Old Foresters F.C.
The Old Foresters Football Club is an Association Football club made up exclusively of former pupils of Forest School, located in Snaresbrook, near Walthamstow, London, England.
The Old Foresters Football Club is probably one of the half dozen or so oldest "soccer" clubs in the world. It has a continuous and proud history going back before its own formal constitution in 1876 and the founding of The Football Association in 1863. Forest played a considerable part in the development of Association Football and Rugby Football, and "The Common" in front of the school may well be regarded as a cradle of the game.
Forest School is one of only three institutions which have been continuous members of the F.A. since 1863, the others being Civil Service and King's College, Wimbledon. It is the only school to have played in the FA Cup (Donington School entered the first F.A. Cup but never actually played a game). The club's main on-field achievements are reaching the quarter final of the F.A. Cup in 1882, and the last sixteen a further three times. The Old Foresters have won the prestigious "old boys cup", The Arthur Dunn Cup three times, the Essex Cup three times and the London Senior Cup twice. Eight Old Foresters footballers have played international football.
The club currently fields three regular Saturday sides in the Arthurian League. Home matches are played at "The Park" in Snaresbrook, London, a short walk from Forest School.
The full history of the club can only be appreciated when put into context within the role of the English public schools into the development of the modern games of soccer and Rugby football. The development of the modern game springs directly from the various games of football played in the public schools of southern England, most notably Harrow, Eton, Rugby, Winchester and Shrewsbury. These schools adapted their own local rules based primarily to suit the dimensions of their individual playing field.
The first set of standardised rules came about in 1848 when representatives from the above schools met at Cambridge University and formulated the Cambridge Rules. The game increased in popularity in the next decade, leading to clubs being formed outside of the schools, often by public schoolboys. In 1863 twelve of these clubs formed the Football Association and drew up a new set of rules, broadly similar to the Cambridge Rules.
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