For the next ten years the Sheffielders played a different game from the Londoners, until they at length succumbed to the increasing power of the Association, and adopted the prevalent rule. In the meantime, the clubs playing the Rugby game remained unassociated for nearly another eight years, although between 1863 and 1870 the Rugby Union game was making decidedly more way in the country than the Association game. As, however, all the players of the Rugby game agreed in not allowing off-side play, few causes of dispute arose, and in general disagreements were avoided by a rule that in matches between clubs the rules of the home club were always to be adopted. In 1871, after some preliminary negotiation between the Richmond and Blackheath clubs, the principal London clubs were summoned together, and in the early part of that year the Rugby Football Union was formed. The more unpleasant features of the hacking and tripping, which were parts of the old Rugby school game, were eliminated, but no other substantial alteration was made in the old method of play, and the main details of the game have ever since remained unaltered, much as the style of play has changed in recent years.

It is from about this time only that football has really become a national game, known throughout the country. Most of the provincial clubs playing under either set of rules have been established since that date. The first international match between England and Scotland under Rugby Union rules was played in 1871, and in the next year the Association players followed suit with a similar fixture; while it was not until the season of 1873-74 that the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge first tried conclusions with each other, the players of both games starting an Inter-'Varsity match in that winter. For the last dozen years the popularity of the game, both with players and with spectators, has spread marvellously, until at the time of writing football is as much the national game of winter as cricket is of summer. If antiquity of origin is to be considered as constituting an additional claim to honour, the game the history of which we have chronicled in this chapter stands pre-eminent amongst English sports.