Football's Laws of the Game are among the most refined and detailed regulatory documents in sport.
Seventeen principal rules, refined across more than 160 years, govern everything from the precise circumference of the ball to the exact circumstances in which a goalkeeper may use their hands.
The modern game operates within a structure so familiar that most supporters never think to question it. That structure, however, did not emerge fully formed.
It was argued, voted, split, and slowly negotiated into existence over decades. Along the way, a number of rules existed that now seem either baffling, dangerous, or both. What follows are ten of the most notable.
No Referees
Until 1871, there were no referees in football. Matches were self-regulated by the two team captains, who were expected to resolve any disputes through mutual respect and a shared commitment to fair play.
The assumption underlying this arrangement was that football was a gentleman's game, and gentlemen could be trusted to govern themselves honestly.
The assumption proved optimistic. Captains disagreed regularly, and the disagreements were not always conducted with the dignity the system presumed. When the FA Cup was introduced, two umpires were added to the proceedings, available to arbitrate when captains could not reach agreement.
By 1878, referees were using whistles to communicate their decisions, which at least ensured that rulings could be heard above the noise of a crowd.
Before the whistle, a raised arm was apparently considered sufficient authority. Whether players consistently acknowledged it is not recorded.
No Crossbar
The earliest football goals were two posts in the ground and nothing else. There was no crossbar, no tape, and no rope to indicate the upper limit of the target.
If the ball passed between the posts, it counted as a goal, regardless of whether it travelled two feet above the turf or twenty.
The practical consequences were predictable. Disputes about whether a ball had passed between the posts or clipped the outside were essentially unanswerable, and arguments about height were entirely pointless because no agreed height existed.
A tape stretched between the uprights was not standardised until 1875, with a proper rigid crossbar arriving later still.
Australian rules football, which developed from the same chaotic mid-Victorian sporting environment, retained the high-ball goal in its own code. The two games diverged from broadly similar origins and ended up looking, and operating, almost nothing alike.
No Forward Passes
In the 1860s, passing the ball forward was not permitted. To advance play, a team either dribbled or found a teammate level with or behind them.
The game was built around individual runs, and players were expected to work their way through opposition rather than around it.
There is something to be said for the dribbling game. It rewarded individual skill and produced players of considerable technical ability. But it placed an absolute ceiling on tactical development.
There was no switching the play, no ball played in behind the defence, no counterattack of any conventional kind. The game moved slowly and largely along predictable channels.
When the forward pass was eventually permitted, football did not simply improve. It became a fundamentally different sport.
The through-ball, the diagonal, the counterattack, and nearly every tactical innovation since all flow directly from that single change.
Anyone Could Be the Goalkeeper
For most of football's early history, the goalkeeper was more of an informal arrangement than a defined position.
Any outfield player could handle the ball near the goal. There was no distinctive kit, no formal set of responsibilities, and no particular protection afforded to whoever happened to be standing between the posts on any given day.
Separate goalkeeper shirts were not introduced until around 1909, before which identifying the keeper required sustained attention and a reasonable degree of inference. The position was not formally restricted to the penalty area until 1912, when handling outside that zone was finally prohibited.
Before that rule change, a goalkeeper drifting deep into their own half to collect a long ball with their hands was doing something entirely within the rules. Unusual, perhaps, but legally unimpeachable.
Goalkeepers Could Handle the Ball Anywhere in Their Half
This rule deserves separate attention from the general question of positional definition, because its tactical implications were considerable.
Before 1912, a goalkeeper was not merely permitted to handle the ball in the penalty area. They could use their hands anywhere within their own half of the pitch.
A well-positioned keeper could intercept a through-ball with their hands, neutralise a loose ball in midfield, or effectively function as an additional outfield defender with a significant physical advantage over any attacker.
The attacking possibilities were equally unusual. Goalkeepers scoring or creating goals was not the extraordinary occurrence it represents today.
The restriction of handling to the penalty area transformed the goalkeeper's role entirely, drawing a clear boundary between the position and every other on the pitch.
Carrying the Ball
In the years before association football distinguished itself clearly from the game played at Rugby School, the two codes shared considerable common ground.
Some early versions of the game permitted players to catch the ball cleanly from the air, a practice known as a fair catch, claimed by calling out a specific word to signal the intention. From there, a degree of carrying was sometimes permitted.
This was not a simple oversight. It was football in the process of deciding what kind of sport it wanted to be. Rules varied school by school and town by town throughout the 1840s and 1850s.
When the Football Association was founded in 1863 and convened to agree on a unified set of rules, the question of handling and carrying was among the most contentious issues on the table.
The clubs that voted to retain it eventually departed and developed what became rugby union. The clubs that voted to ban it remained and built what became association football.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNW-h4WbuNU
Hacking
Hacking was the deliberate kicking of an opponent's shins to dispossess them. Not accidental contact during a challenge, but an intentional strike to the lower leg, intended to bring the ball carrier down.
It was not merely tolerated in early football. In some quarters it was actively defended as a mark of genuine sporting character.
The argument ran that a willingness to absorb a kick in the shins, and to deliver one when necessary, separated serious players from those unwilling to commit. Banning it, the argument continued, would make the sport effete.
This position was put formally at the Football Association's 1863 meetings by a representative of Blackheath club, who lost the vote, withdrew his club from the association, and helped establish what became rugby union.
Rugby union itself eventually banned hacking, which serves as some indication of how extreme the practice must have been.
Shoulder-Charging the Goalkeeper
For a significant period of football's early history, an attacker was permitted to physically charge into the goalkeeper, including while the keeper was in possession of the ball, stationary, or in the process of taking a catch.
Barging the goalkeeper into the net along with the ball was not merely legal; it was considered a standard method of dealing with corners and aerial crosses.
The position required a physical courage that bears no resemblance to anything modern goalkeepers are asked to produce.
Rules, free-kicks, and the protection afforded to keepers today exist in such contrast to this era that the two versions of the position are barely comparable. The abolition of the charging rule was among the more straightforwardly beneficial changes the sport ever made.
Changing Ends After Every Goal
In early football, teams switched ends every time a goal was scored.
The reasoning behind the rule was reasonable enough: pitches were uneven, wind conditions affected play, and teams scoring early into favourable conditions might otherwise enjoy a structural advantage for the remainder of the match.
In practice, the rule created disruption and confusion. It also interacted awkwardly with the absence of any standardised match duration.
If no goals were scored, teams might remain on the same end for the entirety of a game. If goals came frequently, ends changed repeatedly throughout the afternoon. The overall experience was not always coherent.
No Standard Match Duration
For a considerable stretch of football's early history, the length of a match was whatever the two teams agreed it would be before kick-off. Sixty minutes, seventy-five, ninety, or something else entirely: all were acceptable, providing both sides consented.
In the absence of floodlights, matches could also be curtailed by the arrival of darkness. There was no formal provision for this eventuality and no established protocol for what happened to a result when the ball became invisible.
The ninety-minute match was standardised in 1897, not as a rule handed down by some higher authority but as a practical agreement reached because consistency required a shared framework.
Even now, the figure has no particular logic behind it beyond the fact that everyone eventually agreed on it.
How the Rules Made the Game
Each of the rules described here was, at the time of its existence, defended by someone as the correct way to play football. Some reflected genuine attempts to ensure fairness.
Others were simply unfinished ideas from an era when the sport had not yet decided what it was.
Football did not emerge fully formed and then remain static. It was constructed through argument, compromise, and the gradual discarding of whatever failed to work in practice.
The splits that produced rugby union and other codes were not accidents; they were the game choosing its own identity by deciding what it would not be.
The version played today is the result of more than 160 years of that process. It is not a natural endpoint. It is where the negotiation has reached so far.