The first thing to be said about the origins of rugby is that there is no concrete evidence that they lie with William Ellis’ handling of the ball at Rugby School in 1823. Ex-pupil Matthew Bloxxam’s claim that this was the case has invariably defied verification (not that this altogether deterred Rugby School, which in… Read More »
Any description of the natural, life or social worlds we inhabit, independently of its putative level of sophistication, presumes an element of theory. This is because none of us starts with a blank slate, but rather draws on a symbolic framework handed down and absorbed as if by osmosis from previous generations, lay or expert.… Read More »
The extraordinary but longstanding over-representation of those educated in the private sector, most conspicuously in the major ‘public’ schools, in, for example, politics, the judiciary, newspapers and the commentariat is well documented and well know. This is the very stuff of elite recruitment and the reproduction of class relations. Less appreciated, perhaps, is the salience… Read More »
What has been called ‘the athletic imperative’ has been defined as intrinsic to the human condition. Every person, one historian maintains, is born with athletic capability and every person is predestined, ‘hard wired’, to develop that physical potential. Moreover, ‘competition’ is of impressively ancient lineage, even if it is not inborn. It has to do with evolution and survival. The… Read More »
The instructive story of the ‘Workers’ Olympics’ has been neglected, glossed over by many historians of sport. In this blog I draw in particular on the pioneering work of James Riordan (see below). In some ways it was less the idealism of de Coubertin, founder-in-chief of the ‘reconstructed’ modern Olympiad, than its institutional product that… Read More »
Alienation is a pivotal notion in the writings of the young Marx, and one which is perhaps most accessible via an understanding of his views on human nature. Unlike other species, humans are endowed with consciousness and a facility to link consciousness to action. Human action has always and necessarily incorporated acting on nature to… Read More »
This third and final blog asks what next for football in England and elsewhere? The ‘super clubs’ have become mature businesses. But because of the sport’s regulatory structures they seem to be businesses with limited opportunities for expansion, either by horizontal integration (namely, by taking over other companies in the same line of business) or… Read More »
It has been estimated that there were 4740 professional players turning out for 158 English clubs by the outbreak of World War 1 in 1914. By this time crowd in excess of 100,000 were regularly attending FA Cup Finals at the Crystal Palace. The minimum price of admission for a League match was sixpence (2.5p),… Read More »
Football has a long ancestry, reaching back even to Neolithic times. Its early folk forms in Europe and the Americas are reasonably well researched. In medieval England it was often associated with violence. Players not infrequently drew daggers during matches in the 13th and 14th centuries. Contests often provided opportunities for the settling of outstanding… Read More »
A second overly long blog on the English game – sorry! The Second World War, 1939-45, saw cricket at all levels both as a readily adjourned pursuit and as a way of surviving, even resisting, personal suffering and total upheaval. In its aftermath first-class cricketers who had ‘served’ had to readjust to post-war circumstance. The… Read More »