Oldest Football Clubs - Continuous Clubs

Continuous Clubs

It is claimed that the Barnes Club (later Barnes Rugby Football Club), from Barnes in London, was formed in 1839 and is the oldest club to have played football for its entire history. However, this has not been conclusively documented. It is also argued, and supported by the Guinness Book of Records, that Guy's Hospital Football Club, founded by staff at Guy's Hospital in London in 1843, is the oldest club. While a rugby club still exists at Guy's Hospital, the connection between the present club and the one formed in 1843 is poorly-documented.

Another of the oldest football clubs with a well-documented, continuous history is the Dublin University Football Club, founded in 1854 at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. The club plays rugby union.

Sheffield Football Club, in Sheffield, England is the oldest documented stand-alone club, that is, the oldest club not associated with an institution such as a school, hospital or university. It was founded in 1857. It initially played a code of its own devising. The club joined the English Football Association (FA) in 1863 and is recognised by both the FA and FIFA as the world's oldest club now playing association football. The club's rules influenced the FA including handball, free kicks, corners and throw ins; it did not adopt the Association's code in full until 1877.

Liverpool Football Club (not to be confused with Liverpool Football Club of the English Premier League), later known as Liverpool St Helens F.C. were formed in 1857, who claim to be the oldest open rugby club in the world. The club only ever played the Rugby School rules.

Cambridge University Association Football Club has been described by the university as the oldest club now playing association football. Other sources take the foundation date back earlier. For example : "Salopians formed a club of their own in the late 1830s/early 1840s but that was presumably absorbed by the Cambridge University Football Club that they were so influential in creating in 1846". According to Charles Astor Bristed, in the early 1840s at Cambridge, there were games played between clubs from different colleges and houses. Cambridge rules dates from 1848 and football is documented as being played on the original club ground, Parkers Piece, as early as 1838. The earliest existing evidence of the Cambridge University Football Club comes from "The Laws of the University Football Club" dated 1856, and held at Shrewsbury School.

German side 1860 Munich (formed in 1848) was reestablished as a gymnastic and fitness club in the year indicated by its name, but did not play football until 1899.

English club Notts County, formed in 1862, is the world's oldest fully professional association football club.

The first football club in France was established in Paris in 1863 by English expatriates, as the following excerpt from a contemporary newspaper shows: "A number of English gentlemen living in Paris have lately organised a football club... The football contests take place in the Bois de Boulogne, by permission of the authorities and surprise the French amazingly.

The claim of oldest continuous football club in North America is still a matter of much debate. In terms of gridiron football the Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League can trace their roots back to the Hamilton Football Club (nicknamed the "Tigers") which formed in 1869, then later merged with the Hamilton Wildcats in 1950 to form the current franchise. Their rivals to the north, the Toronto Argonauts, were founded four years later in 1873 and boast a mostly unchanged franchise history. It should be noted, however, that both clubs began as rugby football clubs and only later adapted to the gridiron-style of play which would become known as Canadian football. The oldest continuous rugby club in North America which still plays rugby is the McGill University Rugby Football Club which was established in 1863, although their first recorded game was not until 1865. The oldest independent (non-university) rugby club is the Westmount Rugby Club of Montreal, which formed in 1876.

Though football variants have been played in the United States since the 1820s, gridiron-based variants of the game did not distinguish themselves from existing codes until 1871, when Harvard University began playing a variation known as the "Boston Game." This allowed a player to pick up the ball and run with it if he were chased and it quickly spread, with innovations added by Yale University student Walter Camp. The oldest existing non-university semiprofessional football club is the Watertown Red & Black, which was founded in 1896. The Arizona Cardinals, formed in Chicago in 1899, are the oldest club currently in the National Football League, although they relocated to St. Louis in 1960 and then to Arizona in 1988. The Green Bay Packers, founded in 1919, are the oldest NFL club still in their original city.