Note 90 — Chapter XIV · THE PLAYGROUND MOVEMENT IN GERMANY.

When Thomas Arnold’s fourteen years as head master at Rugby Public School were ended by his death in June of 1842, cricket was the recognized summer sport at the English public schools and at Oxford and Cambridge universities; rowing was firmly established as a fall and spring exercise at Eton College, and the Oxford-Cambridge boat race was an annual affair; football was regularly played at Rugby and others of the public schools; and continuous records of the “big-side runs” of the Rugby School Hare and Hounds—forerunners of the later track and field athletics—were already five years old. By the time Thomas Hughes published his “Tom Brown’s School Days,” fifteen years later (April, 1857), all of the public schools had adopted football as the chief winter game, and the first steps looking toward organized track and field athletics as a recognized branch of public school and university sports had been taken. The annual track meets between Oxford and Cambridge date from 1864. The first of the annual Cambridge-Oxford contests in Rugby football was held in 1872, and two years later a similar series in the Association game began. (“Association football” dates from the publication of rules by the London Football Association, December 1, 1863. The Rugby Football Union was organized in London, January 26, 1871).