Its possible sure but the dates still dont match up, and there are numerous accounts that the Rules as Drafted by Creighton were as much based on Rugby as the suggestion they were based on Field Hockey as the actual players of the game themselves were well acquainted with Rugby (no forward passing etc and yes, aware that existed in FH as well).
I suspect you're talking about the various claims made by Richard Smith, William Fleet Robertson and Chick Murray. All of them made long after the fact, all of them containing assertions contradictory to recorded historical facts.
The thing is, you're just repeating claims. That's one of the reasons I decided to do the book, to try to clear up all these various claims, find some actual evidence. Frankly I was surprised no one had done it before. The timelines and the textual evidence clearly support field hockey being the source, and rebut the claims of rugby influence. Hopefully, when you've read the book, you'll stop repeating the unsupported claims.
In fact, we do not know who drafted the original rules. All we can say is that Creighton is the most likely candidate. He never claimed the honour for himself so far as we know. But the stories told by Smith, Robertson and Murray almost certainly cannot be true because they conflict with the facts.
Others who have claimed authorship of the Rules and who do claim that Rugby Rules were the basis for the game of hockeys rules have been dismissed as being "unreliable, fictional accounts" by individuals with what motive to do so no reasons are given. No explanation. Just dismissed when apparently theyve gotten themselves muddled up with dates.
What motive would they have? What motive would they have to claim they were the one who first invented the game that became the most popular sport in the country?
And they don't need a motive. It's entirely possible that they believed their stories when they told them. The earliest one was Smith, 30 years after the fact. Murray's claim was much later than that.
And it's not just the dates. If you'd read the blog post, you'd know that although there are claims of rugby influence, in fact all of the rules text comes from other sources. Even the closest thing you have to rugby, the offside rule, is different, as I've already explained in this thread.
Also, why don't you wait to read the book before deciding why the claims were dismissed? I don't appreciate the implication that I'm just dismissive of the claims. I've got bloody good reasons to be.
Chronology and the fact that Creighton and other McGill athletes played rugby, soccer or the new football and hockey as early as 1875.
Great. And once we get some evidence, possibilities can become facts.
You are forgetting that Creighton was from Halifax, a port city. Some in the Nova Scotia camp suggest that although this version of hockey was first played in Montreal, that Creighton already had the idea for the rules when he came from Halifax, in 1872. There's no direct evidence for this claim, which means there's as much evidence for it as anything you've suggested. I personally doubt it, but I can't discount it.
yet somehow the Field Hockey rules make it over and into the hands of the appropriate McGill student athletes. The appropriate people then converged to Montreal in time to adapt, test, write, the rules for the first week of February.
So you missed/ignored the part where I mentioned the HA rules were based on the Teddington club rules, which existed before the Hockey Association?
Not sure they adapted (in the sense of changed) and re-wrote much in 1876 while they certainly did it later for the 1877 rules. Did they test it? Maybe they did, maybe not. Maybe the game itself was the test.
Indeed, given that the teams involved were essentially Victoria Skating Club A and Victoria Skating Club B, it does have the feel of a test match. Up until the day before, they had apparently intended to use a ball, the puck being an innovation.
Fact is that we have a contemporary testimony in the Montreal Gazette that the brand new Hockey Association rules were already known and used. That's a primary source hard to argue with.
Indeed. The Hockey Association rules were known in 1876, they were referred to as such in a Montreal newspaper in that year, the very same year that wikipedia claims they were codified! News travels faster than some would assume, apparently. Add to that the fact that the rules existed before that time, and there you go.
