English rugby union and the first world war

Historical Journal

Volumn 45, Issue 4, 2002, Pages 797-817

  Collins, Tony ^a  

^a DE MONTFORT UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 85011222995     PISSN: 0018246X     EISSN: 14695103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0018246X02002686     Document Type: Article

References (137)

1. Times, 26 Feb. 1919.
2. Derek Birley, ‘Sportsmen and the deadly game’, British Journal of Sports History, 3 (1986), pp. 288–310
3. Colin Veitch, ‘Play up! play up! and win the war! Football, the nation and the First World War’, Journal of Contemporary History, 20 (1985), pp. 363–377.
4. Paul Fussell, The Great War and modern memory (London, 1975).
5. Jay Winter, Sites of memory, sites of mourning: the Great War in European cultural history (Cambridge, 1998).
6. For a recent discussion see Niall Ferguson, The pity of war (London, 1998), pp. 448–457.
7. Tony Collins, Rugby's great split (London, 1998).
8. Social class statistics are from Eric Dunning and Kenneth Sheard, Barbarians, gentlemen and players (New York, 1979), p. 237.
9. B. Fletcher Robinson, Rugby football (London, 1896), p. 50
10. H. H. Almond in Reverend Frank Marshall, ed., Football: the rugby union game (London, 1892), p. 55.
11. Walpole story reprinted in Howard Marshall, ed., Rugger stories (London, 1932), p. 241.
12. Dulwich school song in Geoffrey Best, ‘Militarism and the Victorian public school’, in M. J. Bradley and B. Simon, eds., The Victorian public school (London, 1975), p. 142.
13. David Cannadine, ‘War and death, grief and mourning in modern Britain’, in J. Whaley, ed., Mirrors of mortality: studies in the social history of death (London, 1981), p. 195.
14. See also Peter Parker, The old lie: the Great War and the public school ethos (London, 1987)
15. J. A. Mangan, Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian public school (Cambridge, 1981)
16. his The games ethic and imperialism (London, 1986).
17. Austin in James Morris, Pax Britannica: the climax of an empire (London, Folio edition, 1992), pp. 75–76.
18. H. A. Vachell, The hill (London, 1905), p. 236.
19. FA Council minutes, 12 Mar. 1906.
20. Yorkshire Post, 23 Oct. 1906.
21. Times, 10 Oct. 1905.
22. See also John Nauright, ‘Colonial manhood and imperial race virility: British responses to post-Boer War colonial rugby tours’, in John Nauright and Timothy Chandler, eds., Making men: rugby and masculine identity (London, 1996).
23. Quoted in Edward Bagnall Poulton, The life of Ronald Poulton (London, 1919), p. 145.
24. Times, 4 Mar. 1919.
25. Athletic News, 24 Aug. 1914.
26. Letter of 28 Aug. 1914, reprinted in Poulton, Life of Ronald Poulton, p. 308.
27. Times, 9 Sept. 1914.
28. Athletic News, 10 Aug. 1914
29. Times, 21 Sept. 1914.
30. Athletic News, 14 Sept. 1914.
31. Athletic News., 21 Sept. 1914.
32. The Alleynian, Mar. 1915.
33. Athletic News, 24 Aug. 1914.
34. Athletic News., 31 Aug. 1914.
35. Yorkshire Post, 1 Sept. 1914.
36. Athletic News, 24 Aug. 1914.
37. RFU Committee minutes, 4 Sept. 1914.
38. For Wales, see David Smith and Gareth Williams, Fields of praise (Cardiff, 1980), pp. 201–203.
39. For Scotland, seeTimes, 13 Aug. 1914.
40. Marriott's circular is in the Yorkshire Rugby Football Union commemoration book, p. 266.
41. Times, 4 Sept. 1914.
42. Peter Simkins, Kitchener's army (Manchester, 1988), pp. 79–103.
43. YRU statement of 9 Sept. 1919 in the Yorkshire Rugby Football Union commemoration book, p. 267.
44. Letter in Athletic News, 28 Sept. 1914.
45. Athletic News, 27 Nov. 1916
46. David Hands, Leicester F. C., 1880–1980 (Leicester, 1981), p. 33.
47. Athletic News, 26 Oct. 1914
48. Captain Guy Paget, History of the raising of the 7th (Service) Battalion, Northamptonshire Regiment (Aldershot, 1915)
49. H. B. King, 7th (S) Battalion Northamptonshire Regiment, 1914–1919 (Aldershot, 1919)
50. S. J. Edwards, Sportsman and soldier (privately published by the author, 1998).
51. Athletic News, 14 Dec. 1914.
52. Yorkshire Post, 1 Sept. 1914.
53. Yorkshire Post., 15 Sept. 1914.
54. Ruth Elwyn Harris, Billie: the Nevill letters, 1914–1916 (London, 1991), p. 19
55. Laurie Milner, Leeds pals (London, 1991), pp. 58–59
56. Yorkshire Post, 1 Oct. 1914.
57. Times, 30 Oct. 1914
58. Yorkshire Post, 14 Nov. 1914
59. Athletic News, 9 Nov. 1914.
60. Times, 14 Dec. 1914
61. Yorkshire Post, 14 Dec. 1914.
62. Athletic News, 22 Nov. 1915.
63. Athletic News., 11 Jan. and 1 Feb. 1915.
64. Athletic News., 18 Jan. and 18 Oct. 1915
65. Edmund McCabe, ‘Rugby and the Great War’, Stand To!, 52 (1998), pp. 41–44
66. Lyn Macdonald, Somme (London, 1983), p. 319
67. Poulton, Life of Ronald Poulton, p. 311
68. Robert Graves, Goodbye to all that (rev. edn, London, 1960), p. 149.
69. Times, 4 Mar. 1919.
70. Douglas Clark MS diary, Imperial War Museum, 90/21/1
71. Athletic News, 23 Dec. 1918 and 22 Feb. 1915.
72. J. G. Fuller, ‘Popular culture and troop morale in the British and Dominion forces, 1914–1918’ (DPhil thesis, Cambridge, 1988), p. 127.
73. Paul Jones, War letters of a public school boy (London, 1918), p. 157.
74. John Maclaren, The history of army rugby (Aldershot, 1986), p. 83.
75. For more on the kicking of footballs into no man's land, see Fussell, The Great War, pp. 27–28.
76. Yorkshire Post, 10 Feb. 1917
77. Times, 12 and 15 Feb. 1917.
78. A. J. Trollope, secretary of the London Society, in Times, 30 Nov. 1918
79. Athletic News, 3 Dec. 1918
80. Yorkshire Post, 10 Feb. 1919.
81. Athletic News, 27 Dec. 1915.
82. Athletic News., 16 Apr. 1917.
83. Times, 5 Oct. 1916.
84. Sheffield Star Sports Special, 16 Oct. 1915.
85. RFU Committee minutes, 14 Jan. 1919.
86. RFU Committee minutes.
87. Times, 15 Apr. 1919.
88. RFU Committee minutes, 26 May 1919.
89. Athletic News, 16 Oct. 1917.
90. Times, 30 Dec. 1918.
91. Letter of Jellicoe reprinted in E. H. D. Sewell, The log of a sportsman (London, 1923), p. 164.
92. Quoted in Harris, Billie, p. 203.
93. Times, 21 Apr. 1919.
94. Athletic News, 21 Dec. 1914.
95. Anne Pallant, A sporting century (Plymouth, 1997), p. 144.
96. Quoted in Modris Eksteins, Rites of spring: the Great War and the birth of the modern age (London, 1989), p. 124
97. The Wipers Times: a facsimile reprint of the trench magazines, London, 1918, and J. G. Fuller, Popular culture, passim.
98. Harris, Billie, p. 7.
99. Quoted in Yorkshire Rugby Football Union commemoration book, p. 20.
100. For the widespread use of sporting metaphors by troops see Fuller, Popular culture, p. 202.
101. Jones, War letters, p. 198.
102. Athletic News, 7 Sept. 1914.
103. Times, 26 Feb. 1919.
104. J. M. Winter The Great War and the British people (London, 1986), pp. 71–93.
105. England players' war records compiled from U. A. Titley and A. R. McWhirter, Centenary history of the RFU (London, 1970)
106. R. Maule, The complete who's who of England rugby union internationals (Derby, 1992). I am indebted to Dr Gwyn Prescott for his valuable insights on this section.
107. Athletic News, 10 and 17 Mar. 1919. The Football League lost forty-four players
108. Simon Inglis, League football and the men who made it (London, 1988), p. 100.
109. J. M. Winter, ‘Upper class casualties’, London Review of Books, 5 Mar. 1987.
110. Times, 30 Dec. 1918.
111. See Athletic News, 8 May 1916.
112. Yorkshire Rugby Football Union commemoration book, p. 272.
113. George Mosse, Fallen soldiers: reshaping the memory of the world wars (Oxford, 1990), especially ch. 5.
114. E. H. D. Sewell, The rugby football internationals' roll of honour (London, 1919), p. 1
115. Yorkshire Rugby Football Union commemoration book, pp. 278, 279, and 276.
116. Winter, Sites of memory, p. 204.
117. Cannadine, War and death, p. 197
118. Boy's Own Paper, Nov. 1919, p. 42.
119. Sewell, Roll of honour, p. 3.
120. Rowland Hill speech quoted in McCabe, Rugby and the Great War, p. 44.
121. Jeffrey Richards, ‘Popular imperialism and the image of the army in juvenile literature’, in J. M. MacKenzie, ed., Popular imperialism and the military, 1850–1950 (Manchester, 1992).
122. Spectator, 22 May 1915.
123. F. C. Hawkins and E. Seymour-Bell, Fifty years with the Clifton R.F.C., 1872–1922 (Bristol, 1922), p. 92.
124. Martin Pugh, The Tories and the people, 1880–1935 (Oxford, 1985), p. 175.
125. For more on cricket and the war see Jack Williams, Cricket and England: a cultural and social history of the inter-war years (London, 1999), pp. 6–7.
126. Fussell, The Great War, pp. 109–110
127. Times, 3 Mar. 1919.
128. Times, 26 Feb. 1919.
129. Times., 4 Mar. 1919.
130. Eton's adoption of rugby is described in the magazine Rugby Football, 16 Feb. 1924.
131. Figures from RFU handbooks for 1919–20 and 1929–30. For the Headmasters' Conference see Report of the 53rd meeting of the Headmasters' Conference, pp. 33–34
132. Tom Jeffrey and Keith McClelland, ‘A world fit to live in: the Daily Mail and the middle classes, 1918–1939’, in James Curran, Anthony Smith, and Pauline Wingate, eds., Impacts and influences: essays on media power in the twentieth century (London, 1987), p. 42.
133. John Osborne, ‘To keep the life of the nation on the old lines: the Athletic News and the First World War’, Journal of Sport History, 14 (1987), pp. 137–50, at p. 149.
134. Whether football was played during the Christmas truces is currently unclear; see Malcolm Brown and Shirley Seaton, in Christmas truce (London, 1994), pp. 134–139.
135. Tony Mason, Association football and English society, 1863–1915 (Brighton, 1981)
136. Dave Russell, Football and the English (Aldershot, 1997).
137. The identification of rugby union with war continues today: for example, Brendan Gallagher, ‘Pass masters of battle front’, in the Daily Telegraph, 7 Nov. 2001.