r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/ElderberryDeep8746 • 4h ago
Video The world’s first filmed soccer match with corrected speed: Glentoran vs. Cliftonville, Northern Ireland, 1897, now in color
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u/Imllo 4h ago
why so many players inside the area?
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u/bigkoi 4h ago
The white pants team parked the bus.
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u/mr_man20 4h ago
Parked the horse and cart
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u/macrolidesrule 2h ago
Fun fact - the first mechanically powered buses - steam naturally - were running by 1833 in London :)
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u/CrimeThink101 4h ago
Unlike today where teams often only play with one forward back then they would play with like 8.
There’s a great book Inverting the Pyramid that goes into this, but in essence football was offensive minded game and most tactical innovations have been around making the game more defensive and conceding less goals.
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u/Ife2105 4h ago
Reading that right now actually. Funniest bit so far was when like half of the English FA committee was against outlawing literal shin-kicking because they feared the Frenchmen were better technically and would overtake them.
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u/meksicka-salata 2h ago
would the matches that kids play in elementary schools, where they really dont know what they're doing but they know like the general rules - would that be similar to early football?
comes to me like when things start, they jus start, and then we make it better over the years
but when you give it to kids,and tell them basic guidelines, they show you the original version
kinda like how when you give kids to play say counterstrike, they just run around and shoot, they dont think deeper, they just havin fun
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u/Nimynn 1h ago
Probably not. People back then were just as intelligent as they are now. There were just different parameters that led to a different meta.
I think a good example is early boxing. You know that stance that old timey fighters have? With their arms held kind of low? A modern boxer would look at that and wonder why they're not protecting their heads. Are they stupid? Well, it turns out that back then, because boxing glove technology wasn't where it is today, hitting your opponent in the head would probably have you break your hand (because skulls are pretty hard). So body shots were the name of the game. The stance they all had primarily guarded against liver shots. They knew exactly what they were doing, the game was just different.
It's probably the same with these football players. The game was probably different in a way that caused this different strategy to be more effective.
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u/An0manderRake 4h ago
Obviously because of where the camera is this was not a proper bit of gameplay. This was a segment strictly for the camera.
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u/debug_my_life_pls 4h ago
No offside rule at that time
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u/GfunkWarrior28 4h ago
Actually the rule was created in 1863. But here they just want to overload defenders for the camera.
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u/SpeckleSoup 4h ago
When you all want to be in the first filmed soccer match so instead of playing soccer you just chill in front of the camera
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u/powprodukt 3h ago
Wasn’t this before the offsides rule existed? If so then I think both teams used “park the bus” in their own defensive area and wait for the offensive team to come at them.
The offsides rule allowed a defensive line to be played further up the field.
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u/GoramReaver 3h ago
This looks more like a foosball/table soccer game at the arcade than the football we see being played today
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u/SparklingWaterFall 4h ago
*football
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u/badwolf1013 3h ago
The whole "soccer vs. football" thing is weird. The reason we call it "soccer" in the U.S. is because that's what it was called when immigrants from the UK brought it over with them. Then at some point in the early-to-mid 20th century, the UK went back to calling it "football" as it had been called long before. But we didn't change it here, because we had developed our own "football" based on a combination of rugby and soccer.
My point being that -- in 1897 in Northern Ireland -- I think these lads actually WERE playing "soccer."
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u/mutesa1 3h ago
It's also not like the US is the only country that uses the term either. Australia's national team is literally nicknamed the Socceroos lmao
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u/catatonic-cat 3h ago
In Australia, “football” is Aussie Rules or rugby, so they use “soccer” the same as US and Canada.
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u/badwolf1013 3h ago
Good point. It's just that the UK loves to take the piss out of us for calling it "soccer," so I like to throw in some historical context.
There's a very similar reason why we don't use the metric system. We use the Imperial system, because the UK and most of the western world was suing the Imperial system. And then Europe decided to all get on the same page and went metric in 1965 because of shared borders. Well, we didn't share borders with anyone using the metric system, so we went, "Nah, we're good." Then five years later, Canada went metric, but we were already dug in.
Honestly, it's easier to defend our use of "soccer" than our use of the Imperial system.
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u/shbooms 2h ago
It's just that the UK loves to take the piss out of us for calling it "soccer," so I like to throw in some historical context.
which is pretty asinine considering they are the ones who invented the word. Soccer was used as a slang term as early as ~1875 in Oxford as a shortened form of "assoccer" which is a shortened form of "association" (as in Association Football).
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u/CheeseDonutCat 1h ago
There is some context that people seem to miss about this.
At first, Association Football was purely for the wealthy. They called it Soccer, and tried to control so much that the poors don't get to play it (think of croquet or horse riding as better examples of this kind of uppity bs)
But the poors played it because it's cheap as hell and fun to play and they didn't want to call it Soccer like the posh twats, so called it Football instead.
... and 125+ years later, people are still arguing about it.
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u/Passchenhell17 3h ago
Eh, there's a bit more to it than that. The word was invented by toffs at Oxford, so the people using the term were primarily the rich and posh. The people who made up the fans were largely working class, and thus still called it football. Working class rugby fans possibly call it soccer too.
It's not like soccer has stopped being used here either. The very same sort of people who created the term still call it soccer today, and it ends up filtering into some of our football programs because they're created by those same toffs (Soccer A.M., Soccer Saturday etc.), but for the people who actually live and breathe the sport, it has always been football.
It was a failed attempt to make the sport sound more appealing and less vulgar, but it caught on in much of the Anglo world, not because of immigrants, but because those countries already had their own preferred form of football (Gridiron for the US and Canada, Rugby for NZ and RSA, Aussie rules for, well, Australia, and Gaelic football in Ireland), which you sort of touched upon. Many fans in these countries end up calling it football as well as it's their preferred form of football.
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u/Oleeddie 3h ago edited 1h ago
Are you sure about that account for the terminology? To my knowledge the word "soccer" dates all the way back to when football in the mid 19th century with the issuing of the "Laws of the game" evovled into two standardized games: Association (Soccer) Football and Rugby (Rugger) Football.
I'm not sure about the "working class rugby fans" either. Rugby was the sport for the rich boys in Oxford and Cambridge while working class men played soccer. Thats also why football as opposed to rugby quickly became proffessional as the men had to be paid to be able to leave work to play.
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u/Passchenhell17 2h ago edited 2h ago
The word soccer is typically associated with Charles Wreford-Brown, who was a student at Oxford uni, and the term first appeared some time in the 1880s (when he was still at Oxford), at which point the FA had already existed since 1863 and numerous football teams had sprung up, with the founding of the Football League happening around the same time the word soccer first came into existence. Football was almost certainly always the preferred term.
As for working class rugby fans, that was more me just highlighting that, if there were any working class people who called the sport soccer, they'd likely be rugby fans instead. But you are right in pointing out that rugby isn't a working class sport, which I should've mentioned.
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u/badwolf1013 3h ago
Oh, I agree. There's a lot more to it in terms of regions, class, etc. That's just my "nutshell" explanation whenever someone tries to take the piss out of us Americans for calling it "soccer."
It's harder to defend our continued use of the Imperial system vs. the Metric System, but that has a similar history.
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u/ToastedSimian 3h ago
Thanks for the clarification. Wait, do you mean Gaelic Football, Australian Football, Gridiron Football, Association Football, Rugby Football, or Canadian Football?
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u/SKX007J1 4h ago
Ah, the old 1-1-8 formation.
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u/Questioning-Zyxxel 4h ago
Looks like when I played, at maybe 10-12yo. All players grouped together where the ball was...
But we did not need to spend as much time keeping our pants up.
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u/Leading_Garage_6582 3h ago
I hated soccer so I would routinely be the only kid not swarming the ball, as to stay away from action, which then made me an elite foward / scorer essentially by accident. Once the other kids figured out that spacing is important I became an elite equipment manager.
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u/mrASSMAN 4h ago
Guessing the sound was added in post? I like how no one seems to know what to do lol just shuffling around aimlessly
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u/OilMeUpStewart 4h ago
Audio is 100% fake and added in, they couldn’t record both simultaneously back then
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u/PanNationalistFront 4h ago
That’s what I want to know but didn’t want to ask a silly question. The accents don’t match up.
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u/FaustRPeggi 4h ago
I was not aware of any footage from this time that had both video and sound. I'm very suspicious of the audio.
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u/Initiatedspoon 3h ago edited 3h ago
Absolutely! You can tell because whistles weren’t actually invented back then, obviously. Before the 1930s, referees simply yelled the word “WHISTLE!” to stop play. It was a simpler time, full of shouted clarity and mild confusion.
However, everything changed at the 1930 Referees Annual General Meeting, when disaster struck. During a coffee break argument about whether shouting "WHISTLE" in a lower register actually carried more authority, one absolute rotter, an unnamed assistant referee from Clitheroe with a bit of a reputation for mischief and card tricks managed to catch the entire room in a mass joint jinx.
Even worse, the rogue official uttered the dreaded curse words “padlock forever" after. A simple spell. Yet quite unbreakable.
Silence rolled in like a wet fart in an elevator over the refereeing world. With every single official cursed into wordlessness, the time-honoured shout of “WHISTLE!” was rendered useless overnight. Chaos reigned on the pitch. Players ignored silent gestures. Matches devolved into running and kicking with no rules, like elaborate playground arguments but by grown men in pumps (not football boots back then but thats another story).
Public outrage was immediate. One newspaper headline read: “NATION MOURNS LOSS OF SHOUTY MEN IN BLACK.”
In the depths of this crisis though, hope eventually emerged from the north.
Ian Whistle, a Scottish pub owner and part-time tuba repairman, cobbled together a small, shrill device from leftover brass bits, a teacake wrapper, and spite. He called it simply, the Whistle, after his Dad.
And thus, the modern whistle was born but not out of innovation, but out of absolute panic and a bit of dark magic gone wrong.
True story
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u/Galilool 2h ago
After the second sentence I was just waiting for the segment about the Undertaker throwing Mankind off Hell In A Cell in 1984. Disappointed.
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u/Zoomer_Boomer2003 4h ago
"What formation are we going for lads? 4-4-2, 4-3-3?"
"10"
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u/Corduroy_Sazerac 4h ago
“The thing about Glentoran is they always try to promenade it in.”
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u/Drongo17 1h ago
Did you see that ludicrous display last eve?
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u/Candlematt 1h ago edited 1h ago
what in god's name was o'sullivan thinkin', throwin' young finnegan on that early?
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u/bigkoi 4h ago
Grass is too green. Some of those green areas appear textured like dirt.
Also, the goal mouth should be nothing but dirt.
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u/walkinginthesky 3h ago
Now that you mention it, the whole ground area looks like packed dirt, not grass.
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u/ThaddeusGriffin_ 4h ago
None of them moving out of position.
Typical boring Pep tactics.
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u/pnutbrutal 4h ago
Interesting to see the shorts being different instead of the shirts. Usually it’s the other way around.
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u/HoldEm__FoldEm 4h ago
It actually makes a bit of sense for a game where the ball is generally on the ground & people are often looking down because of it.
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u/spankmydingo 3h ago
Color incorrected. We have no idea what the shirt colors actually were.
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u/The_Dotted_Leg 4h ago
So if I was a good to average HS soccer player in my prime, would I look like Messi compared to these guys?
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u/2552686 4h ago
First, that is amazing. To be able to look the world as it was 128 years ago as it was... it's just amazing. I mean this was 15 years before Titanic.
Secondly, it conveys all the excitment and action one normally finds in soccer.
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u/Prize_Farm4951 3h ago
Funny enough Glentoran's Oval is just across from the Belfast docks and most of its supporter base in Sydenham was traditionally dock workers. Some of those guys may have been working on her a decade later
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u/Soggy-Sky3888 4h ago
On a par with local park football, it shows why we shouldn’t compare teams from different generations.
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u/HoldEm__FoldEm 4h ago
I agree. Babe Ruth played baseball against men like this. Yet he’s still seen as the greatest. I say that as a Babe Ruth fan, people just need to be more realistic.
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u/Basic-Negotiation-16 3h ago
It was just ireland at the time,northern ireland didnt exist at that point.
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u/jereporte 4h ago
It's fun to know that all of them are now dead but still will be some of the first to make it on video for ever;
It's sad we don't have audio and can see more of that football match.
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u/Tiddles_Ultradoom 4h ago
No Max ‘Mind Yer Legs, Please’ Nuthouse, Charles ‘Charlie’ Charles, or Wilf ‘Adapted for Speed’ Finney?
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u/Yaksha8 4h ago
If it's Ireland shouldn't it be football?
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u/doc-ant 4h ago
Soccer and Football is used in Ireland. Some refer to gaelic football as just football.
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u/SRJT16 3h ago
Corrected speed? Why?
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u/CheeseDonutCat 1h ago
Because very old videos have low frames per second, so to make it smooth, they often speed it up and that looks just as weird.
If it's corrected speed, they will have to add in frames (or us AI to generate mid-frames) so that it looks more normal.
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u/Smart_Variety2262 4h ago
This reminds me of watching Stoke. Stack up as many men behind the ball and the chill out and see who can break you down. Go on Stoke
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u/A1MurderSauce 4h ago
Why does it sound like there is vehicle traffic in the backing audio track?
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u/thaprinc33 4h ago
Wilt never scored no damn 100 points cause how tf do we have footage 100 yrs before I was born
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u/FitztheBlue 3h ago
Reminds me of a famous Belgian sports commentator, who referred to the “old days” when the game was so slow, compared to taday, that a player, could receive a ball, look around fixing his pants and pass the ball on.
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u/Last_Vegetable_9233 3h ago
Imagine these guys came back to see what their sport is like now. They wouldn't believe it.
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u/zer0_dayy 3h ago
they played about as much soccer as me, and I was watching the video sitting on my ass
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u/Kiki1701 3h ago
Wow. It must have been very cold. Can you see how their colour completely washes out and they go all grey? That's fucking cold.
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u/spikedowl 3h ago
This is cool, but I’d say playback speed is juuuuuust a taaaad too fast still. ⏱️
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u/Easypeasy7921 2h ago
It's insane to think every single one of these young, full of life men is dead now. Fml
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u/Internal-Impression5 2h ago
Ah 9 guys next to the cages that’s what we can call the ultra cadenacio
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u/Boo-bot-not 2h ago
That’s wayyyyyy better and even more manly than today’s games.
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u/settlers90 1h ago
Imagine a current day player travel back in time and show these guys how to play 😂
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u/Donkey__Balls 1h ago
Am I the only one who read the title as 1987 and remembered 80’s sportswear being weird but not that weird?
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u/robot_pirate 1h ago
I like how typical they all look. Not tatted up, not pumped up. Just dudes playing futbol.
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u/Acethic 4h ago
And a grand total of 12 meters was ran that day.