[PDF] A Social History Of English Rugby Union eBook

Author : Tony Collins
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 318 pages
File Size : 23,49 MB
Release : 2009-01-13
Category : History
ISBN : 1134023340

GET BOOK

From the myth of William Webb Ellis to the glory of the 2003 World Cup win, this book explores the social history of rugby union in England. Ever since Tom Brown’s Schooldays the sport has seen itself as the guardian of traditional English middle-class values. In this fascinating new history, leading rugby historian Tony Collins demonstrates how these values have shaped the English game, from the public schools to mass spectator sport, from strict amateurism to global professionalism. Based on unprecedented access to the official archives of the Rugby Football Union, and drawing on an impressive array of sources from club minutes to personal memoirs and contemporary literature, the book explores in vivid detail the key events, personalities and players that have made English rugby. From an era of rapid growth at the end of the nineteenth century, through the terrible losses suffered during the First World War and the subsequent ‘rush to rugby’ in the public and grammar schools, and into the periods of disorientation and commercialisation in the 1960s through to the present day, the story of English rugby union is also the story of the making of modern England. Like all the very best writers on sport, Tony Collins uses sport as a prism through which to better understand both culture and society. A ground-breaking work of both social history and sport history, A Social History of English Rugby Union tells a fascinating story of sporting endeavour, masculine identity, imperial ideology, social consciousness and the nature of Englishness.

Author : Tony Collins
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 294 pages
File Size : 38,71 MB
Release : 2009-01-13
Category : History
ISBN : 1134023359

GET BOOK

In this fascinating history of the English game, leading rugby historian Tony Collins traces the development of rugby union from its origins at Rugby School through to the modern era of professionalism and World Cup victory, and explains why the game has come to have such a profound influence on the emergent English middle class.

Author : Tony Collins
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 293 pages
File Size : 31,2 MB
Release : 2012-10-12
Category : History
ISBN : 1136317732

GET BOOK

Since it’s first publication, Rugby’s Great Split has established itself as a classic in the field of sport history. Drawing on an unprecedented range of sources, this deeply researched and highly readable book traces the social, cultural and economic divisions that led, in 1895, to schism in the game of rugby and the creation of rugby league, the sport of England’s northern working class. Tony Collins’ analysis challenges many of the conventional assumptions about this key event in rugby history – about class conflict, amateurism in sport, the North-South divide, violence on the pitch, the development of mass spectator sport and the rise of football. This new edition is expanded to cover parallel events in Australia and New Zealand, and to address the key question of rugby league’s failure to establish itself in Wales. Rugby’s Great Split is a benchmark text in the history of rugby, and an absorbing case study of wider issues – issues of class, gender, regional and national identity, and the impact of the commercialization and recent professionalization of rugby league. This insightful text is for anyone interested in Britain’s social history or in the emergence of modern sport, it is vital reading.

Author : Tony Collins
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 290 pages
File Size : 28,86 MB
Release : 2015-08-27
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 1408843722

GET BOOK

Rugby has always been a sport with as much drama off the field as on it. For every thrilling last-minute Jonny Wilkinson drop-goal to win the world cup or Jonah Lomu rampage down the touchline for a try, there has been a split, a feud or a controversy. The Oval World is the first full-length history of rugby on a world scale – from its origins in the village-based football games of medieval times up to the globalised sport of the twenty-first century,now played in well over 100 countries. It tells the story of how a game played in an obscure English public school became the winter sport of the British Empire, spread to France, Argentina, Japan and the rest of the world and commanded a global television audience of over four billion for the last world cup final. And how American football – and other games such as Australian, Canadian and Gaelic football – emerged from rugby and highlight just how much the modern gridiron game owes to its English cousin. Featuring the great moments in the game's history and its great names – such as Jonah Lomu, David Duckham, Serge Blanco, Billy Boston and David Campese alongside Rupert Brooke, King George V, Boris Karloff, Charles de Gaulle and Nelson Mandela – The Oval World investigates just what it is about rugby that enables it to survive and thrive in countries with very different traditions and cultures. This is the the definitive world history of a truly global rugby.

Author : J. Harris
Publisher : Springer
Page : 184 pages
File Size : 15,64 MB
Release : 2010-08-18
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0230289711

GET BOOK

In 1995 rugby union finally became a professional sport following more than a century as an amateur game. This book offers a critical analysis of the sport in the professional era and assesses the relationship between the local and the global in contemporary rugby union.

Author : Tony Collins
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 299 pages
File Size : 36,8 MB
Release : 2018-08-06
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 1351709674

GET BOOK

This ambitious and fascinating history considers why, in the space of sixty years between 1850 and 1910, football grew from a marginal and unorganised activity to become the dominant winter entertainment for millions of people around the world. The book explores how the world’s football codes - soccer, rugby league, rugby union, American, Australian, Canadian and Gaelic - developed as part of the commercialised leisure industry in the nineteenth century. Football, however and wherever it was played, was a product of the second industrial revolution, the rise of the mass media, and the spirit of the age of the masses. Important reading for students of sports studies, history, sociology, development and management, this book is also a valuable resource for scholars and academics involved in the study of football in all its forms, as well as an engrossing read for anyone interested in the early history of football.

Author : Tony Collins
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 273 pages
File Size : 10,21 MB
Release : 2006-09-27
Category : History
ISBN : 1134221452

GET BOOK

Called ‘the greatest game of all’ by its supporters but often overlooked by the cultural mainstream, no sport is more identified with England’s northern working class than rugby league. This book traces the story of the sport from the Northern Union of the 1900s to the formation of the Super League in the 1990s, through war, depression, boom and deindustrialisation, into a new economic and social age. Using a range of previously unexplored archival sources, this extremely readable and deeply researched book considers the impact of two world wars, the significance of the game’s expansion to Australasia and the momentous decision to take rugby league to Wembley. It investigates the history of rugby union’s long-running war against league, and the sport’s troubled relationship with the national media. Most importantly, this book sheds new light on issues of social class and working-class masculinity, regional identity and the profound impact of the decline of Britain’s traditional industries. For all those interested in the history of sport and working-class culture, this is essential reading.

Author : Stephen Jones
Publisher : Birlinn
Page : 704 pages
File Size : 34,75 MB
Release : 2021-03-04
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 0857905295

GET BOOK

For over 130 years the British & Irish Lions have stood out as a symbol of the ethics, values and romance at the heart of rugby union. To represent the Lions is the pinnacle for every international player in Britain and Ireland, and the dream of tens of thousands of avid fans who fol-low them. A Lions tour, undertaken every four years to the southern hemisphere, is more than a series of rugby matches played out on foreign fields; it is an epic crusade where the chosen few face a succession of mental and physical chal-lenges on their way to the Test arena, where they do battle with the superpowers of the world game. Behind the Lions sees seven esteemed rugby writers delve to the very heart of what it means to be a Lion, using diaries and letters from those who pioneered the concept, to interviews with a vast array of players who have followed in their footsteps. In so doing they have uncovered the passion, pride and honour experienced when taking up the unique challenge of a Lions tour. This is a tale of heart-break and ecstasy, humour and poignancy that is at once inspirational, moving and utterly compelling. And it is the only story worth hearing: the players' own.

Author : Phil McGowan
Publisher :
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 10,88 MB
Release : 2021-02-02
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 9781913412098

GET BOOK

In March 1871 the first international match took place between England and Scotland at Raeburn Place in Edinburgh. Donned in all white the fledgling England team lost that day 0-1 but it was the start of remarkable history. This Rugby Football Union (RFU) product is written by the curator of the World Rugby Museum, Phil McGowan, and recounts the story of how the England team (and rugby itself) grew from an amateur collection of public schoolboys playing in a 'Home Nations Championship' into the globally recognised team they are today, watched by 80,000 at Twickenham and millions on television.

Author : David Ross Black
Publisher : Manchester University Press
Page : 180 pages
File Size : 19,78 MB
Release : 1998
Category : History
ISBN : 9780719049323

GET BOOK

Conventional historical and political analyses of South Africa have frequently neglected the vital role of sport in general, and rugby in particular. This book fills the gap through a critical interpretation of rugby's role in the development of white society, its role in shaping significant social divisions, and its centrality to the apartheid era "power elite".