The ‘Rules Derby’: The Story of Football’s Oldest Rivalry

At the time of writing, the world’s oldest football club, Sheffield FC, is scheduled to play the world’s second-oldest club, Hallam FC, at the world’s oldest football ground in the quarter-finals of Sheffield and Hallamshire Senior Cup…the world’s fifth-oldest surviving knockout competition. Here’s the story of the ‘Rules Derby’.

On Saturday, 22 December 1860, a notice appeared in the Sheffield Independent advertising a novelty for Boxing Day: a football match at Sandygate Cricket Ground between Sheffield Football Club and the Hallam and Stumperlowe Club. Omnibuses would be leaving the Angel Hotel at noon to carry spectators to the ground.

A few days later, on Friday, 28 December 1860, we have what must surely be the first post-match report in football history, as the Sheffield Daily Telegraph notifies readers of a good-tempered contest, won 2-0 by Sheffield FC in snowy conditions and appreciated by a large crowd, among whom many were “extremely liberal with their plaudits”.

It was a football match between two clubs that still exist. But the match pre-dates the foundation of the Football Association (FA) and its rulebook by three years. Sheffield and Hallam were playing by the ‘Sheffield Rules’ of football. And because Sheffield FC became involved in the creation of the FA rulebook, there is a direct line between the 1860 Boxing Day encounter and the 2025 ‘Rules Derby’.

The Sheffield Rules

In the middle of the 19^th century, there were plenty of codes of ‘football’ around. There was even a club in Edinburgh called ‘The Foot-Ball Club’ in the 1820s, but it has no relation to the FA rules. Schools like Charterhouse, Eton, Harrow, and – most famously – Rugby, had their own codes, and when those boys went on to university, they had to reach a consensus on how they would play ‘football’. In 1848, at Parker’s Piece in Cambridge, a set of rules were published and displayed with that very aim.

Meanwhile, in Sheffield, wine merchant and Yorkshire county cricket team captain William Prest teamed up with solicitor Nathaniel Creswick on 24 October 1857 to form a football club. The aim was to keep cricketers active over the winter. Prest and Creswick drew on football codes already being played at universities and put together a set of laws. The club’s minute book from 1858 sold for more than £800,000 at auction in 2011 and includes the first recorded mention of the centre kick, free kicks, corners, goal kicks and throw-ins. Sheffield FC also used a crossbar to define the goal. The minute book also requires players to bring both a red and a dark blue flannel cap to games to differentiate the teams. This could be the first mention of a football kit.

Sheffield FC is recognised by football’s governing body, FIFA, as the world’s first football club. Sheffield FC’s chairman is Richard Tims. I interviewed him for my first book, Origin Stories: The Pioneers Who Took Football to the World. “We formed the first specific organisation with the sole intention of playing football,” Tims told me. “We’re not a school, we’re not a village, we’re not a university, we are a football club.” 

So, what did the men of Sheffield FC do for three years between the foundation of the club in 1857 and the match with Hallam in 1860? “For three years we didn’t have any opposition, hence our nickname of ‘the club’,” Tims told me. “We played amongst ourselves – married men versus unmarried men, letters of the alphabet and so on, until we convinced another local cricket club, Hallam, to form a football club.”

The Rules Derby

The steel city of Sheffield became something of a hotbed of football, including the creation of the Youdan Cup in 1867, the world’s first football tournament, played using Sheffield Rules and won by Hallam against Norfolk Park at Bramall Lane. New clubs were emerging in Sheffield, including The Wednesday (1867), which later became Sheffield Wednesday. Sheffield United did not follow until 1889, when the club was created specifically to fill Bramall Lane in the new professional era.

But back in the 1860s, Sheffield FC were helping the FA down in London to create its rulebook, the genesis of the Association rules game that went on to become the world’s most popular sport. Sheffield FC was a huge cheerleader for the FA in the north, and Sheffield is one of several places with a strong claim to be the ‘home of football’. Sheffield FC eventually adopted FA rules fully over its own rules in the 1870s.

Sheffield FC and Hallam FC both play in the lower reaches of the English pyramid, having decided not to go professional back in the 1880s. As of 2024/25, Sheffield FC play in the Northern Premier League East, the eighth tier of English football, while Hallam FC are in the ninth tier Northern Counties East League Premier Division.

Encounters between the two are often pre-season friendlies. I went along to one in the summer of 2017, which inspired me to write Origin Stories, a country-by-country account of how the game got started in a rough chronological order. The January 2025 cup encounter at Sandygate will be intriguing, and I see it has sold out.

As the host of the 1860 Boxing Day match and still the home of Hallam FC, Sandygate is recognised by the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest dedicated football ground in the world.

There are bigger derbies in the world than two non-league clubs slogging it out in the Sheffield suburbs, but none can boast a longer history.

For more on the roots of football around the world, do please read my book, Origin Stories: The Pioneers Who Took Football to the World.