Inventing the Boston Game: Football, Soccer, and the Origins of a National Myth

＂On Boston Common stands a monument dedicated to the Oneida Football Club. It honors the site where, in the 1860s, sixteen boys played what was then called the ＂Boston game＂--an early version of football in the United States. In the 1920s, a handful of the players orchestrated a series of commemorative events, donating artifacts to museums, depositing self-penned histories into libraries and archives, and erecting bronze and stone memorials, all to elevate themselves as the inventors of American football. But was this self-laudatory origin story of what, by then, had become one of America’s favorite games as straightforward as they made it seem or a myth-making hoax? In Inventing the Boston Game, Kevin Tallec Marston and Mike Cronin investigate and reveal the true story of the Oneida Football Club. In a compelling narrative informed by sports history, Boston history, and the study of memory, they posit that these men engaged in self-memorialization to reinforce their elite status during a period of tremendous social and economic change. This exploration provides fascinating insight into how and why origin stories are created in the first place＂--

Kevin Tallec Marston is Research Fellow at CIES (Centre International d’Etude du Sport / International Center for Sports Studies) and Visiting Researcher and Lecturer at the International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University. His writings on sports have appeared in edited collections and journals such as Contemporary European History and the International Sports Law Journal.

Mike Cronin is Academic Director, Centre for Irish Programmes at Boston College, Dublin. His publications include Sport: A Very Short Introduction.