Jena rules
The Jena Rules are a series of rules in football , they were enacted on January 1, 1893 in Jena and, along with the Cambridge rules, are among the oldest rules in the history of football rules . The most important of these football rules concerned the nature of the playing surface.
The first football club had been founded in Jena three years earlier and they were looking for suitable playing areas. These were found on the meadows in the Jena Oberaue , the natural floodplain of the Saale . Since these meadows were overgrown with trees and bushes , it was decided to prohibit “vegetation” on the fields used for football in Germany . This means that the Jena rules are among the most important and simplest rules in football, even if they seem trivial on the playing fields used today and only make up a fraction of the current rules of the International Football Association Board .
The Ernst Abbe sports field is still located in the Jena Oberauen today .