Rugby's Great Split: Class, Culture and the Origins of Rugby League Football (Sport in the Global Society) - Softcover

Collins, Tony

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0415396174 ISBN 13: 9780415396172

Publisher: Routledge, 2006

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

Praise for the previous edition:

'The outstanding historical work ... definitive on the 1895 schism between the two rugby codes.'- Financial Times

'This book is a landmark in the history and historiography of rugby league and of rugby in general.' - Rugby League Express

Synopsis:

This volume looks at rugby in late Victorian and Edwardian England, and examines how class conflict tore rugby apart and led to the creation of rugby league. At its heart is an explanation of how a game for public schoolboys was transformed into a sport which became closely identified with the working classes of northern England. This text deals with the development of amateurism and professionalism, England's north-south divide, the relationship between rugby and masculinity, and the rise of commercializd sport. It focuses on how working-class men and women became involved in rugby and the hostile reaction to them from rugby's middle-class leaders. The author describes how the war for rugby's soul led to the 1895 split and the creation of a new sport. The new Northern Union immediately allowed, "broken-time" payments to players, developed a distinct ideology of its own and gradually introduced rule changes which created the game of rugby league.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0415396174
• ISBN 13: 9780415396172
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 288