Ebenezer Cobb Morley: Football man and myth

PIONEER: Ebenezer Cobb Morley, 1913

The Way it Was

In partnership with Hull History Centre

To mark the centenary of the death of Hull’s own Ebenezer Cobb Morley, Professor Tony Collins, one of the world's leading authorities on the origins of football, looks back on his complex life and times

Almost unknown in his own time or in his home town, Ebenezer Cobb Morley now has legendary status as the man who wrote the first rules of football and who is, in the eyes of many, the true “father of football”. There’s even a pub named after him on Carr Lane.

But the truth, as Oscar Wilde once noted, is rarely pure and never simple. The true story of Ebenezer Morley is more complex and more fascinating than the simple story of the heroic inventor of football. 

Ebenezer Morley - Cobb was his middle name - was born in Hull in 1831, the son and grandson of well-to-do Congregationalist ministers. After leaving school in Hull, he qualified as a solicitor in 1854 while living in Brentford. He then moved to Barnes, a suburb of south London, where he established a successful law firm, became an enthusiastic rower on the River Thames, and played football for Barnes FC.

On October 17, 1863, a notice appeared on page six of the weekly sports paper Bell’s Life in London, announcing that a meeting would be held on October 26 at the Freemason’s Tavern in the centre of London “for the purpose of promoting the adoption of a general code of rules for football” and requesting that “captains of all clubs” attend. The notice was unsigned, and it has been claimed that it was placed by Morley.

Whether Morley was the instigator or not, the meeting didn’t turn out as planned. There was so much wrangling about how football should be played that the fledgling FA had to hold another five meetings before any sort of consensus was reached.

ORIGINS: Morley’s childhood home was 10 Garden Square, Prince Street, near the current site of Hull History Centre. It would not have looked much different from this view from the 1930s

It took two meetings to thrash out the size of the pitch and goals, who should kick off, and how to bring the ball back in play. At the third meeting, Morley, who was now the secretary of the FA, presented a more comprehensive version of the rules, based on different features from football games played at various public schools.

If anything, Morley’s draft rules resembled Rugby School football, because they allowed a player to run with the ball and pass it with the hands “if he makes a fair catch or catches it on the first bounce”. The new FA appeared to be on course to play a version of rugby.

A week later, the delegates met once more to discuss Morley’s proposed rules. But midway through the meeting he suddenly announced that he no longer agreed with own his own draft rules, and suggested that the FA should use the football rules of Cambridge University. These outlawed tripping and hacking, and banned players from using their hands or arms to catch or propel the ball.

Confused? The delegates certainly were. They voted both for Morley’s first set of rules and also for his second, Cambridge-based, set of rules. The meeting adjourned with less clarity than with which it had begun.

The following week, the delegates re-convened yet again and amidst uproar voted for a revised version of the Cambridge rules that removed any ambiguity about hacking or carrying the ball. The clubs that favoured Rugby rules promptly resigned from the FA.

HOME: A 1930s picture of Prince Street. Garden Square was accessed through the iron gates between the houses, middle-right

Ebenezer Morley had won the day. But the rules that he had persuaded the FA to adopt would not be recognised as football today.

The final rules agreed by the FA allowed catching the ball in the hands if it had not already touched the ground, and the catcher allowed to kick it out of their hands, just as in rugby. If an attacking player touched the ball down behind the opponent’s goal, his side were entitled to a kick at goal, again, just like in rugby.

Despite getting his own way, Morley’s rules were ignored more than they were honoured by football clubs of the time. In fact, when the so-called “first match under the rules of the Football Association” took place on December 19, 1863, Morley’s own club Barnes FC won it by scoring six touchdowns to Richmond’s nil, a result that was technically impossible under Morley’s rules, which only counted goals as a way of scoring.

At the FA’s 1867 annual general meeting only five other people turned up alongside Morley, and he proposed winding up the FA. At its 1868 meeting, only three delegates other than Morley attended. It was only when Charles Alcock became secretary of the FA and started international matches and the FA Cup that football began to rival the popularity of rugby.

It’s impossible to claim that Morley invented football as we know it. But why has the myth emerged around him? To some extent, it is another example of the tendency of all sports to develop creation myths to explain their history. Just think of William Webb Ellis in rugby.

HISTORIC: Morley’s signature, twice, on a document recording a transfer of land in Linnaeus Street, 1876

These myths arise because sport is almost always written about in soap opera terms: triumph and tragedy, heroes and villains. It’s much easier to claim that a sport was invented by one heroic individual than to explain how a complex set of circumstances allowed groups of people to make decisions about the game that would only much later be seen to have significant consequences for the future.

Most importantly, myths like the Ebenezer Morley story help legitimise how people feel about their sport. Morley was born and raised in Hull, a working-class northern city. He was not educated at a public school, unlike many of football’s early administrators. So, he helps to confirm the widespread belief that football began as the game of ordinary people.

And the fact that he lived a life of general obscurity before he died in 1924 means that, like William Webb Ellis, he is also a blank slate upon which people can project their idealised version of how football began.

In short, he’s a perfect person to turn into a myth.