names of almost 300 men who played for the club. The founding members might have been expected to leave football behind when they left school but by persisting with their juvenile activities and continuing to play this vigorous contact sport into adulthood, they were ahead of their time.

The authors show in this book that the Foot-Ball Club fitted perfectly into the vibrant sporting culture which existed among a particular social class in Edinburgh. The city already had a wide range of clubs and societies devoted to physical exercise: Edinburgh sportsmen had already formed the world’s first archery club, first golf club and first gymnastic club; they had written the first rules for golf, bowls and curling, and presented the first trophies for golf and bowls.

The Foot-Ball Club continued in the same pioneering spirit, and the club’s members went on to have an indelible influence on the ongoing development of football, in all its forms, far beyond their time and place. They had an impact on the game’s future progress by passing on their enthusiasm and experiences to their sons, younger brothers and relatives.

This is the story of how Edinburgh can lay claim to a number of football 'world firsts': the first club (1824), first written rules (1833), first medal (1851), first inter-school match (1858) and first organised games for girls (1861). There were Edinburgh-educated men at the founding meeting of the Football Association in 1863, and the city hosted the first rugby international match in 1871, in which the Scotland team was captained by the son of a Foot-Ball Club member.

In writing the definitive history of the Foot-Ball Club, John Hutchinson and Andy Mitchell reveal who the club members were, how they played and what motivated them. They have uncovered a fascinating picture of sport and society in the city of Edinburgh, the people who lived in it and their social networks.

They also tell the life story of the club's energetic founder, John Hope, who remained a passionate advocate of football throughout his long life, and was also a controversial character in other fields - philanthropy, education, religion, politics and temperance - which will resonate with historians of the period.

John Hutchinson has been researching the social history of football for nearly 50 years, and published his first book, the pioneering The Football Industry, in 1982. He has had an abiding interest in John Hope’s Foot-Ball Club which has developed over two decades with a series of extended research articles and has culminated in this book.

Andy Mitchell runs a sports history website and has written numerous articles and several books on football history, including First Elevens: The Birth of International Football. He is a media officer for UEFA, and previously was head of communications at the Scottish Football Association.