There are very good politico-economic reasons for the coincidence, but there is also the neat symbolism in the fact that, after football had been used to shore up the Empire, Britain’s ultimate decline as an imperial power coincided withthe erosion of footballing superiority of the home nations.Football soared in popularity through the first half of the nineteenth century, but in those early days rules varied from school to school, largely according to conditions. At Cheltenham and Rugby, for instance, with their wide, open fields, the game differed little from the mob game. A player could fall on the ground, be fallen upon by a great many of his fellows and emerge from the mud relatively unscathed. In the cloisters of Charterhouse and Westminster, though, such rough-and-tumble would have led to broken bones, and so it was there that the dribbling game developed. That outlawed--or at least restricted--handling of the ball, but the game still differed radically from modern football. Formations were unheard of, while the length of the game and even the number of players on each side were still to be established. Essentially, prefects or older pupils would run with the ball at their feet, their teammates lined up behind them(‘backing up’)in case the ball bounced loose in a tackle, while the opposition players --or, at certain schools, fags(that is, younger pupils who were effectively their servants)--would try to stop them.