Origins
The 1863 Laws of the Game
The 1863 Laws of the Game were the first agreed written rules of association football. This guide explains how they came about, what they contained, and how they grew into the modern Laws.
What the 1863 Laws are
The 1863 Laws of the Game were the original rulebook of association football, drawn up by the Football Association at its founding meetings in London.
The 1863 Laws of the Game were the first agreed written rules of association football. They were drawn up over six meetings in London in the autumn of 1863, at the same time the Football Association itself was founded. The Laws were short and simple by modern standards — thirteen rules in total — but they were the first time a single association-football code had been agreed by clubs from different traditions.
The Laws were the starting point for everything that followed. They have been added to, revised and rewritten many times since, but the structure of association football today still traces back to the document agreed at the FA's founding meetings.
The meetings at the Freemasons' Tavern
The Football Association was founded across six meetings at the Freemasons' Tavern in London in late 1863.
The first meeting was held on 26 October 1863, at the Freemasons' Tavern on Great Queen Street in London. Representatives of around a dozen London-area football clubs and schools attended. The aim was to agree a single set of rules for football, in the same way the Marylebone Cricket Club had codified cricket nearly a century earlier.
Five more meetings followed across November and early December 1863, each one working through points of disagreement. The discussions were sometimes heated, and the most divisive issues — handling the ball and the right to hack opponents' shins — were not settled at the first attempt. By the final meeting on 8 December 1863, a compromise text had been agreed, and the original Laws of the Game were formally adopted.
The key figures
A small number of individuals shaped the early FA and its Laws.
Ebenezer Cobb Morley
Morley was a solicitor and a member of Barnes Football Club. He proposed the original meetings, served as the FA's first secretary, and drafted much of the original Laws of the Game. His influence on the wording of the 1863 Laws was greater than anyone else's, and he is often described as the father of the FA.
Arthur Pember
Pember, of the No Names Club of Kilburn, was elected as the FA's first president. He chaired the founding meetings and helped manage the deep disagreements between clubs that wanted a kicking game and those that wanted to keep handling and hacking.
The founding clubs
Around a dozen clubs and schools were involved in the founding meetings, although the exact membership shifted slightly across the six sessions. Most came from the London area, with Sheffield not yet part of the FA. Several of the founding clubs no longer exist, but the FA itself has run continuously since 1863.
Francis Campbell
Campbell, of Blackheath, was the most prominent voice for keeping handling and hacking in the game. His side argued that the proposed bans would weaken football's character. When the FA voted against him, Blackheath withdrew, and that line of disagreement would shape the eventual split with rugby.
What the Laws contained
The original Laws covered the basics — pitch dimensions, scoring, offside and the conduct of play.
The 1863 Laws set out the basic structure of a football match. They defined the maximum size of the pitch, the location of the goals, how matches began with a kick-off, and how a goal was scored. They specified how the ball returned to play when it left the field — throw-ins from the touchline and a goal kick when the ball went over the goal line. They also covered the basics of offside, with a strict version of the rule that put any player in front of the ball in an offside position.
The most contentious laws were the ones that banned certain forms of physical play. Hacking opponents' shins, tripping and other forms of violent contact were ruled out. Running with the ball in the hand was also banned, as was throwing or passing it forward by hand. These choices defined the kicking-game character of association football and separated it from the games that became rugby.
What they did not contain
Many features of modern football were not in the 1863 Laws and were added gradually in the years that followed.
No crossbar
A goal was scored by kicking the ball between two upright posts. There was no crossbar in 1863, and goals counted regardless of how high the ball went. A tape was strung between the posts from the late 1860s, and the modern crossbar was adopted in 1875.
No penalty kick
The penalty kick did not exist in the original Laws. It was introduced in 1891 as a response to deliberate fouls close to goal. Before that, all fouls were dealt with by free kicks from the position of the offence.
No neutral referee
The earliest Laws did not use the modern referee system. Disputes were handled through captains and later umpires, before the independent referee became central as organised football grew. Two assistant linesmen were formally recognised in 1891.
No fixed match length
The Laws did not specify how long a match should last. The two captains agreed a length before each fixture, and the modern 90-minute match settled in across the 1870s once organised cup and league football began.
The early years of the Laws
The 1863 Laws were the starting point — the rules kept changing across the rest of the nineteenth century.
The Laws were revised regularly from the late 1860s. Goalkeepers as a distinct position with the right to handle the ball appeared in 1871. The crossbar replaced a tape between the posts in 1875. The offside rule was loosened in 1866 to allow attackers to be onside if three opponents were between them and the goal — a version that would last until 1925. The penalty kick was added in 1891.
The Sheffield Rules and the FA Laws moved closer together across the 1870s, and by 1877 the two codes had merged. Throw-ins, corner kicks and free kicks for fouls came across from Sheffield in the same period. By the end of the 1880s, the Laws of the Game looked broadly like the modern version, and the structure of a football match had settled into its long-running shape.
From the FA to IFAB
The Laws of the Game are no longer maintained by the FA alone, but by an international body founded in 1886.
As football spread beyond England across the 1870s and 1880s, separate national associations developed their own rules. To prevent the Laws from drifting apart, the FA agreed to share responsibility for them with the Scottish, Welsh and Irish associations. The International Football Association Board, or IFAB, was founded in 1886 to maintain a single, shared code of Laws across the four British associations.
IFAB remains the body responsible for changes to the Laws of the Game. FIFA joined IFAB in 1913 and now holds half of the votes, with the four British associations sharing the other half. The Laws themselves have grown from the original 1863 text into a full rulebook covering every aspect of the modern game.
What to read next
From the 1863 Laws, the natural next step is to follow the disagreement that broke association football and rugby into two sports.