In many ways, handball and football are two sides of the same coin, a coin minted in Great Britain.
While descriptions of games involving a large inflated ball being kicked or carried through a goal had been known for centuries, it was the 19th century that saw both the divergence and codification of the 'hand' and the 'foot' versions of the game. Born out of the rules of the Public Schools, at first the various versions involved different shaped balls, different amounts of use of catches and kicks, different numbers of playeers, different scoring methods, different shaped goals and just about any other variable of the game you care to imagine. However, with the development of passenger rail in the first half of the 19th century, interschool games became more and more common, and the movement was afoot to develop unified rules of the game to make these interschool games easier to conduct and follow for the spectators. While several things were mutually designated by the mid 19th century, such as the number of players per team (fifteen), starting the game with a scrimmage circle, the forward pass, continuous play except for injuries and the half, and the H shaped goalpost, a rift developed between supporters of kicking versus passing games, embodied by two men,
George Illingworth and John Jolly.
George Illingworth of Yorkshire was the main proponent of the passing game, and his disdain for kicking grew as he engaged in a decades long public fight with John Jolly of Norfolk, the champion of the kicking game. The two engaged in constant letter writing to the press, extolling their preferred means of moving the ball, while also establishing and recruiting for the two great national game associations, Illingworth's British Association of Handballers (BAH), and Jolly's Football Association of Britain (FAB). Many public schools were divided over the camps, but with the Jolly's footballers slowly taking the majority of the schools under their aegis. On the University play level, both games often were played, and often there was fierce intracollegial rivalries between the handball and football fanatics who tried to prove the superiority of their sport.
The BAH developed the rules of handball, standardizing the shape of the ball as a
prolate spheroid, felt to be more conductive to throwing and carrying, maintained the full tackle in order to shake loose the ball (except for the goalkeeper who was sacrosanct), and established that a player holding the ball in the behind (or end-field as it is sometimes called) scores one point, throwing the ball through the goalposts above the crossbar of the H goalpost scores two points, and getting the ball past the goalkeeper through the goalposts below the crossbar either by throwing or carrying scores four points.
The FAB of course codified football, but used a spherical ball designed for kicking and passing by foot, forbade use of the hands (except by the goalkeeper), forbade any throwing, outlawed the tackle, and maintained that scoring was only by kicking the ball above the crossbar between the H goalposts for one point, or kicking it past the goalkeeper below the crossbar between the goalposts for two points.
While Illingworth's handball game was less successful in recruiting Public Schools to his style of play, he did have one huge success, and that was convincing the British Army that his handball rules taught and improved tactical thinking among its players compared to football. The British soldiers would often play the handball game during their off times, and this led to the game spreading more rapidly than football to the colonies of the British Empire, especially the Dominion of Southern America in the aftermath of the Slaver Uprising. Many Empire Loyalists who had shed blood next to the British regulars played the game with their comrades in arms, and the Southrons can be said to have taken to the game like fish to water. Even the former Rebels eventually embraced the game as a true manly pursuit. By the early twentieth century, the game had even spread to their neighbor to the north, the USA, one of the few non-Imperial nations to take to handball.
Jolly's football had its own successes beyond the Public Schools of Great Britain, as it was embraced by many of the young men of quality in Europe. It spread early and rapidly among the European upper classes, and was difficult to suppress during the Korsgaardist era in Eastern Europe, where it was felt to be too British. However, after the Global War football saw a resurgence in Eastern Europe, and by the twentieth century it was the most common game played throughout the continent.
One major exception to the handball/football divide was Ireland, which held to its own form of ball, called
caid (after an older version of a ball game native to Ireland, though much different in rules and form). Caid adopted all the common features of British handball and football, used the tackle and scoring of handball, but kept the ability to kick the ball, and in fact required that after 15 steps the ball had to be thrown or kicked. The ball (spherical as in football) could be caught or run into the behind (end-field) for a point, and either kicked or thrown through the upper part of the goal for two points, and the lower part guarded by the goalkeeper for four points.
Both handball and football were Olympic sports at the 1930 Olympic games, though caid did not have enough international support to be included. The Dominion of Southern America, fielding its own team, took the championship for handball, but England, birthplace of the sport, won for football.