Since then, it has become the most popular sport in the world and has divided people and communities throughout Scotland – and everywhere else – ever since.
Andy Mitchell will now give talks in Edinburgh and Glasgow to reveal how members of The Foot-Ball Club played the game and produced their rulebook.
He has researched and written a book on the history of the club along with John Hutchinson and he’s now to tell the story of their beginnings and how it kicked off.
“Precisely two hundred years ago, on a winter’s day in 1824, the founders bought a football – a leather casing with an inflated pig’s bladder inside – and set up goalposts in a field just outside the city boundaries.
“They met once or twice a week for almost two decades, and the city’s young men flocked to the Foot-Ball Club to play the game they loved.
“Some of them went on to influence the early development of our most popular sport, long before it split into the different codes like rugby and association football.”
The talk in Edinburgh will be held on Wednesday, December 4 at 1.30pm at Register House on Princes Street while the Glasgow event will start at 6pm on Wednesday, December 11 at the Scottish Football Museum at Hampden Park.
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The Foot-Ball Club wound up in 1841, with John Hope managing them for 17 years after founding them.
Club records survived because he was a known hoarder within his unique and extensive archive and they are now held at the National Records of Scotland where the first of the talks will take place.
Mr Mitchell added: “The Foot-Ball Club was born into an exciting environment. Edinburgh had sport in its DNA and by the time the footballers met up in 1824, the city already had the world’s earliest clubs in golf, bowls and gymnastics. John Hope and his footballers were very much of their time and place.”
