Graham Curry

Playing for money: James J. Lang and emergent soccer professionalism in Sheffield

This article examines emergent professionalism within association football in Sheffield during the late 1870s and early 1880s. It attempts to analyse these trends through the career of James J. Lang, a Scotsman seemingly invited to Sheffield with the sole intention of playing football. The citys footballers had already created a thriving sporting sub‐culture and there is some evidence to suggest that Lang may have been one of the first players to participate professionally. His role as an importation is also closely considered. The text touches briefly on other related events together with the careers of additional members of the Sheffield footballing community.

The problem with revisionism: how new data on the origins of modern football have led to hasty conclusions

This article attempts to redress the balance of historical interpretation in terms of the origins of the modern game of football. We analyse succinctly the new data on football outside school settings unearthed by Goulstone, Harvey and Swain which we find to be sparse and ultimately misleading. Because of this paucity of information, it is robustly contended that this information has been overemphasized by the ‘football history community’ and there is little need for any major realignment in the standard histories of the game. We attempt to reignite the debate by proposing the existence of a sporting, more narrowly a footballing, elite in various localities who were partly responsible for the development of the modern game in England. However, we continue to believe that footballers from the major public schools, especially Old Etonians, exerted far more influence on the game’s early development and eventual outcomes than what recent authors might allow.

Sociological Versus Empiricist History: Some Comments on Tony Collins's ‘History, Theory and the “Civilizing Process”’

This article is a reply to Tony Collinss ‘History, Sociology and the “Civilizing Process”’ (Sport in History, vol 25, No 2, August 2005, pp 289–306). In it, we accept some of Collinss criticisms, eg that, in Barbarians, Gentlemen and Players (1979; 2005), Dunning and Sheard exaggerated the levels of violence in northern rugby in the 1890s and 1900s. For the most part, however, we argue that Collinss criticisms are misplaced and we present the systematic evidence which, we believe, supports our interpretations. We end with an exposition of Collinss misunderstandings of ‘figurational sociology’ and offer a restatement of some of the key propositions on which the ‘figurational’ position is based.

Football Spectatorship in mid‐to‐late Victorian Sheffield

In mid‐to‐late Victorian England the footballers of the city of Sheffield created one of the earliest and most vibrant sub‐cultures. The extent of midweek football and the types of crowd disorder in Sheffield football around that time provide two of the more interesting areas for study. The first section of this paper attempts to examine the custom of Saint Monday, the practice of utilizing the first day of the working week as a time for leisure activities, in Sheffield between the years 1876 and 1886. This is attempted through the detailed study of midweek football matches played by clubs from the city and its surrounds during those years. Although Monday will be the principal focus, other midweek days will also come under scrutiny. Secondly there is an attempt to provide a qualitative analysis of football crowd behaviour in Sheffield prior to 1892. The author seeks to add to the ‘football hooliganism’ debate by commenting on existing work carried out in this area dealing with incidents before that date. This section of the paper argues that reported incidents during this period appear to have been relatively few though authors of similar studies appear to have considerably underplayed their seriousness.

The Power Game: Continued Reflections on the Early Development of Modern Football

Abstract In this paper the authors seek to continue the debate on the development of modern football. They note the support offered by Tony Collins to the long-standing reservations of Graham Curry and Eric Dunning regarding the weaknesses of the revisionist case, which has sought to lessen the influence of public schoolboys on the game’s early years. The authors do, however, offer some correctives to Collins’s thoughts, particularly in terms of the complex Sheffield footballing subculture. Curry and Dunning support the need for more research based on local studies and attempt to gather together current thinking in this area.

The ‘origins of football debate’ and the early development of the game in Nottinghamshire

This article continues the debate on the origins of football. It contains new data which note early football activity and initial club formation in Nottinghamshire. The authors reach the conclusion that former public schoolboys were prominent in the development of football in that particular area and see this as further confirmation of their hypothesis that many of these individuals should be seen as important in the establishment of football as a modern sport.

Association Football : A Study in Figurational Sociology

Introduction 1 The Folk Antecedents of Modern Football 2 Public School Status Rivalry and the Early Development of Football: The Cases of Eton and Rugby 3 The Universities and Codification 4 The Sheffield Footballing Sub-culture and Other Early Clubs 5 The Emergence of the Football Association 6 The Advent of Professionalism 7 The Origins of Football Debate Conclusion 171

Forgotten man: The contribution of John Dyer Cartwright to the football rules debate

This article attempts to examine the debate over the need for nationally accepted football rules which took place in England in the early 1860s. It is partially designed to draw the attention of the reader to those arguments that appeared in print in various newspapers and periodicals around that time. However, it is also intended to highlight the part played in these discussions by John Dyer Cartwright, a journalist writing for The Field: The Country Gentlemans Newspaper, who, it is argued, has hitherto received insufficient credit for his role in seeking to unify the football community. In looking more closely at the rules debate it is also perhaps possible to attain a deeper insight into the divisions that existed between footballers in mid-Victorian England and even develop a greater understanding of the eventual bifurcation in 1863 of the Association and Rugby forms of the game.

Vain games of no value? A social history of association football in Britain during its first long century

which has been dominant in British sport history since the 1980s. It is surprising perhaps that a piece that is about sport in total institutions has no reference to Foucault, for example, but there is no explicit discussion of Foucault elsewhere in the collection either. There was to have been a paper on feminist perspectives, but that did not in the end appear in IJHS. Nor is there any discussion of the impact of the digital humanities. While the issues raised by the collection about the future of sport history remain of pressing importance – no less so as the Teaching Excellence Framework looms – it gives only a partial indication of what the new directions might be.

A History of Sheffield Football 1857-1889: ‘Speed, Science and Bottom’

The past two decades have seen a re-alignment of perceptions regarding the influence of Sheffield footballers and administrators on the early development of the game. Several texts already exist on those early years, but Martin Westby’s offering is not only a welcome addition to that increasing list, but also represents an especially well-timed work in that it coincides with several anniversaries in Sheffield football. It is now generally believed that the contribution of players and administrators in the city has been largely undervalued and while this is largely correct, it is the opinion of this reviewer that their influence should not be overvalued. Indeed, Westby commits this very mistake by over-exaggerating Sheffield’s importance when suggesting that ‘it could be argued that without the Sheffield Association, there would be no Football Association’ (p.222). This is almost certainly an over-exaggeration and an Eliasian ‘detour by detachment’ is required. However, the fact that this is a self-publication also indicates the dearth of publishers willing to produce books on such narrow, specialist subject areas. This is a very worrying trend as it restricts the overall narrative and severely limits the information on offer for future generations. The first chapter represents a worthy summing up of early football in its wider context and, also, the game’s early development in Sheffield, although the paragraph concerning the various global forms of football existing today lacks the detail it deserves and is sparse to say the least (p.14). The following three chapters are probably too short and might have easily been incorporated in a single section, but, especially the offerings on school football and the local volunteer movement, unearth interesting new evidence. The volunteer movement, which was to have so many links with early football, blossoming as it did around the same time and including many of the same people who played the game around that time, is particularly well explained. However, in terms of Sheffield Collegiate School, the author is incorrect to believe Percy Young regarding AC Ainger (p.41). Arthur Campbell Ainger was an Old Etonian, but he was not the Ainger who taught at Collegiate. It was Alfred Ainger who worked there and he was educated at King’s School, London. This is important because, in attempting to establish an Eton connection, Young has intimated that football diffusion from Eton might