Guest Post by Chicken Run Boy
Despite its title, this article is no ‘Brady Out’ plea. It’s actually about the boot, more precisely, the football boot.
The idea came from seeing a club video of Dean Ashton watching back his West Ham goals with sons, Ethan and Lucas. In between giving Dad some well- deserved praise, the lads also took Deano to task for both that blond hair-style and the colour of his boots. “Those red boots … they look terrible on you, Dad!” From enjoying the goals it was but a short hop to thinking about Shaun Wright-Phillips and then back to red football boots. So be grateful you’re not reading a long rant about the loss of, arguably, our best Centre Forward since Sir Geoff.
As well as having a ‘thing’ for Helena Christensen, I’d admit to having a ‘thing’ for football boots. Nothing like a fetish you understand, but certainly enough to get the rate of my old ticker up a notch when I see a classic pair. So I thought, in my isolation fever, I’d take a dive into the history and development of the boot, look at the successes, a few failures and re-live a few memories along the way.
The first recorded reference to a pair of boots dates back to 1525. The Tudors were sports fanatics and loved their football. However, their version of the game might have made even Julian Dicks think about taking up Archery or Bowls. Games of football would be played through the open countryside between rural villages, especially popular on occasions such as Ascension Day and Shrove Tuesday when entire villages would play each other in all-day encounters. The object of the game was to capture the ball (pig’s bladder) and bring it back to your own village, with little regard to how this was achieved. Philip Stubbs wrote in his Anatomy of Abuses of 1583:
“Sometimes their necks are broken, sometimes their backs, sometimes their legs, sometimes their arms, sometimes one part is thrust out of joint, sometimes the noses gush out with blood.”
Reading that, the first image that springs to my mind is of some old fella watching his village side getting mullered and muttering “Bloody game’s gone soft. Get stuck in you lazy ****.” Apparently, more people died playing football in Tudor England than when sword fighting. This may say more about the lack of our sword fighting ability or ambition, but with knives often used, mass crushes and brutal fighting, football was a long way from becoming the beautiful game.
But one player no one was going to mess with, of course, was big King Henry. Team owner, manager, star player and ref rolled into one. He had a reputation for being a keen and fit sportsman before he went all Razor Ruddock later in life and in 1525 ordered his personal shoemaker, Cornelius Johnson to make him a pair of boots just for football. For everyone that played there was no special kit involved (unless you count having a dagger sharpened for the big match) so Henry’s boots were a revelation and, at a mere 4 shillings, pretty reasonable too. Unfortunately, the CJ-Tudor Majestic 8 boots didn’t survive the next 500 years, but we do know they were made of strong leather, ankle high and heavier than the normal shoe of the time.
I’ve no idea whether Henry ever joined in the real mayhem of a village derby or restricted himself to a kick-about on the lawns of Hampton Court but I know whose side I’d want to be picked on. The one thing I can state with confidence is that 30 seconds after Henry strutted out in his new leather boots, Tudor England witnessed the world’s first moment of green-eyed boot envy as his Court looked on in awe.
“F**k me Cromwell, just look at those boots mate! I’m getting me a pair of them made.” “Don’t be a total arse Audley son, he’ll have your balls and your head” Not quite Hilary Mantel I grant you, but you get the point. Football boots are for the most part about the practicality of playing football but from day one they have also been a little bit about the aesthetics and the desire of those ‘special’ boots.
We now leap forward several centuries to the time when football as we know it was developing and gaining popularity throughout Britain. Here in the mid 19th century the game was an unstructured and informal pastime, with teams representing local factories and towns in an expanding industrial landscape. Players would wear their work boots, which were long laced and steel toe-capped. Then, to give themselves a better grip and stability, some players started nailing bits of leather and tacks into the soles of their boots. Better for balance maybe, for not of much benefit to the poor opponent on the end of a crunching off the ground two footer.
When the Football Association was formed in 1863 to bring some order to the chaos of the game its 13th rule, was meant to improve player safety. It stated:
“No one wearing projecting nails, iron plates or gutta percha (rubber) on the soles of his boots is allowed to play.”
Picture credit: The National Football Museum – Late 19th century boots.
Two years before the Football League got underway in 1888 the first boots with proper studs appeared. Ellis Patent Boot Studs advertised their product with a letter from a footballer who claimed that they were “a wonderful improvement in making football boots suitable for any weather.” It took another 5 years however before the FA would allow this breakthrough to be introduced to the game, stipulating that studs had to be “made of leather and did not project more than half an inch, and they had their fastenings driven in flush with the leather.”
So by the turn of the century boots had become specialist kit for football, made of thick, hard leather (that would double in weight when wet) with a toe cap of steel or hardened leather as that’s how the ball was kicked back then, not with the instep and six studs set into the sole. With a body that reached above the ankle the designs were crude but the focus was squarely on much needed protection for a game that hadn’t completely shed its feisty medieval roots.
And to be honest, not much of note happened in a football boot sense for several decades, excepting the emergence of some brand names still manufacturing today including Gola in 1905 and Hummel in 1923 (now Danish, originally German). In part two, we’ll pick up the thread with another German company and the story two brothers who just couldn’t play nice.