Emigrants at Play: Gaelic Games and the Irish Diaspora in Chicago, 1884–c.1900

This article uncovers the origins and early history of Gaelic games in late-nineteenth-century Chicago and examines the ways in which membership of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) allowed sections of the city's Irish population to preserve and express their ethnic specificity and support for Irish nationalism. In doing so, it adds to the author's earlier research which has begun to redress the neglect of Gaelic sport in the broader historiography of the Irish in America.     

From sporting past to future well-being: sport heritage and intergenerational learning in Glasgow

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the context of private sporting clubs, previously referred to by sports historians as ‘the long residuals of sport’, as important sites of sporting culture and sport heritage in local communities. The project explores the history and meaning of sport through intergenerational collaboration between the academic researcher, primary school children and experienced members of Glasgow Southside's sports community. The research reflects on the process of intergenerational learning, reminiscence and heritage activities to inform future cultural histories of sport, as well as sports development and future well-being. Through a focus on interpreting cultural and social change in Glasgow sport by educating children and elder members of the community in the use of sport media archives, as well affording opportunities to examine the usefulness of intergenerational communication in community settings, the project investigated the cultural transmission of sporting cultures of the past, and its influence over, or disconnection from, contemporary sporting practices of young people. The article concludes that by acknowledging and sharing the heritage of private sport clubs, such ‘communities of practice’ have an important role to play in fostering stronger socio-cultural ties between clubs, their members and young people.     

Transcultural football. Trajectories of belonging among immigrant youth

Football can play different roles in the lives of immigrant youth. It can be a site for leisure, sport performance and socialization. Even more critically, it can be a place where to negotiate sense of belonging to a local community and to gain access to national sporting cultures. Football can also represent forms of exclusion and discrimination. This article aims to elucidate the meanings that participation in football hold for black immigrant males in a country of recent immigration such as the Republic of Ireland. The article discusses the findings of a long-term ethnographic study with a youth team based in a working-class area of Dublin, the Irish capital. The youth football club plays a special role as a term of identification for the local community. Teenage players of different African backgrounds are presented with the challenge of acquiring different levels of inclusion. They can attempt to appropriate cultural codes that define local working-class men on and off the pitch or they can practice forms of ‘resistance’ that emphasize their own racialized positioning in Irish society. Overall, these dynamics affirm the importance of grassroots football as a venue for young people’s transcultural encounters.     

The Governance of Sport in Australia: Centralization,Politics and Public Diplomacy, 1860–2000

For Australia and most of its people, international sporting contests have long been a marker of the nation’s identity, psyche and international standing. Now in the era of global mediasport, the geopolitical role and the economic impact of elite sport has assumed far wider implications. As a consequence, the need for strong, effective and appropriate governance of all sport, particularly at the elite level has become of critical importance. This paper presents an overview and an analysis of the policy shifts that impacted the development of the Australian Sport Commission, its structure and administration from its colonial roots up to the period leading to the Sydney Olympics in 2000. This discussion will look at the development of the centralized governance of elite and community sport in Australia and will be reflected upon through a consideration of the sportization–globalization processes, with sport in the first instance being established as an element of the cultural diffusion of British imperialism to its significant geopolitical role in late twentieth-century Australia.     

Gaelic Games,Irish Nationalist Politics and the Irish Diaspora in London, 1895–1915

This article makes an original contribution to the growing historiography on the role of sport, and more specifically, Gaelic games amongst Irish immigrant communities around the world. It does so by shedding light on the origins and early history of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century London. In particular, the article explores the ways in which membership of this organisation allowed sections of the city's Irish population to preserve and express their ethnic specificity and support for Irish nationalism. This reveals that Gaelic games were drawn on by a diverse range of organisations and individuals who sought to utilise these sports to galvanise support for varying shades of Irish nationalism.     

Amateurism,Imperialism, Internationalism and the First British Empire Games

The intersections between sport and empire, and between sport and the emergence of internationalism in the early twentieth century, have attracted much recent attention from historians. Less attention has been paid to how these relationships became intertwined. This article suggests that the interrelationship between imperialism and internationalism had a profound impact on sport in the interwar years, challenging Victorian and Edwardian ideals of amateurism. This argument is tested through a study of a signature imperial event founded in 1930, the British Empire Games. The first British Empire Games, held in Hamilton, Ontario, are often portrayed as a display of popular imperialism. This article suggests that while imperialism was certainly one aspect of the event, it was not the only one. The article examines the various meanings which organizers, participants and supporters attached to the Games. Local and national organizers in Canada used the Games to convey civic and national identities to the rest of the Empire. The athletes themselves were ambivalent about imperialism, placing the Games instead within the emerging international sporting community.     

Not Quite Free? Irish Postcoloniality and the Career of Pat O'Callaghan

This paper explores the career of the Irish Olympian Pat O'Callaghan. He won successive hammer-throwing titles in the 1924 and 1928 Olympics as a representative of the independent Irish state. The paper argues that in these Olympics, O'Callaghan can be considered as representing a postcolonial state, in line with much scholarship on other aspects of Irish culture. However, the Irish later fell into a dispute with the International Amateur Athletics Federation and the International Olympic Committee, which were largely steered by the British in dealing with contentious issues over the Irish border, and the Irish were thus effectively banned from the 1936 games. The paper concludes with a discussion over the nature of postcolonial identities in sport, and the complexities around the issue in relation to the constant mediation over what national identities mean within the context of rule-making by international sporting bodies.     

Cultural Nationalism,Gaelic Sunday and the Gaelic Athletic Association in Early Twentieth Century Ireland

To date, much of the established historical literature on the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), the governing body of Gaelic games in Ireland, has focused on the potential or perceived political agency of the organisation. To this end, great swathes of work that has centred on early twentieth century Ireland has also examined the extent of the relationship the GAA had with other nationalist bodies in the country at that time, such as the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), or at the very least the role of GAA members who were also part of such groups. However, the GAA failed in fact to adopt any official ‘political’ position during this period, albeit with one notable exception – a mass demonstration that came to be referred to as ‘Gaelic Sunday’. The example of Gaelic Sunday will be used during the course of this article to demonstrate the actual position of the GAA during this time and in so doing temper the pervasive view abroad, one that the GAA is perhaps too willing to acquiesce with, that it somehow played something close to a defining role in the broader political and revolutionary pursuit of partial independence for Ireland. Rather, as this article will confirm, the GAA's role within early twentieth century Irish society, whilst undoubtedly revealing it to be a powerful nationalist body, remained nevertheless much more cultural than political in nature.     

Football,identity, place: The emergence of Rugby football in Brisbane

Today we accept that football in its various forms is the predominant winter sport in Brisbane; in fact, it is reasonable to state that this is true globally. This paper examines the construction of identity of Brisbane and its people through football in the colony of Queensland during the 1880s. It demonstrates the centrality of sport in this process. The struggle over the choice of football code illustrates how sport was a feature of contested social and cultural terrains and how support for a game was a source of the construction of the identity of initially Brisbane and later Queensland. The paper further illustrates the centrality of the role of sport in the cultural hegemony of British imperialism and of the predominance of the ideology of athleticism in the public schools of colonial Australia.     

Sport in Latin America from past to present: a European perspective

This chapter examines sport in Latin America in its social, cultural, and political contexts. An analysis of the development of sport in Latin America suggests that there have been a number of distinct phases influenced by the cultures of the Spanish, British and French. More recently, the games and pastimes of the United States have made a significant impact. It is suggested that the further development of sport in Latin America is hindered by a number of significant problems. It concludes that the problems faced by some countries are immense and that governments and international organizations in the developed world should offer help where appropriate.     

The Gaelic Athletic Association's Invasion of America, 1888: Travel Narratives,Microhistory and the Irish American ‘Other’

This article explores a little-known event in Irish and American sports history, namely a tour made by the Gaelic Athletic Association to North America in 1888. The article focuses on a newspaper diary kept of the tour by Joseph Whelan, and published in the Irish newspaper Sport. In analysing Whelan's comments, the article seeks to understand how such material can be used to create a microhistory of a specific event such as a sporting tour, and discusses how far the methodology of microhistory can be useful to sports historians. The commentary of Whelan also allows for an exploration of travel narrative. This is a key point with respect to the late-nineteenth-century Irish, as Whelan is a tourist who will return home, rather than an immigrant moving permanently to Ireland. The history of Irish America, and the question of the Irish as 'other', has been dominated by the archives of the immigrant. What the material from the tour allows is an Irish view of America as tourist as opposed to settler. This raises significant questions for the existing historiography of Irish America. In conclusion the article argues that travel narratives of sporting events – tours, tournaments and mega-events – can allow us to approach the history of sport from a fresh angle.     

Tradition,transformation and taboo: European games and festivals in Latin America, 1500–1900

This article builds on an emerging corpus of work that seeks to uncover the history and social, cultural and political significance of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in the United States. However, it also marks a departure from any of the published work to date because for the first time it addresses the place of Gaelic games in the lives of the Irish émigré in the San Francisco Bay area. The article accounts for the origins and early history of the GAA there, and details the key agents and agencies responsible for the Association's development during the first 50 years of its existence. In doing so, it reveals that the GAA's growth in San Francisco appears to have been more moderately paced than it was in some of America's other centres of Irish immigration, particularly Boston, New York and Chicago. The article concludes by exploring the reasons for this and argues that a combination of quantitative differences in levels of Irish immigration to America's Pacific and Atlantic coasts and qualitative differences in the nature of the experiences of the Irish émigré in San Francisco were key in this regard.     

‘Tours of Imperialism’: Cricket and Cultural Transfer in South Africa, 1880–1910

Abstract

Few can deny the significance of sport in today’s South Africa. The sporting structures upon which this is based were first introduced to the country by the British in the late nineteenth century. In line with policies of cultural imperialism, sports such as cricket were promoted at this time as part of a wider political agenda that encouraged the adoption of an ‘English’ way of life in the region. Sports tours, most notably cricket, were a fundamental part of this cultural transfer between the ‘Mother Country’ and her colonies in Southern Africa. To underpin the study of transnational linkages and transfer in African sports, this paper will offer an historical overview of how ‘British-styled’ sport arrived in South Africa and how the early cricket tours between England and South Africa were constructed to promote distinct political and cultural connections. This paper will explore the early development of cricket in South Africa and investigate its symbiotic link to British imperialism and colonialism via the first tours and sporting exchanges that took place. 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 the site of a constructed transnational 'brotherhood' between Britain and its most coveted African colonies.     

Broadening Readings of Sport Monuments: The Arthur Baynes Memorial Obelisk

Monuments to past and present sports performers are increasingly commonplace. Despite the potential for analyses of sports monuments to provide new and valuable insights into past and present sociocultural practices, studies of monuments and other forms of material culture have, until recently, received limited attention in sports historiography. In addition, new scholarship has tended to focus on sporting statues over other, non-figurative, monumental genres. This article will attempt to redress this relative neglect and contribute to a broadening discourse of sport, memory and materiality by analysing one particular sporting monument, a memorial obelisk erected in 1933 on the banks of the Brisbane River in Queensland, Australia to prominent 1920s sculler Arthur Alexander Baynes (1899–1932). The article examines Baynes' sporting career, considers his memorial within the context of obelisks and other commemorative monumental forms, and reads the memorial in its various discursive international, national, regional and local contexts. By providing a detailed analysis of this one ‘local’ sporting monument, the intention of this article is to add to the expanding literature on sporting material culture and, in particular, broaden our readings of sport monuments.     

From a pub game to a sporting spectacle: the professionalisation of British Darts, 1970–1997

ABSTRACT

Various sport scholars have noted the transition of sports from amateur leisure pastimes to professionalised and globalised media sporting spectacles. Recent developments in darts offer an excellent example of these changes, yet the sport is rarely discussed in contemporary sports studies. The only sustained theoretical research on darts focuses primarily on the origins of the sport in its nostalgic form as a working-class, pub taproom pastime in England. This article critically examines the transformation of darts from a leisurely game to a professional sport between the 1970s and the 1990s. The change was enabled by the creation of the British Darts Organisation (BDO) and the introduction of television broadcasting, which together fed a continual process of professionalisation. Initially, this article discusses both the concept of professionalisation and similar developmental changes in a selection of English sports. Following this, via selected interviews, documentary analysis and archival information, the reasons behind the split in darts are explicated, shedding light on how the BDO did not successfully manage the transformation and the sport split into two governing bodies, from which the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC), the sport’s most successful organisation in the present day, has emerged to dominate the world of televised darts.     

The Rise of ‘The World's Largest Sport and Athletic Outfitter’: A Study of Gamage's of Holborn, 1878–1913

This essay explores the evolution of modern sporting goods retailing through the development of Gamage's (A.W. Gamage Holborn Ltd.) before the First World War. The essay examines how Gamage's exploited new models of fashionable consumerism to create a unique retail environment that directly targeted young male consumers enjoying modern forms of sporting and recreational activities. By the end of the nineteenth century, the so-called ‘People's Popular Emporium’ purported to be the ‘world's largest sport and athletic outfitter’. The essay considers Gamage's rise to prominence in a crucial period in the development of commodity culture. It examines the changing cultural form of shops and shopping in relation to the desires of a burgeoning mass market that sought to express and visibly display its economic, sporting, and social status.     

The Rise of Modern Sport in Fin de Siècle São Paulo: Reading Elite and Bourgeois Sensibilities,the Popular Press,and the Creation of Cultural Capital

In the period between 1890 and 1910, British sport flourished in a rapidly modernizing Brazilian city. São Paulo boomed as a coffee export centre for the global market, growing into the second largest metropolis in Brazil. New businesses and industries developed and thousands of immigrants from around the world migrated to the expanding South American city. Along with the flow of new residents came new ideas, new attitudes, and new lifestyles. British sporting customs particularly attracted the attention of São Paulo’s wealthy elites and expanding middle classes who saw in these habits the potential to advertize their commitment to modern ideals of civilization and order. The new British-style sporting clubs that sprang up in São Paulo conferred the cultural capital that the leadership castes needed to gain and maintain their hegemony in the city’s rapidly changing social landscape. São Paulo’s press circulated these new sensibilities and revealed that the city’s sporting enthusiasts both reproduced Westernized norms and re-signified athletic sensibilities to fit Brazilian social patterns.     

The reinvention of the British Lions: amateurs,professionals and contested identities

ABSTRACT

When rugby union became an openly professional sport in the mid-1990s it appeared that one of the institutions most under threat was the British Lions. Now more usually referred to as the British and Irish Lions, this touring team comes together every four years to take on one of the three leading southern hemisphere rugby nations in a three-match Test series. The first tour of the openly professional era in 1997 was celebrated for the ways in which important professional concepts were introduced, yet the touring party retained valued elements of the amateur ethos. The next two tours were not as successful, and led to questions about the very role of the Lions in the professional game. The 2009 tour saw a return to some of the values shaped during the age of amateurism and four years later the Lions achieved their first Test series win since 1997. Drawing upon the written (auto)biographies of those involved in elite-level rugby, this offers us an interesting case to unpack aspects of the fuzzy frontiers between amateurism and professionalism and some of the wider issues relating to sporting identities with specific reference to the topic of working-class amateurs.     

Speaking Irish with hurley sticks: Gaelic sports,the Irish language and national identity in revival Ireland

The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) ban on foreign games, implemented nationally in 1905, affected not only GAA members but Gaelic League members also. The shared Gaelic heritage of both organisations led to their marriage in the Irish Ireland movement and the aims and ideals of both organisations were promoted alongside one another. GAA members were expected to promote and use Irish while Gaelic League members were to play only Gaelic sports. The commitment of GAA members to the language was to prove controversial throughout the Irish revival period, however, where lip service, symbolism and general lack of interest in the language led to the diminishing of GAA language policies. Nevertheless, GAA members enjoyed the status of being uniquely Gaelic. The same leniency was not afforded to Gaelic Leaguers with regard to vigilance in games. By tying itself to the GAA and the ban, the Gaelic League compromised its own ideals as regards the language forming the basis of Irish nationality and the importance of the games as part of Gaelic identity greatly increased. This corresponds with Timothy G. McMahon’s argument that the secondary aims of the Gaelic League came to obtain greater prominence in the Gaelic Revival than the language itself.     

Projecting the visual: British newsreels,soccer and popular culture 1918–39

Between the wars soccer was the leading national sport in Britain. But far more watched the brief depictions of ‘celluloid’ soccer on the newsreels in the cinema than ever watched football on the pitch. Newsreels were a central cultural feature, yet their broader social, historical and ideological significance has been overlooked by both sports and media historians. This study draws on an extensive body of surviving newsreel material. It begins by exploring the complex nature of the inter-war cinema audiences, their responses to sporting newsreels and the cultural competencies they brought to their watching. Examination of newsreel content reveals the changing nature and highly varied coverage of professional and amateur soccer over the period, including significant attention devoted to women's soccer even after its banning from English Football Association grounds in 1921. The day to day practices of newsreel soccer coverage provide fascinating insights into the British sporting values and identities, contained, encouraged or prevented by its representations, codes and conventions. Soccer newsreels produced by the leading companies, while largely conservative in tone, were also highly ideologically charged. Through the ways in which they addressed notions of class, gender, politics, region and identity they had a major cultural impact on broader British society.