A Response to Vamplew and Some Comments on the Relationship Between Sports Historians and Sociologists of Sport

This article seeks to refute Wray Vamplew's contention that my work on cricket is flawed by a failure properly to define violence, by the presence of factual errors and misinterpretations of evidence stemming from unchecked secondary sources and because there are limited examples to support my argument. In responding to this critique I point to Vamplew's own errors, misinterpretation and argument by limited example. I further discuss the criteria by which we might judge an ‘over-reliance’ on secondary sources and conclude that, again, Vamplew fails to substantiate his criticism. The article concludes with a discussion of the relationship between sports historians and sociologists of sport, arguing that debates such as these should recognise the interdependency of, and the considerable developments in, the respective sub-disciplines in recent years.     

Ethics,Money, and Sport: This Sporting Mammon

This article is an examination of the recent contribution in this journal by Kreider. In that publication he argued against formalist and non-formalist positions concerning our understanding of game-player and game-playing, focusing his discussion around game rules and their relationship to the two key concepts. This led him to produce alternative conceptions of game-player and game-playing, and it is these conceptions tied closely to the idea of commitment, and Kreider’s arguments surrounding them, which are the subject of my article. Following an introduction, I summarize and evaluate Kreider's dissatisfaction with earlier accounts. Then I present and examine key aspects of his proposals for a different understanding of game-players and game-playing. While I remain uncertain about some of his claims, overall my conclusions are characterized more by disagreement with him than by a sense that he has overcome problems previously expressed theories contain.     

Football Hooliganism Revisited: A Belated Reply to Patrick Murphy,Eric Dunning and Joseph Maguire

In the light of the republication of my original article on ‘Football hooliganism in England before 1914’ in the volume Sports History: Critical Concepts, edited by Wray Vamplew and published by Routledge in 2014, I offer here a belated reply to the counter-critique of my arguments given by Patrick Murphy, Eric Dunning and Joseph Maguire in their article in the International Journal of the History of Sport in 1998. I regard this debate as still relevant to the academic discussion of the history of association football, particularly the concern about the social and historical origins of football hooliganism within an English context, despite the topic being rather less fashionable than it once was. I believe that my original article, and this reply to Murphy, Dunning and Maguire, make a contribution to the ongoing debate within sports history over the relevance of using particular forms of sociological theory (in this case, Norbert Elias' concept of a ‘civilising process’ operating in European history from the middle ages) to explain historical phenomenon. This paradigm, it is argued, distorts the historical interpretation of sport by the use of such a priori sociological arguments.     

The Origins of Football Debate: The ‘Grander Design and the Involvement of the Lower Classes’, 1818–1840

This article presents extensive new material in ‘the origins of football debate’ by using the British Library's digitisation project of nineteenth-century newspapers. In so doing, it responds to claims from Graham Curry and Eric Dunning that previous works of the ‘revisionist historians’ John Goulstone, Adrian Harvey and Peter Swain are misleading and have led to hasty conclusions. It evidences a football culture beyond the domain of the public schools and highlights the shift in the locus of games from urban areas to paddocks and fields complying with the Highways and Police Acts. This compliance reduced the number of prosecutions covered in newspaper reports of the day but other games, in which misdemeanours took place, are recorded, suggesting that a broad football culture did still exist in this period. The article rejects Curry and Dunning's thesis surrounding a mid-century ‘civilising spurt’ in sport in favour of explanations surrounding the structural changes taking place in the nineteenth century, including increasing industrialisation, urbanisation, population growth, and migrationary movements. It also emphasises the emergence of a horizontally stratified class-based society and an attack on football games from an emerging social and industrial elite who were looking after their property and commercial interests.     

‘This dark world’: the blindfold chess-player in Victorian literary and urban culture

George Walker's March 1840 article for Fraser's Magazine entitled ‘Chess Without the Chess-Board’ outlined the history and method of blindfold chess (or chess-play without sight of the board and pieces). Arriving as chess was becoming increasingly visible within nineteenth-century literary and urban culture, Walker's essay covered familiar issues on the topic concerning spectacle, utility, and bodily and mental damage, as well as furthering his own concerns with the history of the game and the possibility of expanding participation. This assessment of ‘Chess Without the Chess-Board’, part of wider research concerning chess in urban and literary modernity, complements research published in the author's monograph on the cultural chess-player and previously within Sport in History. Prominent themes of Walker's article include the multiple identities of the blindfold chess-player and the game’s ever-changing relationship to standards of respectability. ‘Chess Without the Chess-Board’, offering a lengthy ‘how-to-play’ to the beginning player and outlining the national prestige and celebrity of historical blindfold chess-players, also presents a potentially disreputable reading of practice and player, denying any wider social utility.     

The Origins of Football Debate: The Evidence Mounts, 1841–1851

In response to recent articles by Eric Dunning and Graham Curry, this article presents a wide range of new material from the period 1841 to 1851 in the ‘Origins of Football Debate’, using evidence gleaned from the British Library's digitisation of nineteenth-century newspapers. It responds to the charge that the works of ‘revisionist historians’, John Goulstone, Adrian Harvey and Peter Swain, are misleading and have led to hasty conclusions, and rejects their analysis that argues they are part of an academic community seemingly frantic for working-class influence to the detriment of public schoolboys. The article adds extensive evidence that records a much broader footballing culture across the country in mid-century than previously thought. In so doing, it addresses concerns, which have troubled many scholars, of the alleged disappearance of football in the wider community in the mid-nineteenth century, not least because of the sport's rapid expansion amongst the working and middle classes in the 1870s. The evidence presented does suggest that many forms of football other than folk football or games under the influence of public schools or public schoolboys were played, challenging ‘orthodox’ historian's views surrounding the influence of public schools and public schoolboys on the development of the game.     

‘A Potent and Pervasive Ideology’: Athleticism and the English Elementary School

This article demonstrates that the ideology of athleticism was an important feature of life in elementary schools throughout the country in the late Victorian and Edwardian era. It argues that the ideology which originated in the Victorian public school spread firstly to ‘Oxbridge’ and then to grammar schools before being adopted increasingly by elementary schools after the Cross Commission of 1888. It offers a detailed consideration of the arguments put forward in Colm Kerrigan's article ‘“Missing Men” and missing evidence’ (Soccer and Society 10, no. 6 [2009]: 897–902) and demonstrates using a variety of primary and secondary sources that athleticism was widespread in elementary schools. It draws on the views expressed by Professor G.T.P. Finn (‘Athleticism, football and schooling: “missing men”, misunderstanding evidence and own goals’. Soccer and Society 11, no. 3 [2010]: 897–902) that Kerrigan has a limited understanding of athleticism. It concludes that athleticism in the elementary school was an even more widespread ideology than previously thought and points to the need for further research in this area.     

Strength Peddlers: Eddie O’Callaghan and the selling of Irish strength

Building on Geraldine Biddle-Perry's 2014 discussion of Gamage's department store, and seeking to address the still existent historical dearth on sporting retail, the following article highlights the case of Eddie O’Callaghan, an Irish bicycle and physical culture retailer operating in fin de siècle Ireland. Focused exclusively on O’Callaghan's trade in ‘Sandow Developers’, an elastic workout device sold by famed physical culturist Eugen Sandow, the article examines three distinct marketing approaches taken by O’Callaghan's company from 1898 to roughly 1906. To do so, the article begins with a brief discussion of cycling and physical culture in Ireland, so as to provide a background to O’Callaghan's situation. Following this, the article explores three distinct marketing approaches taken by O’Callaghan and his associates at the dawn of the twentieth-century. The article concludes by exploring the possible reasons for O’Callaghan's retreat from physical culture commerce by 1906. In doing so, it is argued that O’Callaghan and his affiliates called upon ideas of gender, strength and health in their bid to attract Irish consumers. The article thus sheds light on the then nascent physical culture market alongside larger questions of gender and sporting retail in the Irish sphere.     

Questioning the no-touch discourse in physical education from a children's rights perspective

In this paper we question the rationality of ‘no-touch policies’ and offer an alternative approach to the matter of physical contact between teachers and students in the context of physical education (PE) in schools. Earlier research has drawn attention to how a discourse of child protection is starting to affect how physical contact is viewed in PE practice. The avoidance of intergenerational touch is increasingly justified by referring to the children's rights agenda. Here, arguments for ‘no-touching’ are linked to children's right to be protected from harm. In the paper we explore a children's rights-based viewpoint that supports the use of and need for physical contact in PE teaching by developing theoretical and practice-based arguments. An alternative children's rights perspective, based on rights theorising, is used to formulate the theoretical argument. Interviews with 16 PE teachers about their experiences of physical contact in their pedagogical work form the practice-based arguments. The two arguments provide a way of looking at intergenerational touch in education from the vantage point of children's human right to develop to their full potential, which can support a need for physical touch in pedagogical situations.     

Sport as a (mere) hobby: in defense of ‘the gentle pursuit of a modest competence’

In this essay, I defend sport as a (mere) hobby in contrast to sport as a ‘mutual quest for excellence through challenge’. With the assistance of ideas found in the novel Don Quixote, I raise questions about the clarity, merit, and sufficiency of the quest-for-excellence apologetic. I employ arguments made by James and Dewey to support my alternate defense of sporting activity as a hobby, that is, as ‘the gentle pursuit of a modest competence’. Based on the work of Wu, my defense stands as both a philosophic argument and a cultural critique.     

A dolphin only looks like a fish: Players’ behaviour analysis is not enough for game understanding in the light of the systems approach – a response to the reply by McGarry and Franks

Abstract

In this article I defend my previously published system approach to game playing in sports (Lebed, 2006). Founded on the main argument of mine about insufficiency of performance analysis only for games study, it is based on an inter-disciplinary comprehension of sporting game events from four different angles: the logical-philosophical, the behavioural (performance), the anthropological, and complexity angles. The paper consists of four parts, corresponding to the four angles. The first three parts offer deconstructive and reconstructive analysis. The three provide criticism of McGarry and Frank's arguments against my view of complex dynamical systems in sports. The logical analysis negates my opponents’ general view of a match (a process) as a dynamical system. The behaviour analysis refutes their claim about couple oscillator dynamics as a universal dynamically interpreted model of game playing. The anthropological panoramic vision of sporting games leads me to conclude that my opponents’ analysis of two exclusively interacting sides in a squash or soccer contest is too narrow and insufficient to explain the broad diversity of games. According to the, classification suggested in Lebed (2004), I offer seven possible models that can systematically reflect different groups of games. In the fourth part, the complexity angle is analysed from a constructive point of view. Here I take one of the above seven models and try to outline a ‘‘soccer-like’’ game perspective modelling founded on the view of play process as a conflict of two four-level self-regulating complex systems, where each one is additionally involved in its own loop of cybernetic regulation.     

The analysis of athletic performance: some practical and philosophical considerations

This article presents a hypothetical dialogue between a notational analyst (NA) recently schooled in the positivistic assessment of athletic performance, an ‘old-school’ traditional coach (TC) who favours subjective analysis, and a pragmatic educator (PE). The conversation opens with NA and TC debating the respective value of quantitative and qualitative methods of performance analysis. Having considered their arguments from a-distance, PE offers a philosophically underpinned point of view that helps to practically reconcile NA's and TC's opposing positions. While primarily focusing on practical issues relating to the analysis of athletic performance, PE contends that ‘quantitative’ and ‘qualitative’ approaches can be legitimately used in combination. Such a stance would appear in-line with a pragmatic philosophical perspective, which by focusing on practical issues embraces pluralistic methods. It is hoped that this dialogue will facilitate further philosophical and practical debate to generate knowledge that could enrich coaches' understanding by presenting an approach to performance analysis that is more realistic for practitioners.     

A genealogical analysis of Peter Arnold's conceptual account of meaning in movement,sport and physical education

We write as critical theorists who share an interest in how conceptions of physical education are taken forward in policy and practice. In this respect, we are particularly intrigued by Peter Arnold's conceptual account of meaning in movement, sport and physical education, and the subsequent ways in which his ideas have informed national curriculum ambitions. Despite the prominence of Arnold's influence, we are concerned that there has been an insufficiently rigorous and robust review of his theorising to date, particularly in relation to where his ideas originated from. Accordingly, we critically discuss the merits of adopting a genealogical approach in order to support a detailed analysis of Arnold's conceptual account of meaning in movement, sport and physical education; one which especially focuses on learning ‘about’, ‘through’ and ‘in’ movement. We conclude by questioning a number of the complex strands of Arnold's work in the expectation that greater lucidity and purpose can emerge. This it is argued will be beneficial in terms of providing clarity on aim or aims statements in physical education, which in turn can secure greater policy coherence and practice gains.     

Pacific Islands Rugby Alliance (PIRA): Rugby in ‘Our Sea of Islands’

Epeli Hau‘ofa's influential essays ‘Our Sea of Islands’ and ‘The Ocean in Us’ advocated the development of an Oceanic identity for the peoples of the Pacific. That cause, he argued, was consistent with geography, history and the need for coordinated responses to navigate a globalising world. It was also consistent with contemporary regional trends, as evidenced by the rise of cultural, intergovernmental and sporting connections. Though Hau‘ofa did not specifically mention rugby, his work raises important implications for understanding the sport's growing regional possibilities. The following paper analyses the Pacific Islands Rugby Alliance (PIRA) in the context outlined by Hau‘ofa. Founded in 2002, PIRA represented a coordinated response by the Fiji, Tonga and Samoa Rugby Unions to the rise of global professional rugby. PIRA's ‘Pacific Islanders’ team undertook tours to the Southern and Northern Hemispheres in 2004, 2006 and 2008 before the organisation's demise in 2009. The article focuses on the following questions: How did PIRA emerge as a regional response to global professional rugby? What were PIRA's goals and what challenges did it confront? How did PIRA incorporate three nations into a new Pacific Islanders ‘brand’? To what extent did PIRA embody the kind of regionalism espoused by Hau‘ofa?     

Dispositions of elite-level Australian rugby coaches towards game sense: characteristics of their coaching habitus

Bourdieu's analytic concept of habitus has provided a valuable means of theorising coach development but is yet to be operationalised in empirical research. This article redresses this oversight by drawing on a larger study that inquired into how the ‘coaching habitus’ of elite-level Australian and New Zealand rugby coaches structured their interpretation and use of the Game Sense approach to coaching to illustrate how habitus can be operationalised. It focuses on the identification of characteristics of the individual coaching habitus of four elite-level Australian rugby coaches and how they shape their interpretation and use of Game Sense. Drawing on suggestions made by Lau, we identify the characteristics of four individual ‘coaching habitus’ by examining their views on: (1) the characteristics of good coaches; (2) characteristics of great rugby players and how to develop them; and (3) their dispositions towards innovation in coaching.     

‘Prizefight women’ or boxing as a mirror of Hemingway’s writing

ABSTRACT

Through the study of an article written by the young Hemingway in The Toronto Star Weekly dated from May 15th, 1920, these lines offer an additional insight into the writer’s personality, and more specifically the reasons for his admiration for boxing. Entitled ‘Prizefight Women’, this article relates the reactions of a crowd during a traditional pugilistic meeting featuring the ‘French Idol’ – Georges Carpentier. If throughout his life, Pap displayed his taste for this sport, it appears that the main reasons for his fascination were already revealed in this writing.     

‘That Excellent Sample of a Professional’: Dan Maskell and the Contradictions of British Amateurism in Twentieth-century Lawn Tennis

This article critically examines the life and career of Daniel ‘Dan’ Maskell OBE CBE (1908–1992), the much-loved British professional coach and BBC commentator for Wimbledon. It positions his social ascendancy during the inter-war and post-war periods within the contexts of shifting class relations in British society, and the professionalisation of tennis and growing performance orientation of amateur tennis authorities in Britain. Given his working-class origins, Maskell's gradual acceptance into the British lawn tennis fraternity and rise to become ‘the voice of Wimbledon’ and, for some, the personification of traditional British sporting amateur values, was something of an enigma, and reflected key contradictions in what amateurism constituted in the twentieth century. Despite enduring systematic discrimination in clubs and exclusion from amateur competitions, as a consequence of him being a ‘professional’, he remained a chief proponent of the amateur ideology throughout his lifetime and exhibited numerous personal qualities that endeared him to the upper-middle-class establishment: modesty, loyalty, integrity, conservative views on player behaviour, deference to authority, strong work-ethic, and a good-humoured nature. Once tennis went ‘open’ in 1968, and throughout a period when professionalism and commercialism threatened to undermine the sport's core ideals, Maskell continued to represent and promote amateur ideals through his broadcasting ethics and values.     

‘Last Zulu Warrior Standing’: Cultural Legacies of Racial Stereotyping and Embodied Ethno-Branding in South Africa

This paper explores the legacies of white South African cricketer Lance ‘Zulu’ Klusener. His childhood immersion in ‘Shakan culture’ on a Natal farm was said to imbue him with warrior prowess on the field. In Klusener's newly democratic country even township veterans of the People's War against apartheid, who associated cricket with racial tyranny, followed his World Cup exploits. So too did his rural Zulu fans in KwaZulu–Natal chiefdoms. Klusener's ‘Zulu’ persona not only represented deeper cultural histories, but also pervasive colonial markers. In the post-apartheid era, Klusener's fame revealed a different minority at play. His sporting identity impressed the ‘rainbow nation’, especially the promoters of reconciliation selling the evocatively familiar with a new twist: the warrior inspiring unity, not with tribal spear, but with colonial bat. With international sanctions against South Africa lifted in 1994, boosters of cricket wanted to change negative perceptions of their racially exclusive sport. Klusener appealed to the historically oppressed at home and opened sources of global revenue formerly closed by a four-decade-old sport boycott. Indeed, his ‘warrior’ reputation was ripe for exploitation in a ‘neoliberal’ tourism-oriented economy called ‘Ethnicity Inc.’, the title of a book by John and Jean Comaroff on the ‘marketing [of] vernacular lifeways’ of ‘ethno-nations’.     

Real Tennis and the Civilising Process

This article examines the social significance of Real Tennis among the Western European nobility during its heyday of the sixteenth century. Underpinned theoretically by Norbert Elias's seminal empirical work The Civilising Process, this article seeks to identify the societal preconditions for the emergence of Real Tennis, and provide explanations for its diffusion across Western Europe and subsequent boom in popularity among the nobility. A critique is offered of the current body of literature written on Real Tennis, with an aim to address a general lack of focus on the game's ‘social’ elements and how their development is linked with structural changes to the game over the centuries. The article then goes on to examine the ways in which Real Tennis became a symbol of prestige and a tool for social mobility among the increasingly status-competitive royal court nobility. Played during royal festivals, the game provided opportunities for nobles to engage in conspicuous consumption through architectural, clothing and gambling displays; having an entourage in accompaniment to the noble players; and, through the style of play and behavioural control, exhibiting self-restraint and foresight. Overall, an attempt is made to apply Elias's theoretical framework to aid our understanding of the development of Real Tennis, a game that has never been characterised by overt ‘violence’ of the kind examined previously by other sociologists employing an Eliasian framework.