Historian believes Dumfries and Galloway is home of world's oldest known football pitch

Daily Record

25-04-2025

The Stewartry may be the home of the world's oldest known football pitch. Football historian Ged O'Brien has uncovered evidence that suggests the beautiful game was played on farmland near Gatehouse more than 400 years ago. And he believes this will lead other experts to 'rewrite everything they think they know'. Ged's discovery was unveiled in the final episode in the current series of BBC Scotland's A View From The Terrace, which will be shown tonight. The founder of the Scottish Football Museum has discovered a letter written by Rev Samuel Rutherford, who was minister at Anwoth Old Kirk in the 17th century. It shows that when he arrived at the parish he found 'a piece of ground on Mossrobin farm where on Sabbath afternoon the people used to play at foot-ball'. Ged – a former president of the Association of Sports Historians – believes this sentence backs up his argument that football was being played in Scotland hundreds of years before it was invented in England. He said: 'This is one of the most important sentences I have ever read in football history, because it specifically identifies the exact place the football pitch was.' Rev Rutherford was furious his parishioners were playing football on a Sunday and ordered some of his flock to put stones on the pitch to stop the games. The film for A View From The Terrace shows Ged and a team of archaeologists discovered a line of 14 large rocks across a flat area at the former Mossrobin farm, with tests indicating they were put there around the time Rutherford was minister. Archaeologist Phil Richardson from Archaeology Scotland, who conducted the tests, said: 'This backs up the story that a barrier was put across an open space. It's not about stock control, it's not about agriculture or land boundaries and ownership. This is not a wall, it's a temporary barrier to stop a particular event happening – in this case football.' Ged added: 'There are serious implications for historians because they are going to have to rewrite everything they think they know. In the history books, football is mob-football. 'It was chaos, people drunk, it's anarchy. The traditional view of modern football is that it started in 1863 with a group of ex-public schoolboys from places like Eton and Harrow.' O'Brien argues this narrative is 'entirely and utterly mistaken', pointing out that for centuries, Scots have been playing a more organised form of football in places like Anwoth, where his discovery was made. Standing on the site of the ancient pitch, he added: 'This is one of my great days ever, because we're stood on the proof that we need to show that Scotland invented modern world football.' Anwoth Old Kirk is perhaps better known as one of the filming locations of The Wicker Man. Now it may have another claim to fame. Click here for more news and sport from Dumfries and Galloway. Ged said: 'Anwoth is going to be one of the cornerstones of the new world history of football. 'This is a place that the locals specifically chose as a football pitch and I've got the evidence. It's the start of the narrative that runs through to today because the game they played is the game everybody plays everywhere in the world.' 'You can be up the side of a mountain in the Himalayas, watching a football game, and the ghosts of Anwoth will be watching,' he added. The episode of A View From The Terrace is available on iPlayer and will be shown on the BBC Scotland channel tonight at 10.30pm.