South African Cricket,Imperial Cricketers and Imperial Expansion, 1850–1910

‘It has become an accepted fact,’ declared one South African observer in 1915, ‘that where Englishmen are banded together, either by reason of duty, self-advancement or force of circumstances, there cricket will be played.’[1 [1]‘Cover Point’, ‘Eastern Province Cricket’, 27. ] Indeed, throughout the British Empire cricket had followed on the heels of exploration, military might and political intervention in establishing a British code of civilization in foreign territories. This article will explore the early development of cricket in southern Africa and investigate its symbiotic link to British imperialism and colonialism. The origins of the game in South Africa will be examined as well as its development up to 1910 (the date of Union in South Africa) as a site of a burgeoning imperial ‘brotherhood’ between Britain and its most contested colony.     

Tours of Reconciliation: Rugby,War and Reconstruction in South Africa, 1891–1907

Former South African Rugby Board President A.J. (‘Sport’) Pienaar once reflected that rugby football was the ‘greatest cementing influence between the Afrikaans and English-speaking sections in the country’. 1 1. Quoted in A.C. Parker, The Springboks 1891–1970 (London, 1970), p. 5. Pienaar was president of the South African Rugby Board between 1927 and 1953. Indeed, when Mark Morrison brought the British Isles team to South Africa in 1903, it was, according to rugby historian Paul Dobson, as ‘a tour of reconciliation’. This was, he added, ‘rugby's contribution to healing the sad and painful wounds of the Anglo-Boer War’. 2 2. P. Dobson, Bishops rugby. A history (Cape Town, 1990), p. 44. This article will explore the significance of the early pioneering tours as well as the nature of Anglo-Boer relations leading up to the South African War of 1899–1902. Significantly, the post-war tours of 1903 and 1906, the year of the first oversees rugby Springboks, will be examined as early examples of sport being used in South Africa to reconcile a divided society.     

Unlocking the Cape Code: Establishing British Football in South Africa

This paper examines the emergence of modern forms of football in southern Africa during the late nineteenth century. It focuses on Cape Town – ‘the birthplace of South African sport as we know it today’ 1 1. André Odendaal, ‘The Thing that is Not Round’, in Beyond the Tryline, ed. Albert Grundlingh, André Odendaal, and Burridge Spies (Randburg: Ravan, 1995), 26. – and draws on comparative material from elsewhere in the region and overseas. It also locates events within wider social and political developments at a time when Britain sought to establish its supremacy through a federation of the South African colonies and republics. Central to the investigation is the need to discover more about the existence of a Cape football code and to ascertain the means by which William Milton championed rugby in the course of promoting a broader imperial sporting culture. In exploring the changes which occur, the article will pay attention to the stance of the press and take into account soccer's struggle for recognition; the establishment of parallel black football organisations, and the escalation in Afrikaner support for rugby.     

Archives,Truths and the Historian at Work: A Reply to Douglas Booth's ‘Refiguring the Archive’

In his article ‘Sites of Truth or Metaphors of Power? Refiguring the Archive’ 1 1. Douglas Booth, ‘Sites of truth or metaphors of power? Refiguring the archive’, Sport in History, 26 (1) (2006), pp. 91–109. Douglas Booth calls for ‘a more cautious engagement with archived materials’ and suggests that traditional historians ‘conceptualize archives as simple, straightforward neutral sites of knowledge’. In reply, this article argues that all good historians understand that archives are not straightforward repositories from where truths can be retrieved. It suggests that the practicalities of writing and publishing mean that historians’ caution in interrogating archives is not always obvious in their publications. Postmodernism does have much to teach historians about how to practise history but its lessons will not be fully embraced while it fails to recognize fully the critical methodologies already employed within the discipline.     

‘Thus far and no farther’: the rise of women’s hockey leagues in England from 1910 to 1939

ABSTRACT

The Lancashire and Cheshire Ladies Hockey League (LHL) was formed in 1910, ‘by way of dissenting from the policy of the All England Women’s Hockey Association [AEWHA]’, which disapproved of playing for championships or trophies.²2. Anon., ‘Ladies Hockey Gala’, Manchester Guardian, 3 April 1911, 3. Similar league competitions – set up and largely run by men – quickly followed in cities and towns across the North and Midlands, providing women with regular Saturday afternoon fixtures, as well as knockout cup games. After failing to find satisfactory accommodation within the AEWHA, several leagues broke away to form an alternative governing body, the English Ladies Hockey Leagues Association (ELHLA), which remained in existence until 1960. As well as organising inter-league games and cup competitions, the ELHLA selected England representative teams. With a focus on class and gender, this article – for the first time – will examine the AEWHA’s evolving attitude towards leagues from 1910 to the start of the Second World War, and the types of teams that populated these early competitions. It will also explore the conditions that gave rise to the ELHLA and the impact this organisation had on the authority of the AEWHA before 1939.     

Beyond Kolpak: European Union Law’s Unforeseen Contribution to the Movement of African Cricketers

Abstract

The movement of professional cricketers from South Africa to England to play in County Cricket has expanded since the late 1960s. It became more attractive during the period of South African isolation and some players saw English cricket as a route to play at Test match level through changing national allegiance. This paper explores the role of law in facilitating movement in two ways. First, in the case of Greig, the attempt to ban players who chose to participate in the new commercial venture, World Series Cricket, was overturned. Second, in the Kolpak case a decision of the European Court of Justice paved the way for South Africans and Zimbabweans to abandon their national side and play in England as domestic players without the usual constraints applied to overseas players. The opportunity was taken by numerous players because of the political upheaval in cricket that was contemporaneously taking place in both South Africa and Zimbabwe. The movement of players caused concern in both South Africa and England and led to a re-consideration of the financial relationships between governing bodies and players.     

Hellenism and Olympism: Pierre de Coubertin and the Greek Challenge to the Early Olympic Movement

The aim of this paper is to examine the deeper processes that contributed to the incorporation of Hellenistic ideals and Anglo-Saxon values into the ideology of Olympism, especially at the end of the nineteenth century. It focuses on Baron Pierre de Coubertin's ideas, motives and actions as expressed in his published articles and personal correspondence, principally on the grounds that ‘modern Olympism was conceived’ by him. 1 1. Olympic Charter (Lausanne, 2004), p. 7. This commentary draws on a detailed analysis of a sample of 201 texts written by de Coubertin between 1894 and 1937. As evidenced in the documents that were analysed, an eclectic approach to Olympism may be interpreted not simply as a reflection of the admiration of de Coubertin for these sets of values, but rather more significantly as part of his discursive strategy to appeal to and gain the support of the governing body of the IOC and its adherents, as well as to safeguard the games from other influences.     

James Catton, ‘Tityrus’ of The Athletic News (1860 to 1936): A Biographical Study

This paper examines the life and career of James Catton, one-time editor of The Athletic News and a hugely influential figure in the development of British sports reporting from the late-Victorian period through to the inter-war years. 1 1. The paper is based on one I presented at the British Society of Sports History annual conference in April 2003 at the University of Southampton, and arises from work on my PhD. thesis on the professionalization of sports journalism from 1850 to 1939.      

The German Influence on the Development of the US Playground Movement

The playgrounds of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had only a little in common with our notion of playgrounds today, which are planned for young children and equipped with sand gardens, shovels, slides or monkey bars. Although the playgrounds of the period mentioned above provided space and equipment for younger children, they were actually grounds offering space for various kinds of sports and gymnastic exercises. The target groups of these playgrounds were primarily not young children but boys and girls of a more mature age. The structure of the playgrounds, with a square for gymnastic activities and a separate playing field, was that of the early outdoor gymnasiums introduced by the immigration of the early German Turner in the USA in the 1820s. 1 1. E. Geldbach, ‘Die Verpflanzung des deutschen Turnens nach Amerika: K. Beck, K. Follen und F. Lieber’, Stadion I (1) (1975), p. 331. Because of this similarity in infrastructure one cannot deny a link between the Turner and the playground movement in the United States. But the aim of this article is to examine another German influence on the playground movement: namely the play movement in Germany.     

The need for ‘representative task design’ in evaluating efficacy of skills tests in sport: A comment on Russell,Benton and Kingsley (2010)

Abstract

Russell, Benton and Kingsley (2010 Russell, M., Benton, D. and Kingsley, M. 2010. Reliability and construct validity of soccer skills tests that measure passing, shooting, and dribbling. Journal of Sports Sciences, 28(13): 1399–1408. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) recently suggested a new association football test comprising three different tasks for the evaluation of players' passing, dribbling and shooting skills. Their stated intention was to enhance ‘ecological validity’ of current association football skills tests allowing generalisation of results from the new protocols to performance constraints that were ‘representative’ of experiences during competitive game situations. However, in this comment we raise some concerns with their use of the term ‘ecological validity’ to allude to aspects of ‘representative task design’. We propose that in their paper the authors confused understanding of environmental properties, performance achievement and generalisability of the test and its outcomes. Here, we argue that the tests designed by Russell and colleagues did not include critical sources of environmental information, such as the active role of opponents, which players typically use to organise their actions during performance. Static tasks which are not representative of the competitive performance environment may lead to different emerging patterns of movement organisation and performance outcomes, failing to effectively evaluate skills performance in sport.     

‘Tracksuit Traitors’: Eastern German Top Athletes on the Run

In the time between its founding and the fall of the wall in November 1989, more than three million people left the German Democratic Republic, many of them illegally and under dangerous circumstances. The party leadership perceived this mass exodus of its citizens as one of the major threats for the real socialist regime.1^?1. Bispinck Bispinck, Henrick. “Republikflucht. Flucht und Ausreise als Problem der DDR-Führung.” Vor dem Mauerbau. Politik und Gesellschaft der DDR in den Fünfziger Jahren, edited by MichaelSchwartz and Hermann Wentker, 285–309. München: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2003. [Google Scholar], “Republikflucht.”‘Republikflucht’, as this move from East to West was called by the party leadership, was the reason for the two most important hiatuses in Eastern German history: the first result was that the SED leadership built the wall in August 1961. Many years later, in the fall of 1989, the situation culminated, when a flood of desperate refugees tried to escape to the Federal Republic of Germany via Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia, thus effectively hurrying along the regime's demise. The world of sports, too, was considerably affected by this phenomenon. The following essay shall offer a short historical summary of the different reasons and routes Eastern German top athletes chose for their escape. Examples from various decades show that in spite of individual circumstances certain similarities in pattern can be made out, especially in respect to the way the government dealt with these cases of ‘treason’.     

Africa and the ‘World’ Cup: FIFA Politics,Eurocentrism and Resistance

The development of African football in the international playing arena during the last 25 years has been such that several noted commentators have predicted that the name of an African nation will soon be appearing on the World Cup trophy. [1 Most notably, Walter Winterbottom and Pelé expressed their belief that an African nation would win the World Cup before the new millennium. Such predictions remain unfulfilled, but the assertion of the former FIFA President João Havelange that an African team would qualify for the last four by, at the latest, 2002, was a feat that Cameroon and Senegal both narrowly missed out on during the 1990 and 2002 World Cups respectively. See F. Osman Duodo, ‘On the Threshold of Eating With Kings’, FIFA Magazine, Oct. 1996, 13–14. ] With the exception of Senegal's valiant efforts in reaching the quarter-finals of the 2002 tournament, the relatively weak performances of the continent's other representatives at the two most recent editions of the game's premier international tournament would not appear to bear out this assertion. [2 During France ‘98, only Nigeria qualified for the knock-out phase. At Japan/South Korea 2002 only Senegal reached the latter stages of the competition although the four other teams narrowly failed to progress from the group stages. ] The promise offered by Cameroon's quarter-final appearance at Italia 90, Nigeria and Cameroon's Gold medals at the 1996 and 2000 Olympic football tournament and African successes in FIFA's under-age competitions thus remains unfulfilled. [3 Nigeria and Ghana have twice won the biennial under-17 World Youth Championship since its inauguration in 1985. ] However, the disappointment that greeted the early exits of most of the African representatives in 1998 and 2002 should not conceal the fact that, in a political sense, both tournaments were a major victory for the African game. When one considers that African representation at the World Cup has historically been restricted by a Eurocentric bias at the heart of FIFA, the participation of five nations at both France 98 and Japan/South Korea 2002 allows these tournaments to be viewed as significant milestones for African football. Drawing on analyses of primary archival materials and other sources, this essay examines the ways in which the World Cup Finals, and more specifically, the political debate surrounding the distribution of places for the tournament has come to represent one of the key arena's in which Africa's quest for global football equity has manifested itself. [4 For a discussion of Africa's struggle for global equity within FIFA see P. Darby, Africa, Football and FIFA: Politics, Colonialism and Resistance (London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2002). ] The essay concludes by assessing the extent to which the discourse on Africa's place at the World Cup can be read as a reflection of broader First World-Third World power relations.     

Mary Garber's Coverage of Black Sports in the US Segregated South, 1944–1964

This paper addresses the gap in literature that ignores sport as practiced, managed or communicated by women by focusing on sportswriter Mary Garber, and the meanings engendered through her coverage of black high school and collegiate athletics in the Twin City Sentinel of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, during the mid-1940s through early 1960s. She received numerous prestigious awards during a career that spanned seven decades, but limited historical treatises examine this influential figure. Few scholars have attempted to understand the history of women in this male-dominated field or the sociocultural forces and obstacles that contextualise and hinder their contributions. It is a sad irony that Garber was atypical for her time, and remains so in the contemporary climate. Therefore, one major objective of this paper is to create a discourse through Garber's body of work that will help to eradicate the gender inequalities of women in sport media. In contrast with representations of women and racial minorities in mainstream sport media, this paper demonstrates that Garber addressed pertinent social concerns and supplemented dominant ideological content with more inclusive depictions of the population she covered by resisting white, masculine, heteronormative assumptions about which sports and athletes merit attention.1 ^1. I use ‘black’, ‘African-American’ and ‘white’ throughout the paper not to reinforce false notions of race as an innate biological trait, but to refer to the ways ‘race’ has been socially constructed with real, material effects.     

Sex,sport and justice: reframing the ‘who’ of citizenship and the ‘what’ of justice in European and UK sport policy

Universalist claims are often made about sport which is, as a consequence, increasingly written into national and international policy as an entitlement of citizenship or even human right. Further, in most countries physical education (PE) is a compulsory component of children's education, and sport is seen as central to this. Consequently, in the interests of justice sport must aspire to be egalitarian, that is, relevant to and meaningful for boys and men, and girls and women. In this context three fundamental questions are asked in relation to sport: (1) Do all citizens want to participate? (2) Who counts as a citizen? and (3) What are justice and equality? Feminist political and citizenship theory particularly the work of Pateman, Lister and Fraser is used to explore these questions and interrogate the ‘who’ of citizenship and the ‘what’ of justice in relation to framing sport policy in Europe and the UK. It is argued that notwithstanding the extensive use of the Council of Europe definition of sport,¹1. ‘“Sport” means all forms of physical activity which, through casual or organised participation, aim at expressing or improving physical fitness and mental well-being, forming social relationships or obtaining results in competition at all levels' (CE, 1992 CE. (1992/2001). European sports charter. Retrieved from https://wcd.coe.int/ViewDoc.jsp?Ref=Rec(92)13&;Sector=secCM&;Language=lanEnglish&;Ver=rev&;BackColorInternet=9999CC&;BackColorIntranet=FFBB55&;BackColorLogged=FFAC75 [Google Scholar]–2001 CE. (1992/2001). European sports charter. Retrieved from https://wcd.coe.int/ViewDoc.jsp?Ref=Rec(92)13&;Sector=secCM&;Language=lanEnglish&;Ver=rev&;BackColorInternet=9999CC&;BackColorIntranet=FFBB55&;BackColorLogged=FFAC75 [Google Scholar]). and despite or even because of the widespread adoption of the language of gender equality and gender mainstreaming, although formal sport citizenship rights might be accorded to all individuals and regarded as gender neutral, this masks a discourse of androcentric sport citizenship. This has captured European and UK sport policy and provision and is hindering further progress towards gender justice in sport and therefore PE. Given the universal and compulsory aspirations of sport particularly within PE, gender justice should be conceptualised not only as cultural recognition, political representation and economic redistribution within the normalised frame of competitive performance sport or ‘sport for sports sake’; but also as a critical meta-political remapping and reframing of sport as sport and physical recreation or ‘sport for all’.     

Sport and the sexually abused male child1

Through feminist research in the study of sport, the issue of child sexual abuse has been driven onto the agenda of sports organisations, resulting in considerable practical reform (Brackenridge, 2001 Brackenridge, C. H. 2001. Spoilsports: understanding and preventing sexual exploitation in sport, London: Routledge. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). However, the flip-side to this development is that the experience of sexually abused males has been largely ignored. In 1990, Struve claimed, ‘a growing number of clinicians who work with sexual abuse are discovering that males probably are sexually victimized just as frequently as females’ (p. 3). Despite research on the ‘sexually victimized’ male reaching back over the last 15 to 20 years, researchers in sport have, so far, largely ignored the issue of the sexual abuse of males. Certainly, there has been no in-depth treatment of the abuse of males and sport researchers, to date, have been driven by the ‘male perpetrator–female victim’ paradigm. This focus has influenced the type of research that has been conducted and has inadvertently contributed to the further silencing of the sexually abused male. This paper focuses upon the absence of sexually abused male children in empirical research and theoretical analyses of sport. It notes issues, previously ignored within sport, surrounding the sexual abuse of males, particularly the under-identification of this group, as well as recognition of female perpetrators. Through reviewing literature from social work and therapeutic disciplines, this paper brings the sexually abused male into focus and facilitates a discussion of issues, distinct from the sexual abuse of females that have much relevance for sport. It concludes that if sport is to attempt to safeguard all children from sexual abuse, research in, and analyses of, sport, must reflect the highly complex nature of child sexual abuse, including the experience of male children.     

Recent developments in competitive anxiety direction and competition stress research

The area of competitive anxiety continues to be extensively researched with considerable attention focused on the notion of ‘direction’. The purpose of this review is to demonstrate how the study of direction has advanced our understanding of the competitive anxiety response through providing an overview of the existing research, and emphasizing why sport psychologists investigated the underlying mechanisms of performers’ facilitative interpretations of anxiety symptoms. Finally, we discuss how direction has been integrated into Lazarus (1990 Lazarus, R.S. 1990. Theory-based stress measurement. Psychological Inquiry, 1: 3–13. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar], 1991a Lazarus, R.S. 1991a. Emotion and adaptation, New York: Oxford University Press.  [Google Scholar]); Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) transactional perspective of stress, and how this may be used to inform future research into the broader area of competition stress.     

"A man's game": cricket, war and masculinity, South Africa, 1899-1902

As practitioners of the imperial sport of the Victorian age, cricketers rallied whenever war descended upon England and its colonies. The South African War of 1899-1902 was no different. Adding to existing work on cricket's imperial development within South Africa, this study marks a significant contribution to research on the link between masculinity, war and sport during the Victorian era. A concept emerging from the English public schools of the mid- to late nineteenth century, the masculine ethos of sport and military honour had reached colonial South Africa by the outbreak of war in 1899. In its analysis of cricket and masculinity, this essay examines the events surrounding the war in South Africa and provides an example of the distinct relationship that existed between the military and the masculinity of sport and its organisation during this era.     

‘They think it’s all Dover!’ Popular newspaper narratives and images about the English football team and (re)presentations of national identity during Euro 2012

The 2012 UEFA European Football Championship (‘Euro 2012’) – Europe’s quadrennial football bonanza was held in Poland and the Ukraine between June 8th and July 1st. Occurring between Elizabeth II’s Diamond jubilee and the London 2012 Olympic Games, the eyes of the media were fixated on the pride and joy of English football, its men’s national team. With national consciousness at an all-time high, articles in England’s tabloid, ‘red-top,’ daily national newspapers The Sun and Daily Mirror were tracked for three weeks as they lavished their attentions on the national pastime. Their coverage of the English team reflected a heightened consciousness of English national identity. Drawing on Guibernau’s strategies for creating and uniting citizens around a collective national identity, this study examined how England’s popular media presented and represented England’s national identity to reflect the real and imagined versions of Englishness during this major sporting event.¹1. Montserrat Guibernau, The Identity of Nations (Cambridge: Polity, 2007). By focusing on The Sun and Daily Mirror’s narratives about, and images of, the English team during the Euro 2012 tournament, this paper focuses on how English national identity ebbed and flowed during a time of seismic change within the country. Shaped by an inductive textual analysis, this paper shows how the press fluctuated between optimistic notions of the present and future English national identity and traditional ‘olde England’ in an almost formulaic fashion.     

Can Sport Form a National-Socialist Elite? The Example of SS Sports

Heinrich Himmler, leader of the Schutzstaffel (SS, Protection Squadron), regarded sports and sports competitions as efficient means to strengthen the importance of his organisation. The members of the SS were obligated to obtain the sports badges of the Sturmabteilung (SA, Storm Detachment) and the ‘German Sports Badge’, thereby – according to national socialist ideology – promoting a ‘natural selection’ and guaranteeing the formation of an elitist troop. The SS wanted to ensure they could successfully compete with other organisations during nationwide sports events and to nominate 50% of the members of the German Olympic Team. Moreover, the athletic rivalry between SS and SA continued in the struggle over the leadership within German sports. The SS tried to occupy as many positions of party officials as possible and consequently SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich saw himself as the legitimate successor of the Reichssportführer,1 ^1. On April 28, 1933, Hans von Tschammer und Osten was first named Reichskommissar für Turnen und Sport (Commissioner for Gymnastics and Sports of the Reich). On July 19, 1933, he was elevated from Hitler to Reichssportführer and the whole sports sphere in Germany was placed under his power. the leader of the national socialistic sports system.     

The ‘East Asian’ Olympic Games: what of sustainable legacies?

Sport has proven to be an unstoppable globalising force. The Olympic Movement has come to epitomise modernisation and the extent to which Western sport has become globalised. The philosophy of Olympism, once resting upon just two pillars of Excellence in Sport and Culture has since 1994 been underpinned by a third, the Environment. All of the Olympic Games host cities now have to support a responsible concern for environmental issues and with that the very sustainability of ‘our’ culture, and sport itself. They must do so by bequeathing a holistic positive legacy from their Games. This paper will analyse the three ‘Asian’ Olympic Summer Olympic Games – Tokyo 1964, Seoul 1988 and Beijing 2008 – by looking at the cultural, sporting and environmental legacies each has left.

The discussion of the concept of sustainability as an element of culture will embrace Littig and Griessler’s idea that social sustainability is about the quality of societies expressed through the nature-society relationships and is not merely an economically based notion.1 ?1.?Littig & Griessler, ‘Social Sustainability’, 72. In this paper we consider the three Asian Summer Olympic Games. Each has been related to a specific nodal point in the host country's national history, as a means of illustrating, indeed emphasising, the always unique impacts of context on event and process. Yet we propose that, locked as they are in distinct epochs and differing cultural, political and economic contexts, they are nonetheless marked in common by an Asian discourse heavily reliant upon economic and nationalistic motivations.

The progressive analysis of each Games demonstrates that although each was unique, particularly in regards to the expectations stakeholders had of ‘their Olympics’, all three host nations represented themselves as ‘modern hybrids’ by simultaneously demonstrating their modernised characters and emphasising their ancient cultures. The analysis demonstrates the holistic impact of these events by reference to the wide range of economic, social, cultural and sporting changes that have emerged for each host from each festival. The evaluation of the nature and significance of these legacies reemphasises the impact of the Olympic Games as a vehicle for social change and illustrates the transformative power of sport at national and global levels.