Over the Top: ‘A Foul; a Blurry Foul!’

Part of Britain's folk memory of the First World War is of long lines of Tommies resolutely going over the top into a storm of machine gun fire and walking bravely to their deaths; following a piper if Scottish or kicking a football if English. However, rather than eventually becoming a conventional act of bravado, evidence suggests that the ‘football charge’ was limited to a 10-month period between 25 September 1915 and 1 July 1916. The most famous example is that of‘B’ Company of the 8th Battalion of the East Surreys led by Captain Nevill atthe Battle of the Somme. However, it was first performed, and possibly mostsuccessfully used, by the London Irish Rifles at the Battle of Loos on 25September 1915. This article examines what actually happened on the 25September 1915 and explores the underlying rationale of the first ‘football charge’.     

Securing the Sports ‘Miracle’: The Stasi and East German Elite Sport

Given the political and social importance of East Germany's elite sports system, the Ministry of State Security (Stasi) constructed a comprehensive and invasive system of surveillance to protect the clandestine state doping programme, to prevent flight to the West by sportspeople, to ensure the smooth running of sports events, and in general to help maintain the country's status as a sporting superpower. While the Stasi enjoyed much success in its mission, thanks in no small part to the deployment of several thousand informers, its authority and capabilities were constrained by the magnitude of its many other security operations, the autonomous actions of sports fans and performers, the defection of high-profile individuals, and internecine rivalries between major sport-political and bureaucratic organisations such as the DTSB and the Dynamo Sports Associations. The collapse of the East German communist system and the declassification of state and Party materials opened up both the top-performance sports system and the Stasi to critical enquiry, triggered bitter disputes over the appropriateness of the judicial, moral and political reckoning with East Germany's sporting legacy, and highlighted the convergent paths of elite sport across the Iron Curtain.     

‘Old’ Football and the ‘New’ Codes: Some Thoughts on the ‘Origins of Football’ Debate and Suggestions for Further Research

A close reading of recent contributions to the ‘origins of football’ debate suggests that there is now more consensus among scholars about the broad sequence of events than is rhetorically allowed. However, this consensus itself rests on some shared conceptual and methodological illusions. These include: a continual naivety about the use of the name ‘football’ in the primary source materials; asystematic underestimation of forms of play (and a collateral overestimation of the importance of rules and codifications) in the development of football; and, above all, a widely shared, and very dubious, conviction that the pursuit of the historical origins of football is a meaningful activity. This article analyses each ofthese illusions in turn and suggests some methodological and substantive alternatives to them. These alternatives sum to the conclusion that the origin of both modern football codes is a far more remarkable and many-sided story than has been appreciated, even in the very best research to date. Moreover, it is a story whose many dimensions and implications go well beyond the borders of Britain, and indeed beyond the history of ‘soccer’ or ‘rugby’ alone.     

‘Really on the ball’: exploring the implications of teachers' PE-CPD experience

Continuing professional development (CPD) is currently high on the Scottish Education agenda. Recent curriculum reform in Scotland, with the introduction of Curriculum for Excellence, places physical education (PE) at the forefront for its role in directly supporting learners' mental, emotional, social and physical well-being. This emphasis on PE, along with concerns about the health of the nation, has resulted in a nationwide initiative providing non-specialist teachers of primary PE with the opportunity to develop a specialism in the subject through government-funded CPD programmes at postgraduate level. Using Knowles' andragogical model as a framework, this paper reports data from a larger research study that evaluated a Scottish PE-CPD initiative. This paper comprises a single case holistic study investigating the impact and implications of a PE-CPD programme through the professional learning journeys, from the outset until completion, of four teachers: a nursery teacher, a class teacher, a cluster cover teacher and a PE specialist who participated in the programme. Data were collected over one academic year using two-stage questionnaire interviews and were analysed thematically with special attention given to the emerging general themes to achieve a holistic understanding of the case. Study findings endorse the positive impact of using the andragogical model of adult learning combined with the literature-supported characteristics of effective PE-CPD programmes. Teachers' perspectives on their CPD experiences, integration of acquired learning into working contexts and teaching post-PE-CPD were then examined to determine the next steps. This led to critical reflection on the implications of the findings for the teachers' ongoing professional development. We then challenged the role that university providers play in supporting teachers' lifelong learning. Instead, we suggest new school-university partnerships and alternative ways to support capacity building and lifelong learning towards a sustainable transformational change in Scotland's primary PE.     

Behind the Iron Curtain: Football as a Site of Contestation in the East German Sports ‘Miracle’

Sport is employed as a lens through which one can understand better the social and political inner workings of dictatorship. This paper treats sport as a cultural institution within GDR (German Democratic Republic) society and sets out to complement the two broad paradigms used to study East Germany: the first, a broad approach under the umbrella of ‘Cold War histories’ and ‘totalitarianism theory’, usually focusing on the few; the second, a so-called ‘histories of everyday life’ approach generally focusing on the many. Using an in-depth case study of the sport of football, the paper introduces a new paradigm: the ‘contested dictatorship’ approach. This approach rejects the broad totalitarian notion of dictatorship as applied to East Germany and shares many of the underlying assumptions of the ‘everyday history’ approach, in particular by allowing a far greater role for agency with much more room for manoeuvre for actors and institutions within the structures of an authoritarian state than ‘totalitarian’ understandings usually permit. Drawing on empirical archival material, the paper reveals the endemic rivalries between key personalities (and even large industrial enterprises expressing regional identities) in a struggle for influence over the game; rivalries between fans of GDR football teams; fan culture and hooligan behaviour as forms of self-determination; and how these issues contributed to the poor performance of football relative to other sports.     

Going ‘to the Fountainhead’: Black American Athletes as Cultural Ambassadors in Africa, 1970–1971

During the Cold War, the State Department frequently employed prominent black athletes as cultural ambassadors in an attempt to defuse global criticism of racism in the USA. In the late 1960s, as many black American athletes identified increasingly with the “Black Power” movement, their personal motivations often clashed with State Department goals. In 1970, the black American tennis star Arthur Ashe, along with Stan Smith, conducted an extremely successful tour of six African nations. The following year, the State Department attempted to replicate that success by sending NBA stars Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Oscar Robertson to Africa. Those players, for a variety of reasons, were less cooperative and effective than Ashe. The shortcomings of the Jabbar/Robertson tour contributed to a decline in the State Department's practice of utilising star black athletes as cultural diplomats.     

Empiricist Versus Sociological History: Some Comments on the ‘Civilizing Process’

This article offers a critique of the use of historical evidence by one of the sociologist proponents of the civilizing process in British sport. It argues that, in using cricket to illustrate how sport became less violent, he failed to define violence in a manner conducive to meaningful historical examination and, further, made historical errors of fact, relied too much on unchecked secondary sources, misinterpreted evidence, and argued by limited example.     

‘What about the community impact?’: The Corpus Christi ‘hook’

This case study draws on theory in the following areas (1) public financing of sport facilities and in particular, the method of bonds and the impact on and involvement of local taxpayers, (2) community impact of minor league sport teams, and (3) leveraging of sport teams and facilities. This case is centered on Justin Drew, the president of the Corpus Christi Hooks, who must work with city officials to ensure that his minor league baseball team does not lose local support. The city of Corpus Christi helped finance the Hooks’ stadium a few years prior, and now with new members on City Council, tough economic times, and a history of folded professional sports teams in the city, Drew must be proactive in seeing that the Hooks do not meet a similar fate.The case presents a common challenge confronted by communities that host professional sport teams. In many cases, cities must provide some level of public financing for sport facilities in order to attract or retain a team. To gain public support, various promises are made about the potential for the team to transform the community. However, once public funding is secured and a team and facility is in place, it is unclear who has the responsibility for delivering on these promises. The situation presented in this case is not unique. In fact, similar claims are made about the impact of a sports team, regardless of the size of the host community or the type of team. This case gives students the opportunity to measure impact and also think critically about how to leverage a sports team to create value for the community. Although the characters in the case are fictitious the case draws upon actual facts and data from public records regarding Corpus Christi and their minor league baseball team, the Hooks; thus, providing students with a realistic dilemma to consider. The case is intended for use in Sport Finance/Economics and Sport Policy courses, but could also be adapted for other courses such as Sport Marketing, Sport Communication, Facilities and Event Management or even Research Methods.     

‘Vivid and Realistic’: Edwardian Sport on Film

This article is an evaluation of the Edwardian sporting films in the recently restored Mitchell & Kenyon Collection held by the National Film and Television Archive in London. The collection reveals snapshots of the everyday life of the working class at work, play and going about their daily business, watching football, both association and rugby, participating in civic and religious events and enjoying a range of leisure activities. This article is an attempt to place these films within the sporting and social context of the age in which they were taken. It explores how different sporting activities became a major factor in developing an audience for the institution of cinema.     

The NASCAR experience: Examining the influence of fantasy sport participation on ‘non-fans’

While NASCAR has traditionally been among the most watched sports in the US, the brand has suffered due to economic conditions and waning interest. As a result, NASCAR has focused its promotional efforts on new marketing and revenue-generating strategies to raise awareness of the sport. One way to increase awareness is through fantasy sports, which have seen a marked uptick in global popularity. However, using fantasy sports to activate involvement among self-described non-fans of a particular sport remains a relatively unexplored area. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of fantasy sports on attitude and certain behavioral factors using a mixed-method, comparison group design. Employing the path analytic model to examine relationships among variables, results indicate significant differences between study conditions and regression analyses show how patronage intentions were influenced. Focus group data buttress the quantitative results and support the use of fantasy sports as a way to convert self-identified sport non-fans into involved fans.     

Barney Kieran,the Legendary ‘Sobraon Boy’: From the Mean Streets to ‘Champion of the World’

This article explores the remarkable career of Bernard Bede (Barney) Kieran, known in the Australian sporting press of the time as ‘the Sobraon Boy’. He was born in Sydney in 1886, grew up in the mean streets, was imprisoned aboard the industrial training ship Sobraon and, at the zenith of his sensational world record-breaking swimming career, died suddenly on 22 December 1905. He was only nineteen and was mourned by the public as one of Australia's first sporting icons to be cut down tragically in his prime. Incorporated in this study is the forgotten tragic sporting saga of the first great Australian twentieth-century swimming hero and its connotations of muscularly-based youth reclamation. Consideration is given to the social context, the growing popularity of swimming in the early twentieth century, Sydney and the widespread newspaper coverage of his career and death which helped to create the formation of the tragic sporting hero of Australian myth.     

‘Thrash yourself Thursday’: the production of the ‘healthy’ child through a fitness-based PE practice

Saturating the Canadian landscape are media and health industry discourses representing childhood physical ‘(in)activity’ and ‘obesity’ as being at ‘epidemic’ proportion. Increasingly identified as a focus of concern within such representations is the school setting, simultaneously positioned both as a cause of and a key institutional site for redressing these ‘pathologies’. Drawing on qualitative research carried out at a Canadian elementary school, this discussion offers a Foucaultian governmental analysis of one school's navigation of this gauntlet of accountability to improve children's health. Specifically, the school-wide fitness-based initiative known as ‘Thrash yourself Thursdays’, whose objective is the production of ‘healthy’ students, is examined to understand the power relations enacted through it, and how the target of this practice (i.e. the children) negotiated such efforts to shape their bodily conduct. This in turn, offers a unique contribution to the governmental literature, which is more characterised by attending to discourses and strategies of government rather than how the subjects of such strategies respond to such efforts.     

Purism and the category of ‘the aesthetic’: the drama argument

This paper examines one component of Stephen Mumford’s case for the claim that we should regard sport, art and the aesthetic as more closely connected than has tended to be the case, under the influence of the work of David Best, in recent years. Mumford’s rejection of what I call ‘the drama argument’ is examined in detail and it is argued that all but one element of his case fails to do the job he envisages.     

Athletes in transition: German immigrants to Mandatory Palestine – between integration and segregation*

The Brit Maccabim Atid sport club was founded by immigrants from Germany who came to Palestine during the 1930s. The circumstances surrounding this organisation’s establishment differed from those of the sports organisations operating in Palestine until then. We consider sports culture as a tool for analysing immigrant absorption processes. Our discussion is based on the claim that sports served as a means of social integration for German Jews. In Palestine, sports served as an arena of conflict between the political camps in the Jewish settlement. In response to this political reality, immigrants from Central Europe began organising to establish separate sports clubs along political and ethnic lines, thus responding to the needs of immigrants identifying with German cultural circles. Brit Maccabim Atid constitutes a test case for the social and cultural changes in the meaning of sports in the move from one country to another. The paper describes two sociological models, each of which examines the impact of involvement in sports on the extent to which immigrants become integrated into society. Our findings indicate that sports participation in an immigrant society can be a unifying and assimilative factor and at the same time a segregating factor.