What if football was never one game to begin with?

WHAT ARE WE EXPLORING?

The familiar story of football tends to begin with a game being codified and then spreading around the world.

Look more closely and things get considerably messier.

Football Family Tree explores the different games, rules, people and decisions that eventually produced the football codes we recognise today — and asks what that history can tell us about how sport continues to change.

WHAT ARE WE DOING?

We're turning the research into a growing collection of books, live lectures, conversations and visual material.

Rather than treating history as something fixed to be reported, we're using it to ask questions about why games develop differently and what causes them to change.

WHERE ARE WE NOW?

The first book and lecture, There Was Never One Game, explore the world before football's different branches became inevitable.

Further parts of the Football Origins Collection are currently in development.