Rome Wasn't Built in a Day, Chapter Three; I beg to tender the following suggestion

By the end of the 1870s, the stage was already being set for changes that would set the course for the global game.

3. I beg to tender the following suggestion

The tipping point came on the 31st March 1883, but the cracks had been showing for a while. It had always been the case that somebody had to pay for football matches to take place. For wealthy former public schoolboys this was never an issue and the matter of getting paid to play football was, if anything, considered somewhat gauche. But they were being rapidly outnumbered by just about everybody else.

In the first place, it was a tin being passed around to throw in a penny towards running costs. Then, clubs found that they could enclose their pitches and charge everybody a penny to get in, just as cricket had done more than a century earlier. And they’d also found that those who turned out to watch were far from impassive observers. Football supporters were coming into existence, and they wanted their teams to win.