Vain Games of No Value?
A Social History of Association Football in Britain During its First Long Century
by
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On 27th December 1949, the programme of matches staged by the Football League in England and Wales was watched by a total of 1.27 million spectators. Taking into account matches played in Scotland and Northern Ireland, along with a wide range of minor league matches, it is probable that at least two-and-a-half million people attended a football match on that day. In recent years, with the enhanced role of television, such figures are regularly matched and frequently exceeded. Association football is firmly established as one of the foremost features of popular culture in the world.
Yet, in contrast to comparative social phenomena, such as theatre, cinema and popular music, Association football has rarely been the subject of comprehensive historical study or analysis. Writing about the game has been dominated by ghosted biographies and by club-based publications that are more likely to perpetuate myths than to explain historical development.
Focusing on the origins of the game in the British Isles from the mid-nineteenth century to the latter stages of the twentieth, Terry Morris sets out to demonstrate the true complexity of its development in the course of this 'long century'. He links it to important social and economic developments in contemporary Britain and illustrates how the game sometimes reflected these, but often deviated from them. Alone among the major sports played in Britain, for example, Association football escaped the control of the governing classes and the assumptions of amateur superiority that dominated rowing, tennis or athletics throughout this period. The game's development gave rise to perceptions of social identity, both on the part of players and spectators, that had never existed before. Issues such as the role of television in relation to the game, the acceptance of women's participation, and of football played on the Sabbath also constitute important elements in the wider development of contemporary British society. In short, this book traces and analyses the origins, and the social and economic development of one of the most popular leisure activities and the most widespread social preoccupation in the modern world.
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About the Book
It should be unthinkable to write the social history of Britain from the late nineteenth century onwards without reference to association football. Yet by the time that the Football Association celebrated its centenary year in 1963, no serious academic analysis had been undertaken of the sport and of the various channels by which it had developed in different parts of the country. By the time that historians began to tackle that task, its complexity and diversity were such that it could only be undertaken in installments. Studies emerged that focused upon individual clubs and specific regions or which were limited to narrow time scales. No work examined the long century from the 1860s to the 1970s in full.
This book analyses the growth of British football in all its aspects—the developments of the football crowd, the status of the professional player, women’s football, the difficult survival of amateurism, to mention but a few. It also highlights the factors that contributed to diverse developmental paths in different parts of the country. The author has used the widest range of source materials to achieve a broader overview of the game’s history than has previously been attempted.
About the Author
Terry Morris only misspent half of his youth, dividing his time between the calm of his study and the bedlam of the football terraces. Graduating in history from Oxford University, he combined his two loves in a teaching career, spent entirely at University College School, in Northwest London, where he served successively as head of history and as deputy headmaster. He is the author of a range of textbooks on the sixteenth, the nineteenth, and the twentieth centuries.