Sheffield

Sheffield rules

Main article: Sheffield rules

By the late 1850s, many football clubs had been formed throughout the English-speaking world, to play various codes of football.Sheffield Football Club, founded in 1857 in the English city of Sheffield by Nathaniel Creswick and William Prest, was later recognised as the world’s oldest club playing association football.[78] However, the club initially played its own code of football: theSheffield rules. The code was largely independent of the public school rules, the most significant difference being the lack of an offside rule.

The code was responsible for many innovations that later spread to association football. These included free kicks, corner kicks, handball, throw-ins and the crossbar.[79] By the 1870s