A sports historian behind the claims that Scotland invented football says he has found the world’s oldest known pitch there.
Ged O’Brien, who has campaigned for years for England to be stripped of its status as creator of the beautiful game, says new evidence backed by archaeology suggests the sport had been played on a farm north of the border around 400 years ago.
That would be more than 200 years before the formation of the Football Association in 1863.
O’Brien, a former president of the Association of Sports Historians and the founder of the Scottish Football Museum, says his discovery will force those who believe modern football was invented in England to “rewrite everything they think they know”.