Folk football emerged in pre-industrial farming communities across the UK. The game has connections to Celtic sun worship practices: the ball is the daystar, to begin the game the ball is thrown up to reach the sun, when it comes back down towards the earth and makes contact with the ground it becomes a sacred object.
Folk football was played across the commons (shared agricultural land) with there being no spatial restrictions; the limitations of the dimensions of the pitch and the goalposts were defined by, for example, the side of a church or beginning of a river. The ‘pitch’ could span many miles. In order to score, the ball had to touch the allocated goal, and the number of players on each team was unlimited and so was the duration of the match.
Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries the large-scale nature of folk football -- it being self-organised and autonomous from the governing powers -- meant that it was associated with violence and disorder. It threatened the aristocracy’s order, power and economic interests in the agricultural lands, creating tension between rural and the beginnings of urban land. This early form of football is heavily tied in with the ‘land'; shared land, land use and communities' relationships to it. If you understood and had good knowledge of the land you were more likely to win the game.
The enclosures precipitated the land not being able to be used as the ‘pitch’ in the same way, eventually leading to an end of folk football. Modern Football has been abstracted from the land, with regulated and homogenised pitches.
Folk football was played across the commons (shared agricultural land) with there being no spatial restrictions; the limitations of the dimensions of the pitch and the goalposts were defined by, for example, the side of a church or beginning of a river. The ‘pitch’ could span many miles. In order to score, the ball had to touch the allocated goal, and the number of players on each team was unlimited and so was the duration of the match.
Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries the large-scale nature of folk football -- it being self-organised and autonomous from the governing powers -- meant that it was associated with violence and disorder. It threatened the aristocracy’s order, power and economic interests in the agricultural lands, creating tension between rural and the beginnings of urban land. This early form of football is heavily tied in with the ‘land'; shared land, land use and communities' relationships to it. If you understood and had good knowledge of the land you were more likely to win the game.
The enclosures precipitated the land not being able to be used as the ‘pitch’ in the same way, eventually leading to an end of folk football. Modern Football has been abstracted from the land, with regulated and homogenised pitches.
FOLK FOOTBALL EXTENDED HIGHLIGHTS
The video is part an ongoing project centred around the origins of football — how it is heavily tied in with the ‘land’, shared land, land use, ownership and communities’ relationship to it.
The video documentation is of an interpretation of a folk football game I held with the Ghost Art School in Auchangarrich last August. The pitch ran through an ancient and dead woodland and the goalposts were made out of old telegraph poles found on site.
The audio in the video was recorded from an improvised live football commentary performance with Martin Steuck during The Wrong Map Ghost Art School exhibition in a disused bank in February. Martin Steuck was also the ball painter for the game, where, by the end of the game the images and paint had disintegrated, and rubbed off onto the players and the land.