Offside

In his book The Story of Football (1965), Robert Leckie points out that in the 1870's, one last bottleneck remained to be opened before football could become inimitable American. It concerried the "offside". The word, as used at that time, did not apply to the present violation occurring when a man on eitherteam crosses into enemy territory before the ball is snapped. Instead it was a word the British used to describe a player who got ahead of his own ball carrier or kicker. It is what Americans now call blocking or interference?tactics which were highly iliegal in the early Rugby days (Leckie, 1965).