The Laws of the Game, Weekly Telegraph, 1897

The FA’s laws, printed in full by a paper from the city that once had its own.

Work: newspaper supplement
Maker: Weekly Telegraph, Sheffield
Date: 1897
Era: The Victorian game · 1870–1900
Source: Weekly Telegraph, Sheffield, 2 October 1897 · via Wikimedia Commons

Sheffield printed the rules it had once rivalled.

Format

The full-resolution scan, colour-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and explore.

Size

$29.00

The story

A supplement to the Weekly Telegraph of Sheffield, 2 October 1897: Association Football, the Laws of the Game, printed in full for readers to keep. The laws date back to 1863, when the newly formed Football Association adopted a set written by its first secretary, Ebenezer Cobb Morley. Sheffield had played by a code of its own from 1858, and between 1863 and 1877 the two sets of rules lived side by side, each at times shaping the other. Twenty years after the Sheffield Rules gave way, a Sheffield paper was printing the Football Association’s laws as the rules of everyone’s game.

See it on your wall

The piece, in the room it was made for

The Laws of the Game, Weekly Telegraph, 1897, printed large and framed — in the den, the club bar, the supporters’ bar. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.

The Laws of the Game, Weekly Telegraph, 1897 framed on the wall

About this reproduction

A reproduction of newspaper supplement — Weekly Telegraph, Sheffield, 1897 — from the copy held by Weekly Telegraph, Sheffield, 2 October 1897 · via Wikimedia Commons. The source. The work was published before 1931 and is public-domain verified.
Printed faithful to that source scan — restore honestly, disclose always. We do not re-colour it, complete it, or interpret it; the piece you receive is the image as it survives, halftone grain honored as history, not damage.
Printed to order on museum-grade cotton-rag stock with pigment inks — the pairing is rated 100+ years.
Colour-managed to the source; the tone of the paper and the ink is the period’s, not ours.
Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed editions ship flat-packed).
If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.

Why our pieces cost more than a poster: a poster is a mass run on wood-pulp stock, colour-corrected to whatever flattered the press that day. This is one sheet, pulled for you, at a size where the maker’s hand is visible — the linework, the halftone grain, the lettering — on materials made to outlast their owner.

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