Football, as a formal game, was incubated at the public schools of the nineteenth century and Shrewsbury had a key role in the game's development. Salopians were prominent in the early history of the organised game at Cambridge University, according to Adrian Harvey "Salopians formed a club of their own in the late 1830s/early 1840s but that was presumably absorbed by the Cambridge University Football Club that they were so influential in creating in 1846". The school has an 1856 copy of the Cambridge rules of football, predating the 1863 rules of the FA.