A brief history of The Corner
Originally, restarting the game from the corner was not a kick but a corner throw-in. Found within the members rules book of The United Mechanics Football Club for the 1865–66 season, was a law stating that the ball must be thrown back into play from the corner flag if the ball went behind the goal. The corner throw was awarded to the side that touch the ball first once it went out of play at the ‘goal sides’.
It’s unclear if this corner throw was a general Sheffield Football rule or just one written & used by United Mechanics since the Nottingham Evening Post who in 1935 published an article describing Mechanics 1865 rules did also refer to rouges as a scoring method. The same report however stated that a footnote made it clear the rules listed were peculiar just to the club. Either way the corner throw had to go at least 6 yards and hit the ground before being touched and so was consistent with the general Sheffield throw-in rules at the time.
The thirst for some form of corner restart persisted in Sheffield during the next couple of years. A March 1867 letter published in The Sheffield Daily Telegraph argued that it was too easy for a defending side to just allow the ball to pass over the goal line to get an easy free kick and stop any attack. The author of the letter suggests the side winning the behind goal line touch should kick the ball back into play from the nearest corner flag.
The corner-kick was officially introduced into Sheffield association football the following year in 1868. Sheffield Norfolk FC proposed the law change which was adopted by the Sheffield FA in October 1868. This very first form of the corner kick could be awarded to either side since it had to be taken by the opposite side to the one that had kicked the ball behind the goal line. The law also didn’t award a corner if the ball went over the crossbar making it still slightly different to our modern corner kick. It was however still a ‘corner kick-in’ & yet another Sheffield world first in association football history.
It’s worth noting that the introduction of the corner kick into Sheffield football in 1868 also effectively abolished the rouge scoring system and the link to any form of touching the ball down in association football.
The Sheffield FA were successful in getting the London FA to adopt its corner kick law in 1872 as described above. In 1873 however, Great Marlow FC proposed an alteration to the London FA’s corner kick law making it essentially the rule we play by today, a corner for the attacking team but goal kick for the defending team and when the ball leaves the field at any point behind the goal.
The Sheffield clubs did still keep their own corner kick law when playing local matches until both Sheffield & London codes became fully amalgamated in 1877.
Do you have more information about this that we could add? Are any of the facts wrong? Please get in touch if so.
Source: Steve Wood
