Did you know that when the Field Colours were first created in the Michaelmas Half of 1860, they were meant as a joke? Philip Norman, a member of the 1859 side recounted this story in the Eton Chronicle of March 1923.
In 1860 Herbert Garnet was an old choice (a colour from the year before) along with H.B Rhodes the Keeper (Captain). Garnet later in life re-acquainted his friendship with me through a series of letters, the last of which recounts his story.
'It was the football half of 1860 that I suggested to Rhodes (who wanted colours) that we should have those that now exist, but merely as a joke, and he was so pleased that much to my surprise he adopted them at once. He left that Christmas, and I was Keeper afterwards, but he never gave me the Keeper's Book, as he promised for me to enter things in. As there was no matches in the next half, nothing happened, so I suppose the record of the starting of the colours
got lost'.
“Garnet's remark that he was Keeper afterwards indicates a state of things which I suppose has long ago passed away. In my time and his, there used to be a Keeper or Keepers of the Field in the Easter Half, although no football was played. I suppose it was a matter of survival.”— Herbert Garnet
