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This fascinating selection of photographs traces some of the many ways in which Rugby has changed and developed over the last century.
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.
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.
Rugby is New Zealand's national sport. From the grand tour by the 1888 Natives to the upcoming 2015 World Cup, from games in the North African desert in the Second World War to matches behind barbed wire during the 1981 Springbok tour, from grassroots club rugby to heaving crowds outside Eden Park, Lancaster Park, Athletic Park or Carisbrook, New Zealanders have made rugby their game. In this book, historian and former journalist Ron Palenski tells the full story of rugby in New Zealand for the first time. It is a story of how the game travelled from England and settled in the colony, how Maori and later Pacific players made rugby their own, how battles over amateurism and apartheid threatened the sport, how national teams, provinces and local clubs shaped it. The story of rugby is New Zealand's story. Rooted in extensive research in public and private archives and newspapers, and highly illustrated with many rare photographs and ephemera, this book is the defining history of rugby in a land that has made the game its own.
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.
Rugby union has undergone immense change in the past two decades - introducing a World Cup, accepting professionalism and creating a global market in players - yet no authoritative English-language general history of the game has been published in that time. Until now. A Game for Hooligans brings the game's colourful story up to date to include the 2007 World Cup. It covers all of the great matches, teams and players but also explores the social, political and economic changes that have affected the course of rugby's development. It is an international history, covering not only Britain and France but also the great rugby powers of the southern hemisphere and other successful rugby nations, including Argentina, Fiji and Japan. Contained within are the answers to many intriguing questions concerning the game, such as why 1895 is the most important date in both rugby-union and rugby-league history and how New Zealand became so good and have remained so good for so long. There is also a wealth of anecdotes, including allegations of devil-worship at a Welsh rugby club and an account of the game's contribution to the Cuban Revolution. This is a must-read for any fan of the oval ball.
As France's oldest team sport, rugby football has throughout its 125-year history reflected major changes in French society. This book analyzes for the first time the complex variety of motives that have led the French to adopt and remake this rather unlikely British sport in their own image. A major site for the construction of masculine, class-based regional and national identities, France's tradition of 'Champagne rugby' continues to be as subject to dramatic upheavals as the society that produced it. The game's precocious professionalism and endemic violence have not infrequently caused the French to be cast as international pariahs. Such isolation, exacerbated by internal politics, has led the French not only to encourage the extension of the sport beyond its British imperial base (into Italy and Romania, for instance), but also to engage in some uncomfortable tactical alliances, most obviously with apartheid South Africa.Taking his analysis both on and off the field, the author tackles these issues and much more: the relationship of sport and the state (including particularly the Vichy period and the period under de Gaulle); professionalization; the persistence of colonial and postcolonial structures (including the role of ethnic minorities); and gender issues - especially masculine identities. At the same time he links the evolution of the sport to the broader context of French socio-economic, political and cultural history.This book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the cultural analysis of sport or French popular culture.
A visual history of rugby's greatest sporting event, this beautiful photographic book is a fascinating chronological exploration of the matches, teams, heroes and surrounding stories of the tournament. Each chapter covers a Rugby World Cup, starting with the inaugural competition in 1987 - in which New Zealand confirmed their status as the world's top rugby nation - to the historical 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa after the end of apartheid and the international sports boycott through England's fantastic win in 2003 breaking the southern hemisphere's dominance, up to the 2015 qualifiers. The book also looks ahead to Rugby World Cup 2019, with Japan as host city. Each photograph has been carefully selected to give a real glimpse into this great tournament. The ideal, collectable gift for any rugby fan, written by a rugby expert.
If all sports are really about war, then rugby is a heart-thumping epic of bayonet charges and hand-to-hand fighting. In Memoirs of a Rugby-Playing Man, bestselling author Jay Atkinson describes his thirty-five year odyssey in the sport-from his rough and rowdy days at the University of Florida, through the intrigue of various foreign tours, club championships, and all star selections, up to his current stint with the freewheeling Vandals Rugby Club out of Los Angeles. Jay has played in more than 500 matches, for which he's suffered three broken ribs, a detached retina, a fractured cheekbone and orbital bone, four deadened teeth, and a dislocated ankle. Written in the style of Siegried Sassoon's Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, Atkinson's book explains why it was all worth it--the sum total of his violent adventures, and the valuable insights he has gained from them.