Episode 02 — Sheffield FC: The Start of the Beautiful Game

In 1857, two cricketers from Sheffield — Nathaniel Creswick and William Prest — founded the world’s first football club, forever changing the way the game would be played. Sheffield F.C. became the birthplace of organized football, writing the earliest set of rules and laying the foundation for what would become the world’s most popular sport.

From the creation of the Sheffield Rules to the first derby against Hallam F.C., and from “married vs. singles” matches to innovations like free kicks and corners, discover how this small English side shaped the DNA of the Beautiful Game.

Along the way, you’ll hear Trivia from the Hall, bite-sized facts and hidden gems that bring history to life in surprising ways. Each season, episodes compete for the Team of the Year crown, awarded to the story that resonates most with listeners through likes, comments, and subscriptions. And every inducted team finds its place on the Hall of Teams Wall of Honor, a growing collection that celebrates the greatest clubs in history.

Hall of Teams isn’t just about matches and results — it’s about the origins, traditions, and legacies that make these teams eternal.

Across Sport. Across Time. Across the World.

Welcome to the Hall of Teams, the podcast where sports legends live again.

I want to first touch on the point that people have asked: Why do

you cover teams from the 1800s?

Why not Real Madrid, the Yankees, the Lakers?

Sure, covering billion-dollar clubs with millions of fans would

certainly bring in more views.

The Hall of Teams isn't just about who's the biggest; and it's

just not about getting views.

It's important to set the foundation for the Hall of Teams with who was first.

It's easy to follow greatness — much harder to begin it.

These are the teams that laid the first cornerstones, drew the first

lines, and set the first nets.

So, before we crown the giants of today, we honor those teams and leaders who

carved the first path and started it all.

And this is the story of the Sheffield Football Club.

We start in the year 1857.

A world of steam, smoke and scarcity.

Queen Victoria reigns, Italy isn't yet a country.

Abraham Lincoln?

He's still a lawyer on the prairies of Illinois.

Leisure is rare and precious.

And Sundays in England?

They're silent.

In the northern steel city of Sheffield,

Nathaniel Creswick and William Prest, both members of the local cricket

club, felt something was missing.

Cricket filled their summers, but winters dragged on cold and

restless, as we all know they can do.

So, as winter settled in in 1857, they asked a question, what if there was a

game suited for the cold months too?

They didn't want to form a club for schoolboys or a pastime

for nobles and the aristocrats.

They envisioned something different.

A club opened to anyone, a place where all could be long.

On October 24th, 1857, in Parkfield House in Sheffield.

The inaugural club meeting was held.

A year later, at the club's AGM, saw the creation of the rules that

would shape the future of football.

A vision of two men, became Sheffield FC.

The world's first football club, and the first club of its kind.

At first, football was chaos.

A patchwork of local, informal, and school-based rules — Sheffield helped

change that with their own code:

the Sheffield Rules.

The rules they didn't become standardized overnight.

At the time, there were dozens of different rule sets, and in many

places, no written rules at all.

That's why before every match, teams would start the same way,

by reading the rules aloud.

Just to make sure everyone was playing by the same version of football.

Hands allowed?

"No".

Hacking the shins?

"Definitely not".

Goals?

Only if the ball passed under the string, that early version of the

crossbar, and between the posts.

But eventually, improvisation gave way to organization.

As the game grew, so did the need for consistency, not just in play,

but in the size of the pitch itself.

By 1863, the newly formed Football Association (or the FA) began

standardizing the game, including the size of the goal: eight

yards wide, eight feet high.

The dimensions were simple, familiar, and balanced, wide enough

to score and fair for keepers.

But nets?

They didn't come until nearly 30 years later.

In 1891,

Liverpool engineer, John Alexander Brodie invented the first goal net to solve a

did the ball really go in?

Before nets, fans argued.

Referees guessed.

Tensions rose.

Brodie's solution, netting with just the right tension, helped settle the score.

Every clean strike into the back of the net today owe something

to that bit of 1800s engineering.

One forgotten Sheffield rule that is sure to raise eyebrows:

" "No player shall leave the ground in a leaping motion to impede the ball."

In other words, "No jumping."

Legend says they were worried players might try to quote,

"Fly like starlings."

Unquote, to block high passes.

The proof lives in the club minutes from 1865: a hand-drawn diagram showing a man

mid-leap with a giant X through his torso.

A rule against jumping.

Imagine showing that to Christiano Ronaldo and the great jumpers of the game.

The rule was eventually scrapped, but it shows even the first rule makers

had to learn through play, and every leap was through trial and error.

Sheffield's influence didn't end at home.

Teams from Germany, Switzerland, Argentina, and beyond, wrote letters

asking, "Can we have your rules?" Sheffield replied by post: wax seals, hand

drawn diagrams, and even advice on boots.

One note to Dresden, Germany read,

"If you play by these rules, you play with honor."

Through these exchanges, Sheffield wasn't just exporting

a rule book, but a philosophy.

simplicity and structure.

By 1889, Europe had adopted what became known as the Sheffield

model, not just exporting a game, but exporting a way to play.

And yet as football spread across borders, Sheffield held on to

something no other club could claim: the original Sheffield Rules.

This handwritten document is one of football's most sacred treasures.

Welcome to Trivia from the Hall, where we spotlight the strange,

surprising, and significant stories that shaped the world of sport.

One of the most unusual innovations was the "Rouge", a rule that offered

teams a second chance at glory.

The Rouge was a special score from the late 1800s.

If the ball went between side posts, outside the main goal, or across the

goal line, without counting as a true goal, a team could score a Rouge.

A kind of close call point.

In some early competitions, Rouges even decided tie games.

And as association football rules standardized the Rouge slowly faded

away, leaving the conventional goal, as football's only way to score.

if you're listening on your favorite podcast app, just know the full

video version is on YouTube.

Featuring vintage footage, archival visuals, and exclusive behind the

scenes content you won't want miss.

Every club has a badge or logo, but Sheffield's is a banner of survival.

The shield stands for strength and tradition.

Its main colors, red for passion, black for toughness, and gold

for honor and being first.

Two men stand on the crest, not to show victory, but to mark where it all began.

And in strong gold lettering, "1857".

The beginning.

Right from the start, Sheffield FC instituted a rule that every player had to

bring their own red or dark blue flannel shirt, along with a red flannel cap.

Players wore whatever they could stitch up or have made by a local tailor.

These homemade uniforms, or kits, made them stand out

as a true team on the field.

A signal that a new kind of team sport had arrived.

The origin of "away kits" has its roots in improvisation and resourcefulness.

In 1862, when Sheffield crossed the Pennines to play Manchester,

both teams turned up wearing red shirts, causing plenty of confusion.

The solution?

Improvise.

Players tied white handkerchiefs to their arms, or through their

collars, and some grabbed whatever was available to stand out.

Legend has it, that one of the players even borrowed a tea towel from a

local inn and used it as a cape.

Maybe not stylish, but it worked.

Fans and players could finally tell who was who on the pitch.

That moment became an early step toward what we now call the "away kit".

Match Day in Sheffield was something special.

A social ritual.

Essential as church, the theater, or a town meeting.

Where a newspaper once marveled at

"A civilized gathering marked by handshakes and the occasional pipe."

The first-ever recorded Sheffield match in 1857 wasn't sorted by skill or age.

It was married versus singles.

Football's first friendly fire game.

The world's oldest rivalry isn't El Clásico or the Manchester Derby.

It's Sheffield FC versus Hallam FC.

First played on Boxing Day, 1860.

A frozen field near Sandy Gate Road.

The players, local lads from two pioneering clubs.

No stands, no sponsors, just scarves, boots, and a crowd gathered in the cold.

The score lost to time...but the rivalry lives on, even today, when Sheffield

faces Hallam, it's more than a match.

It's a reenactment of football's first true derby.

Another remarkable match in Sheffield FC's storied history took place in

1878, when Sheffield hosted Sheffield Wednesday, for one of England's

earliest games under the lights.

The atmosphere was electric, the field glowing with gas lamps

placed around the pitch — a new kind of magic for football fans.

Where over 12,000 people gathered, some experiencing artificial lighting at a

sports event for the very first time.

A single night changed football.

The game glowed, and would never be the same.

In 1957, as Sheffield FC turned 100, the club didn't just raise

a glass to the past —they wrote a letter straight to the year to 2057.

After the centenary banquet, the board described football as they knew it.

Surviving two world wars, being there at the birth of the game, and wondering if

television might change football forever.

But mostly, they hoped Sheffield's spirit would last long after they were gone.

The whole board signed by hand, tucked in a team photo, and sealed it all

up in a brass time capsule under a clubhouse bench — not to be opened

until Sheffield's 200th birthday.

Not just a piece of nostalgia, but a pep talk sent across a hundred years.

Not everything comes easy, even for the world's first football club.

History can inspire, but it can't fill the stands or pay the rent.

By the early 2000s, Sheffield FC faced a fight for survival no one saw coming.

Sparse crowds, fading sponsors, relegated to the ninth tier of English football,

eight steps below the Premier League.

Each match could have been the last.

"Britain's oldest football club may be forced to fold."

BBC Radio.

Richard Tims, a local printing company owner, saw the state of the

club and stepped in as chairman.

With his leadership and support of dedicated local fans, and new

sponsors, and growing international recognition, Sheffield FC survived.

For the first time in over a century, the club also secured a

permanent home, moving to the Coach and Horses Stadium in Dronfield.

The move was pivotal providing stability and sparking renewal and local interest.

Yet hopes for a true Sheffield home endured.

In 2022, that long held dream finally began to take shape.

Construction started on a 5,000 seat stadium, complete with a football museum

set to open for the 2025-2026 season.

For Sheffield, this new ground is more than brick and glass.

It's a promise kept, the spiritual home of football and the new beginning of a

new chapter for the world's first club.

Milestones come and go.

But 150 years — that's not a milestone, that's a monument.

In 2007, Sheffield FC marked its sesquicentennial, 150 years since the

world's first football club was born.

The city became a festival: banners hung from balconies, children

painted celebration posters at school, fans retraced the muddy

footsteps of Creswick and Prest.

The city buzzed with excitement at the news that Pelé was

coming to the celebration.

Then he eloquently spoke:

"Sheffield is the cradle of the beautiful game."

He also said,

Without Sheffield, there would not be me."

His words echoed across generations.

As he walked onto the pitch at Bramall Lane, the crowd rose

— a thunderclap of ovation

The King had arrived.

He wasn't there to be honored - he came to honor them, to honor where it all began.

In that moment Sheffield FC was the soul of football itself.

Among the guests also Inter Milan, a legendary team from

another time and another place.

They came not just to play, but to say thank you.

In the crowd, fans from Brazil, Germany, Italy, and beyond, held handmade signs.

One boy, no older than 10, lifted a cardboard placard in Portuguese,

"Without you, no game."

This wasn't just a match.

It was a thank you letter, written in cheers and chants.

Today, Sheffield FC exists far from the spotlight — no TV deals,

no trophies, no TikTok stars.

But nothing outweighs one simple truth: they were the first.

In every archive, we found stories of determination and grace.

We found a club built not for glory, but constantly for

the true spirit of the game.

Generation after generation, Sheffield FC has been its guardian, moving

football forward with an unwavering belief in what it truly means.

As they say in Sheffield,

"You don't change history, you honor it."

Sheffield FC stands as the club that dared to invent, to welcome anyone,

and to turn rules into a living legacy.

And with that, we proudly induct Sheffield Football Club into the Hall of Teams.

Because every time you watch a match, you witness a legacy that Sheffield began.

Share their story and honor the roots of the game.

In the Hall of Teams, legends don't just live in the past.

They rise again through you.

This year, you decide who earns the title, "Team of the Year".

It's more than a title.

It's a legacy without borders.

Across all sports.

Across time.

And across the world.

Want your team to win?

Watch the episode.

Tap, Like.

Comment with #Team Of The Year, and your team's name.

And don't forget to subscribe, because every voice and every vote counts.

The team with the most likes, comments and new subscribers,

will be crowned Team of the Year.

Their logo will be immortalized on the Wall of Honor.

And remember, you can watch the full episode on the Hall

of Teams YouTube channel.

Thanks for joining us on this legendary journey.

If there's a team you'd like to nominate for the Hall of Teams, drop it in the

comments using #NominateYourTeamName.

From football's first club, to rugby's fiercest tradition, join us next time

as we cross the oceans and cultures to tell the story of the mighty All Blacks

- the team that turned ritual into fear.

And legacy, into legend.

Until then, remember, behind every logo is a legacy, and behind

every team, a tale worth telling.

I'm Kirk Jensen, and this is the Hall of Teams.