Iain Christopher Adams

Over the Top: ‘A Foul; a Blurry Foul!’

Part of Britains folk memory of the First World War is of long lines of Tommies resolutely going over the top into a storm of machine gun fire and walking bravely to their deaths; following a piper if Scottish or kicking a football if English. However, rather than eventually becoming a conventional act of bravado, evidence suggests that the ‘football charge’ was limited to a 10-month period between 25 September 1915 and 1 July 1916. The most famous example is that of‘B’ Company of the 8th Battalion of the East Surreys led by Captain Nevill atthe Battle of the Somme. However, it was first performed, and possibly mostsuccessfully used, by the London Irish Rifles at the Battle of Loos on 25September 1915. This article examines what actually happened on the 25September 1915 and explores the underlying rationale of the first ‘football charge’.

‘The first ever anti-football painting’? A consideration of the soccer match in John Singer Sargent’s Gassed

The essay presents a discussion of Gassed, a large oil painting by John Singer Sargent displayed at the Imperial War Museum in London. Completed in 1919, Gassed is the major achievement from Sargent’s commission as an official war artist at the appointment of the British War Memorials Committee during the latter period of World War I. Prominent in the painting is a group of soldiers, blinded by a mustard gas attack, being led to a Casualty Clearing Station tent. In the distant background of the painting, another group of soldiers can be seen kitted out in football attire playing a match. The significance of this football imagery is our point of enquiry. As the title suggests, some recent interpretations regard the painting as offering critical reflection, from the time, about the symbolic links between sport and war. However, whilst the painting may certainly be left open to this type of viewer interpretation, archival and secondary resource material-based research does not support such a critical intention by the artist. Yet, nor is there evidence that Sargent’s intention was the projection of war-heroism. Rather, Sargent’s endeavour to faithfully represent what he observed allows Gassed to be regarded as a visual record of routine activity behind the lines and of football as an aspect of the daily life of British soldiers during the Great War.

Football: a counterpoint to the procession of pain on the Western Front, 1914–1918?

In this article, three artworks of the First World War containing images of recreational football are analysed. These three images, In the Wings of the Theatre of War, Artillery Men at Football and Gassed, span the war from its beginning to its conclusion and are discussed in relationship to the development of recreational football in the front-line area, the evolving policies of censorship and propaganda and in consideration of the national mood in Britain. The paper shows how football went from being a spontaneous and improvised pastime in the early stages of the war to a well organized entertainment by war’s end. The images demonstrate how the war was portrayed as a temporary affair by a confident nation in 1914 to a more resigned acceptance of a semi-permanent event to be endured by 1918; however, all three artworks show that the sporting spirit, and hence the fighting spirit, of the British soldier was intact.

A Game for Christmas? The Argylls, Saxons and Football on the Western Front, December 1914

Historians know that any mention of football and World War I will involve discussions of the Christmas truces of 1914 and the mythical football match between British and German troops. Many British soldiers denied that any truce had occurred let alone a football match. However, while there is indisputable evidence of truces, triangulating proof of football has been elusive. In this paper, a case study of the British 2/Argylls and the German 133/Saxons is developed. The underlying reasons behind the truce are discussed and why some combatants, in the short break from trying to kill each other, probably played football, even though certainly not as the formal match of popular imagination. It is argued that the truce was a result of unique circumstances and was not an overwhelmingly inspirational moment for the majority of troops involved; they all returned to the fighting. Most participants on both sides of the truce probably regarded it as an unexpected holiday and some availed themselves of the opportunity to play their favourite game. The paper concludes by examining recent commemorative events of Christmas 1914 and how they may have contributed to the myth of ‘The Football Match’.

‘Hey Pal! Who Won the Marathon?’ The Illustrated London News's Coverage of Sport in 1908, an Olympic Year

The complete digitization of The Illustrated London News (1842–2003) enables a closer look at its contents and coverage of particular events and areas of interest. In this article, we look at how The Illustrated London News covered sport, including the London Olympic Games in 1908, during that year. We determined that the newspaper devoted comparatively little special coverage to these Olympic Games apart from the marathon. This was because the social goals of its readers were not perceived to be met by this relatively new and unproven international sporting event. Unlike more established domestic events, the games failed to excite the editors and readers of the first mass-readership illustrated newspaper.

Wyndham Halswelle and the 1908 Olympic 400 metres final, the most controversial race in Olympic history?

ABSTRACT One of the central narratives of the 1908 Olympic Games is the intense Anglo-American acrimony which culminated in the nadir of their sporting relations. One of the major controversies involved the 400 metres final which featured Halswelle, a British athlete, and three Americans – Carpenter, Robbins and Taylor. The final was declared void after Carpenter obstructed Halswelle and was disqualified. In protest the Americans withdrew Robbins and Taylor from the re-run and Halswelle won the gold medal unopposed. This paper explores the 400 metres final from the perspective of the British athlete Wyndham Halswelle utilising his diaries, photo albums, scrapbooks and the papers of his elder brother, Gordon. Serendipitously, the continual digitisation of newspapers also gave further insight into allegations of illegal team tactics by Carpenter and Robbins in the initial race. The article then further exploits these resources to develop a case study of Halswelle as an elite early-twentieth-century British amateur athlete. Differences in ideas of the amateur athlete ideal are often identified as an underpinning cause of international squabbling at the IV Olympiad and may have led to Halswelle’s decision to retire after the games at the age of 26 while still improving his performances.

A Century of British Readings of America through American Football: From the Fin de Siècle to the Super Bowl

Abstract This paper examines the development of American football and the Super Bowl in the British imagination utilizing data from the British press. Divergent images of America have been present for centuries in British minds, and American football became intertwined with these images in the nineteenth century. Initially presented as a brutalized version of British varieties of football, once American football was seen live in Great Britain and it became a familiar subject on newsreels, some commentators interpreted it as a spectacle and a synonym for American life–modern, exciting, fast, and fun. Others viewed it as a threat that could undermine the British cultural heritage. The regular broadcasting of the NFL by Channel 4, including the Super Bowl live, was a watershed with the game swiftly gaining audience numbers whilst English association football was in a dour period. The increased popularity resulted in more media coverage, including negative images of unbridled capitalism, fixed games, and drug use. By the 1990s, audience numbers declined as English football was rehabilitated and American popularity waned, mainly through unpopular foreign policies. Today, many Britons regard watching the Super Bowl in the same way as a trip to Disney, an one-day holiday to a ‘foreign’ culture.

The Sporting Image: A Personal Journey Utilising History to Develop Academic Inquiry and Creativity

In 1997, an optional third-year undergraduate module, The Sporting Image, was developed for sports studies students in which they scrutinised the portrayal of sport in popular and high culture; including literature, film, TV, art and music. Fifteen years later, this module, now compulsory for sports journalism students, continues to examine the portrayal of sport and ways in which it has become an integral part of popular culture and resonates with values and standards specific in time and place. This paper describes the evolution of the module and its successes and failures in obliging both the lecturers and students to move outside of their comfort zones and engage with creative writing, poetry, music and the visual arts.

Olympic Visions: Images of the Games through History

1990s most of the British sport was ‘largely financed by local effort’ (p. 232). There are other areas where sport and politics interacted ranging from foreign policy to football hooliganism and fox hunting, and they find their place here. The idea that sport should be a matter of concern for the government derived, in part, from anxieties prompted by disappointing British performances in major international events. As ideological rivalry intensified during the Cold War, the argument for some form of state support for elite performers became irresistible. ‘Before 1964 Conservative ministers were reluctant proponents of state assistance for international sports teams’; after 1970, they sought to emulate Labour ‘in promising an expansive approach’ (p. 162). Inevitably, Olympic politics feature prominently, not least in relation to Thatcher Government’s attempts to follow the lead of the United States in boycotting the 1980 Moscow Games, using sport ‘for the first time as a political weapon’, rather ineffectively as it transpired (p. 170). The convoluted and long-running saga of sporting relations with South Africa presented British governments with particular difficulties from the D’Oliviera affair of 1968 onwards. Again, this did not end well forMrs Thatcher with Britain being singled out by the United Nations as ‘the main collaboratorwith apartheid sport’ (p. 192). Fast-trackingZolaBudd’s application for British citizenship so that she could run in the Los Angeles Games in 1984 was one of the many breaches of the Gleneagles Agreement, designed to discourage sporting links with South Africa, which the Callaghan Government had signed only seven years earlier. Similarly, as English football reeled from crisis to crisis in the 1980s and early 1990s, the government hardly covered itself in glory, backing an ill-judged compulsory membership scheme for spectators that would have punished the innocent along with the guilty had it not been abandoned after Lord Taylor’s interim report into the Hillsborough disaster made it clear that the football authorities and the police had more of a case to answer than the fans. To be fair, sport raised problems for Labour after 1997 in the form of Michael Foster’s bill to ban fox hunting, initially passed by the Commons with an enormous majority and, thereafter, subject to covert back-pedalling, with Blair leading the retreating peloton, in the face of opposition from the Countryside Alliance. There are no doubt good reasons why this book carries the subtitle The Road to 2012, even though the Olympics are only part of the story related here. Jefferys makes it clear that the road was both long and winding and that political contingency helped to determine its route. Of his book’s many solid virtues, these are the most important.