football at Eton and Winchester. The football season Evidence for the establishment of the football season at English public schools comes in "Bentley's miscellany" (1844). In a chapter entitled "Eton Scenes and Eton Men" the seasonal sports cycle is described thus: "Tamer boys play at cricket in the Summer and Hockey in the Winter; but the manlier youths pull in the boats during the Summer and play at Football in the winter". See also the quotation below which confirms that the association football season began in Autumn. This is noteworthy because traditionally association football had been played in England during Shrovetide. Games between clubs School association football clubs (and other sports) were a central part of life at 19th century English public schools. In "Five years at an English University" (1852), American Charles Bristed describes his time at Cambridge University in the 1840s. During a discussion on Eton and Rugby School (drawn upon letters from former students there) he states: "[A boy is] proud of the house he belongs to as a man of his college; though in cricket and association football clubs, in regular "long boats" and aquatic sweepstakes, in running and leaping races, he competes with the whole school, yet he belongs to a association football club in the autumn, which includes the twenty or thirty boys boarding in his own house and thus matches are made between houses as between colleges". Significantly this shows evidence of the first organised competitions between association football teams not just within schools but between them. For competitions to take place between colleges it would clearly require some agreement over rules of the game. This necessity, combined with the availability of sufficient time and money to pursue the sport, was the driving force that led to the creation of modern association football rules by people who had studied or taught at English public schools and universities. This quotation also points to the establishment in English public schools of the "football season" which to this day begins without fail in Autumn. Team colours The earliest evidence of coloured shirts used to identify association football teams – the tradition of wearing distinctive team strips (i.e. uniforms) — comes from early English public school association football games, for example an image of Winchester football from before 1840 is entitled: "A 'Hot' at Foot Ball. The commoners have red and the college boys blue jerseys". House