Pay Up and Play the Game: Professional Sport in Britain, 1875-1914

Hardback

Main Details

Title Pay Up and Play the Game: Professional Sport in Britain, 1875-1914
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Wray Vamplew
Physical Properties
Format:Hardback
Pages:416
Dimensions(mm): Height 229,Width 152
Category/GenreBritish and Irish History
World history - c 1750 to c 1900
Sports and outdoor recreation
ISBN/Barcode 9780521355971
ClassificationsDewey:338.437960941
Audience
Professional & Vocational
Illustrations 60 Tables, unspecified

Publishing Details

Publisher Cambridge University Press
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publication Date 1 December 1988
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

Based on a vast range of club and association records, Pay Up and Play the Game presents the first systematic economic analysis of the emergence of mass spectator sport during the years prior to World War I. It explores the tensions behind an increasingly commercialised activity that was nonetheless suffused with 'gentlemanly' values at many levels, and highlights the retreat of the latter as working-class consumption and participation became predominant, symbolised most dramatically by the celebrated victory of proletarian Blackburn Olympic over the Old Etonians in the FA Cup final of 1883. Wray Vamplew examines the linkages between sport, gambling, crime and spectator violence, and concludes that many supposedly 'recent' developments (notably football hooliganism) in fact have their origins in this, the 'Golden Age' of sport in Britain.