James Hamilton on Sport History and Psychology
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHLNjiTtshI] I’m off to Scotland in the morning. Not like this – who do you think I am? Chris Dillow? In my little car with its greasy windscreen and Vostock driving position, starting before sunrise.. a prelude to a later, nastier trip in a big white van full of books and booze and the odd…
It was a headline in the Independent, and my heart sank: “Beckham sees Capello’s passion as key to England success.” “Passion and commitment” were once an unwanted theme of this blog. Here’s a recap of two myths of British football that are wrong but effortlessly ever-present: “Passion outweighs skill and technique.” What we need is/are…
Note: if anyone cares to do their own version of this in the comments, I’ll turn it into a separate post here. Just because Desert Island Discs is old doesn’t mean it isn’t tight. Only eight records? And one book? One luxury? I never felt much like having a luxury, unless that be an unexpected,…
In this recent post, I said: After 1910, in any case, the Southern League and the Football League came to an agreement which regularised retain-and-transfer across both organisations. Had that not happened, it is interesting to speculate that a post-1918 Southern League might not have taken advantage of depression in the north of England and…
Thanks largely to the fortunate survival of the Mitchell and Kenyon archive, the British Film Institute now possesses many hours of Edwardian football footage. A large proportion of this has now been properly restored and the best of it released on two DVDs: Electric Edwardians and Edwardian Sport . Snippets of this material come and…
I mentioned Fred Spiksley here yesterday – he was one of the group of Edwardian football coaches and ex-players interned by Germany with John Cameron at Ruhleben near Berlin. This group, plus Jack Reynolds, William Townley and Jimmy Hogan, pioneered the teaching of football, and had to go abroad to do it. Of these, Fred…
(WARNING: this is quite long) I’d been casting about for months for an image that might effectively sum up the history of English football. A face, a stadium, perhaps a team lineup or training session. Perhaps a German airport, snowbound. It was a search for a picture that would say the most in the least…
6.15a.m. Kensal Green station. Then, Euston, St Pancras, Brussels; then the ICE through Belgium and the Ardennes to Cologne; too long in the melting heat around the Dom waiting for our connection, then Bielefeld, Hanover; then hammering down across the German plains at 150mph, spilling out into the quiet of Friedrichshain from Ostbahnhof at 8.30p.m….
Back from Berlin, and as promised I have photographs to do with the man who I consider to epitomise the history of English football. But before I give you my nomination, I want to expand on the suggestions people took the time to make in comments on my original post. Peter Jackson nominates two players,…