A London history graduate reads about a football club that fought itself over seven minutes and reminds everyone the English were doing this in the Middle Ages
Monday, 26 October 2026. My flat in Kentish Town, boiler still broken, three jumpers, a hot water bottle and a book on medieval sport, 8.00pm.
A Club That Fought Itself Over Seven Minutes
I came home tonight, put on all three of my jumpers because the landlord insists the boiler is in hand, and read the report on how six Bramblewick Rovers players were suspended after a teammate arrived seven minutes late. The lad’s Fiesta broke down outside a Greggs. He walked past the sausage rolls, which is heroism. His captain had replaced lateness fines with a rule that late arrivals fight a teammate. Six piled in. Two were arrested. Supporters said it was the most coordinated movement the team had managed all season.
I laughed until my hot water bottle fell off the sofa. Then I picked up the book I had borrowed from the library that afternoon, a history of English sport, and realised Bramblewick Rovers had accidentally recreated the origins of English football.
Medieval Mob Football, A Brief And Bruising History
Before football had rules, it had villages. In medieval England, so-called mob football was played between whole parishes, often on holidays, with hundreds of players and very few rules, chasing a ball across fields, through streams and occasionally through people’s houses. Kings repeatedly tried to ban it. Edward the Second issued a proclamation against it in London in 1314, worried about the noise and the disorder. Later monarchs banned it because it distracted men from archery practice. Nobody listened. They carried on fighting over a ball, and some places still do.
The most famous survivor is the Royal Shrovetide Football match in Ashbourne, Derbyshire, which has been played for centuries every Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday between two halves of the town. The goals are three miles apart. Shops board up their windows. It is, as far as I can tell, Bramblewick Rovers’ training session with better attendance and a royal prefix.
The Captain Is A Medieval Lord
The report says the Bramblewick captain, who introduced the fighting policy, had himself collected seven yellow cards for dissent and once missed a match because he thought it was on Sunday. This is a perfect medieval lord. Medieval lords also introduced harsh punishments for small infractions while personally ignoring every rule they found inconvenient. If Darren Gristle had been born in 1314, he would have been the reeve of a small Derbyshire village and personally responsible for at least three proclamations from Edward the Second.
The manager arrived at the emergency meeting twenty-three minutes late because he had forgotten which training ground the club used. This, too, is historically accurate. Most medieval kings arrived late to their own battles. Some arrived at the wrong one. History is basically a list of men turning up late to things and blaming the weather.
The Council Task Force
My favourite detail is that Bramblewick-upon-Soot council has set up an eighty-five thousand pound task force on punctuality and community harmony, which will report in twelve months because several members are unavailable until March. The launch started forty-five minutes late because the council chamber was double-booked for a meeting about parking meters.
That is the exact descendant of a medieval proclamation. Edward the Second banned mob football; the people kept playing. Bramblewick council will publish a report on lateness; everyone will keep being late. The English have spent seven centuries issuing rules about other people’s behaviour and the English have spent seven centuries ignoring them. It is, in its way, the most stable constitutional arrangement in Europe.
Last Night On The Dance Floor
I should confess that I was out on Saturday at a club in Camden, and the dance floor at one in the morning was not wildly different from mob football. There was no ball, but there was a great surge of people moving in one direction for no clear reason, a man who seemed to have appointed himself captain, and at one point six people converging on one poor lad who had accidentally spilled a drink. Nobody was arrested. Everybody hugged it out. That is the advantage of a dance floor over a dressing room. The music forgives everybody eventually.
What History Teaches Us About Being Late
The report’s moral philosopher says the punishment exceeded the offence. I would add, as a historian, that it always does. Societies have always punished being late more harshly than being bad at your job. The Bramblewick striker who cost four hundred thousand pounds and has scored only parking fines remains in the team. The lad who walked past a Greggs to be seven minutes late got six people. There is no greater constant in English history than that.
My landlord, incidentally, is now forty-one days late fixing the boiler. I have considered forming a mob. I have considered writing a proclamation. Instead I have put on a fourth jumper and written this diary, which is the twenty-first century equivalent of a peasant carving a rude picture of the lord into a church pew. It will not fix the boiler. But it will be found, centuries from now, by a historian, who will understand.