Football was never meant to be nice.

The medieval practice of hoofing an inflated pig's bladder from village to village fell somewhere between a pitched battle and a major civil disturbance.In this day and age, the Football Association, the game's national governing body administering over 2000 leagues, has emerged to impose some semblance of order on this most passionate of activities.It is backed up by a team of lawyers at City solicitors Freshfields, among them 33-year-old barrister turned solicitor Raj Parker, a commercial litigator who spends nearly a third of his time handling contentious work for the FA.'It does not look for litigation,' he is keen to emphasise.

'It hardly ever, in my experience, initiates proceedings.'Notwithstanding, soccer's recent catalogue of conflict has seen the FA forced into an assortment of legal forays, most notably perhaps its 1991 struggle with the Football League over the setting up of the Premier League.'The Premier League litigation, in which the FA was sued in four different actions, was a resounding success,' recalls Mr Parker, 'in the sense that all the attacks made to prevent it implementing the Premier League were defeated.'Mr Justice Rose ruled in the High Court that the FA did have the right to set up and administer the new breakaway league.

The association was a body that arose only in private law, and was not a public authority subject to judicial review.The association was also called to make submissions to Lord Taylor's inquiry into the 1989 Hillsborough stadium disaster.

'The FA put in recommendations as to safety, and most, if not all, of those were taken up by Peter Taylor,' says Mr Parker.One on-the-field issue which has provoked legal debate is the use of the elbow to gain height when jumping to head the ball.Mr Parker says the FA prefers to consider such incidents, when they result in serious injury, in the private hearings of its disciplinary commissions, rather than cases going to court and 'bringing the game into disrepute'.'The FA does deal with an enormous amount of disciplinary matters relating to on-the-field offences, which the media don't get hold of.'From the 2000 or so leagues, you can imagine how many complaints of unacceptable play there are,' says Mr Parker.He rejects the suggestion that the FA is not doing everything it can to stamp out unacceptable play, pointing to new guidance sent to referees, county associations and the leagues themselves to make sure that unacceptable conduct is reported and acted against.A rule change to prevent the types of eye socket injury suffered by Spurs centre back Gary Mabbutt and Torquay defender John Uzzell would be 'extraordinarily difficult to draft', according to the Freshfields lawyer.'The English game is a physical game,' he says, and adds: 'It seems to me, having played, it's quite hard to jump for a header without lifting your arms.'Undoubtedly the most prolonged legal negotiations the Freshfields team has been involved in of late for the FA have been the tip-toeing manoeuvres leading up to the recent appointment of the former Tottenham manager, Terry Venables, as England 'coach'.Delays in appointing Venables were in part due to the FA's 'due diligence' in asking soccer commentator, former Blackpool and England player Jimmy Armfield to canvass 'most people of weight in the professional game' as to the choice of coach.'It was not helpful that during these deliberations the media, from the Financial Times to the tabloids, ran pieces on Mr Venables' alleged business and private affairs.

Those allegations needed to be investigated,' says Mr Parker.Meanwhile, the inquiry into Tottenham Hotspur, being undertaken by Robert Reid QC, Steve Coppell, chief executive of the Football League Managers Association, and Rick Parry, chief executive of the Premier League, will look at allegations of loans to players and payments to agents in respect of two transfers involving the north London club.

Its initial findings are expected to be submitted to the FA shortly.More widely, the issue of alleged payments in transfer deals, is being examined by the FA and the international governing body, FIFA.Mr Parker says: 'At some stage a decision has to be made as to whether you ban [agents] entirely or you license them.

It's a policy question for administrators, people in the FA.

To ban them entirely would be difficult to police, because, as I understand it, they are pretty endemic, they serve a function and they are regularly used.'The problem is how to stop abuse of that function by the diversion of the sorts of figures that the media claims are being diverted into the hands of agents in respect of the large amounts of transfer fees being paid.'With the sums allegedly being creamed off said to run into millions, it is clear that the game has come a long way since the days of the pig's bladder.