ANCIENT ORIGINS

BEAUTIFUL GAME A MINORITY SPORT AT THE GAMES

To the pleasure of all those sports that are thoroughly swamped by football year in, year out, the beautiful game's vast popularity beyond the Olympiad has not translated to popularity within it and many a match at the Olympic Games, though not the final, is played to audiences of several hundred. In Sydney there are, however, 1.6 million tickets on sale because of the size of football stadiums compared with the venues of other sports. If sold, they would make football the most watched sport.

The introduction of a women's event at the 1996 Games in Atlanta, and the fact that the title was won by the US, helped to generate a little more interest but only the stars of World Cup football could really turn the spotlight on the game when it becomes the first sport to be played at Sydney.

Football is the only sport at the Games that will played outside Sydney, with matches scheduled for Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra and Melbourne, as well as the host city.

Contrary to popular wish in England, the game was born in China in about 80BC, with bamboo poles serving for goalposts. European football, conceived much later, was a more violent affair, not least among Roman soldiers who used the severed heads of enemies for a ball. Ancient Greeks also played a form of football, while a game called calcio is recorded in Florence and involved 27 players on each team kicking or carrying the ball, a mix between football and rugby.

A book on the history of England written in 1174 makes the first mention of football as being a game played with inflated bladders among other things and loosely resembling the sport of today. The game was very popular and spread rapidly throughout England in the 12th and 13th centuries though the early pitches were flexible affairs, the game often involving a stampede from one end of a town to the other.

Passing the ball with the hands was still a feature of the games in English public schools in the late 17th century but the Football Association, formed in 1863, set the ground rules for the modern game we know today. England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales established the International Football Association Board in 1883, but the home nations are not allowed to compete at the Games as anything but Britain. In international football, the opposite applies and the home nations are keen to preserve their autonomy. If they played as Britain at the Olympiad, the Federation Internationale de Football Association (Fifa) may wish the home nations to do so in world football. As such Britain has not sent a football team to the Olympic Games since Melbourne in 1956.