SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
England has long been seen as the home of modern soccer - ah - I mean football. But now their old rival, Scotland, disagrees. Ged O'Brien is a sports historian and founder of the Scottish Football Museum in Glasgow, and he claims to have discovered the world's oldest soccer field, and it's in Southern Scotland. He joins us now. Thanks very much for being with us.
GED O'BRIEN: Thank you.
SIMON: What makes you sure, Mr. O'Brien, that this is a football field - soccer, as we call it here - and not just, you know, a big meadow?
O'BRIEN: A series of amazing coincidences, Scott. First off, it's a field which has no use because the land was so poor. Next coincidence, it's about half a mile south of a new Presbyterian church, Anwoth Kirk, that had been built in 1627. Another coincidence, Samuel Rutherford, who is actually a famous Protestant theologian - it was one of his first places where he ministered. So this is a man who was seriously anti-soccer. It is recorded that his parishioners, on a Sunday, would either go into the church and then go out to this field in Anwoth, or they would not go to church at all. And he was serious about bringing everyone to God.
So eventually he snapped and headed off to remonstrate with them that they weren't doing as they should do. And the fact that I know exactly where it is, thanks to Archaeology Scotland, is when he went out to remonstrate with his parishioners, he swore by the witnesses that were the Rutherford stones, which were prehistoric - prehistory stones, which allowed me to exactly identify where the field was.
SIMON: Part of the dispute - as I understand it - about who invented modern soccer, depends on how you define the game. Because there was a sport called mob football - wasn't there? - played in the British Isles?
O'BRIEN: That absolutely drives me nuts. The game, as far as I can see, was an excuse to punch the guy in the next parish who you didn't like. How can this game possibly have any link to the game the Scots perfected in the 1870s and '80s where you have 22 players on a pitch. And of course, the answer is, it has no link. The link is from places like Anwoth, playing regular football every Sunday, running through the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th centuries until modern football really started, I guess, in 1872, with the world's first International.
SIMON: As I don't have to tell you, I'm sure, at international tournaments, you know, Scotland and England are both represented. Should Scotland fans now start singing, it's coming home, when the game is going their way?
O'BRIEN: Absolutely. And when there have ever been international tournaments in England and they do the "Football's Coming Home," I will always tell people I must have fallen asleep and missed all the Glasgow games.
SIMON: Ha.
O'BRIEN: What's happened is the history of, in my case, football in Scotland has either been smothered or stolen wholesale and has become the history of football in England.
SIMON: Ged O'Brien is founder of the Scottish Football Museum in Glasgow. Thanks very much. Good season to you, Sir.
O'BRIEN: Thank you.
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