This week we delve deep into the origins of the football codes across Britain, Europe and the Americas with Thomas Adam, author of the new book The Global Spread of football from the 1860s to the 1880s.

His book looks at the emergence of football in England, Germany, Argentina and the United States in the 1860s and 1870s, and looks at the decisive influence of education and educators in the rise of the game. The book is code-agnostic, and so looks at ‘football’ as nineteenth century observers did: one game with many different ways to play. Along the way we also discuss the roads not taken, such as how Germany could have become a rugby nation and the US a soccer bastion.

For more details about the book, go to https://anthempress.com/books/the-global-spread-of-football-from-the-1860s-to-the-1880s-hb

For more on the history of rugby and the other football codes, take a look at www.rugbyreloaded.com (where you can find the links for this episode) and follow me on Twitter at @collinstony