Paul Rouse dropped in for his weekly look at the history of sport on Tuesday's Off The Ball, where he focused on the origins of soccer.

The public schools of Harrow, Eton and Rugby had some form of football, according to Rouse while there were also "Cambridge rules" formed at that university, as there were at Oxford.

However, it was in London around the 1840s and 1850s that clubs began to form with their own sets of rules that could lay claim to being the foundation of Association Football as a sport.

"In the 1850s, they set up clubs such as Black Heath and Richmond, and they each played by their individual rules. When they came to play each other they either played by one of the club's rules or combined their rules.

"There were more and more football clubs being established each with their own set of rules and there was no combined set of rules for all of these clubs."

Freemasons' Tavern

This was as it was until 1863, when the Football Association was formed, the FA as we know it.

"The first meeting was held in the Freemasons' Tavern in London in October 1863," recounts Rouse.

"A group of people from the existing clubs around London came in and they established, over a course of meetings over the next five or six months , what became known as the Football Association."

"There were disputes about how the nature of the game should be and it came down to two basic things, was this going to be a catch and run game?

"As all the games in public schools involved handling of the ball or should it be a dribbling, kicking game? That was the first divide."

Hacking

Every five-a-side player will be familiar with the other split in the fledgling organisation. "The second divide was whether 'hacking' should be allowed?" says Rouse.

"Hacking was allowed in all of the public schools. it involved the deliberate kicking on the shins of your opponent."

While some may argue the practice exists to this day, Rouse says there were some rules to hacking:

"There was a certain etiquette to it. You weren't supposed to use your heel when you hacked an opponent or kick above the knee."

Catch the ball

While carrying the ball in hand was in the first draft of rules of the original FA, it was subsequently dropped as was 'hacking' removed due to the risk of players being unable to work after games.

Rouse recalls the first set of written rules being fairly different from modern ones:

"The FA, in its first published rule book, said you can catch the ball but you must drop it immediately and kick it. You couldn't run with it and you are not allowed to hack.

"From these rules and around these rules the Football Association was formed. Immediately there was a split."

"There was a group of clubs who said this is absolutely outrageous.

"One man, Campbell, who was representing one of the London clubs said: 'if you wanted to invent a game like that even French men could come over and beat us,' the ultimate insult to Englishmen."

The group of clubs was against the new FA rules on the lack of 'manliness' in the game, an argument some are still having about the modern game.

"There were a group of 20 clubs who were used to carrying the ball and were allowed hack," says Rouse, "said 'no, we're not joining this.'"

Explosion

While the game is now global the sport did not just explode from those meetings in 1863.

"There was nothing inevitable about the idea that soccer would thrive or even survive at the beginning because the Football Association did not spread its rules beyond the core group of clubs active in the London area."

There were less than 20 clubs across the entire island of Britain four years later in 1867, and there was concern that the rules might just disappear.

It was not until the 1880s that the game "exploded."

The two key reasons were the establishment of the FA Cup providing structure and the London FA and the Sheffield FA playing representative games against each other.

"This began a process," according to Rouse. "Where the Football Association and its rules spread out of London into other areas.

"By the 1870s by virtue of that spread and by virtue of the FA Cup. You just got a sense of momentum building around a competition, a structure and around a set of rules."

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