Our Olympic Sevens hopes turn to Cary, North Carolina, next weekend when, if the script falls into place, the USA Eagles will meet Canada in the finals of the NACRA qualifier for the North American place in Rio 2016. One nation advances, the other waits for the final repechage to determine the twelfth, and final tournament spot.
In 1869, Rutgers and Princeton played the first inter-collegiate game of soccer-football, a contest without carrying the ball or tackling. Eventually, Columbia, and Yale also played this kicking game and formed the first Football Association. Harvard eschewed membership, opting to play "The Boston Game," with running the ball across a goal line for a chance to kick a goal through the uprights. Importantly, if challenged by an opposing player, the ball could be carried, until the runner was tackled. Harvard sought out other colleges to play the tackling game without success.
A year later, Harvard challenged rival Yale to a game of football. Yale agreed to a dual game of soccer and rugby in what is known as the "Concessionary Rules" game played in New Haven on November 13, 1875. Harvard triumphed four goals to none. Yale concurred that rugby was superior to the soccer game. Two Princeton students watching returned to campus as missionaries for rugby.
Soon, most of the east coast colleges (Brown, Bowdoin, Dartmouth, etc.) took up the new sport, and eastern prep schools as well.
Rugby seemed entrenched as the autumn contact sport for American colleges. But, one Yale player in that first Harvard game, Walter Camp, lobbied for a reduction from fifteen men to eleven, three downs to keep possession if a gain of five-yards, and a line of scrimmage. Camp, who played in the first six Harvard-Yale contests, would prevail, facilitating the conversion of rugby into American style football. By 1882, almost all of the rugby-playing institutions converted to gridiron rules.
Canada continued to expand rugby in Ontario and Quebec Provinces in the 1880s and 1890s. And, it created a twelve-man version of American gridiron, which formed its own association in 1903. Forward passing in Canadian football was not allowed until 1929, twenty-three years after its introduction in the USA.
Darn: when I saw the headline I thought it was about me. Oh well. Interesting stuff Allyn.