{"id":3852,"date":"2020-10-14T10:43:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-14T08:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/?p=3852"},"modified":"2020-10-14T13:29:57","modified_gmt":"2020-10-14T11:29:57","slug":"seeing-the-big-picture-a-historical-view-of-football-society-and-fair-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/seeing-the-big-picture-a-historical-view-of-football-society-and-fair-competition\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeing the \u2018Big Picture\u2019: a historical view of football, society and \u2018fair competition\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

The leaking of Liverpool and Manchester United\u2019s \u2018Project Big Picture\u2019 to, amongst other things, shrink the Premier League (PL) to 18 clubs\u00a0has, despite an offer to the English Football League to share 25% of future television revenue, angered many \u2013 including the PL itself.<\/p>\n

With 14 of the PL\u2019s 20 clubs unaware of the scheme, the PL has stated the plan could have a \u201cdamaging impact on the whole game\u201d and their concerns were shared by supporters\u2019 groups and, even, the government, which suggested this \u201cbackroom deal\u201d would\u00a0”create a closed shop at the very top of the game”<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Not known for the promotion of equality, the government\u00a0\u2013 in the form of the Department for Culture Media and Sport \u2013\u00a0stated: ”Sustainability, integrity and fair competition are absolutely paramount and anything that may undermine them is deeply troubling. Fans must be front of all our minds, and this shows why our fan led review of football governance will be so critical”.<\/p>\n

The finer details of the plan, and the ironic call for \u2018fair competition\u2019, notwithstanding it was the proposed abolition of the League Cup (currently sponsored by Carabao), and the Community Shield that most clearly demonstrates football\u2019s disconnect with its own history, and the integral role that such competitions played in establishing the game’s status as the \u2018national game\u2019 (at the expense of cricket).<\/p>\n

\"\"Without getting into the minutiae of each game\u2019s historical development, both sports had relied on irregular, and unrelated, \u2018challenge\u2019 matches until the Football Association (FA) introduced the FA Challenge Cup in 1871. Although this competition was based upon this age-old concept, its elongation towards a cup final gained massive popular support because it created more meaningful matches.<\/p>\n

Central to this enhanced meaning was the fact this competition brought together different communities in competition. Cities such as Manchester and Liverpool had long been economic rivals, but improving death-rates and all aspects of cultural life \u2013 that now included sport \u2013 became important elements of civic pride. This was especially so once the dominance of public-school clubs (most famously the Corinthians and the Wanderers, who won the FA Cup five out of the first seven competitions held) was challenged by what the famous amateur and all-round sportsman, C. B. Fry, described as \u2018provincial\u2019 clubs.<\/p>\n

Essentially working men\u2019s teams, the success of Blackburn Olympic over Old Etonians in 1883 marked a watershed in the game\u2019s development. And yet, the likes of Fry reacted badly. As he bemoaned in\u00a0The Strand Magazine<\/em>\u00a0in 1902, not only had Olympic abandoned the \u2018old arrangement\u2019 of six forwards in order to introduce a \u2018centre half-back\u2019 the Blackburn Olympic team had, he complained, trained in preparation for the match \u2013 something \u2018never contemplated by those who instituted the Cup competition\u2019.<\/p>\n

However, upper-class\u00a0objections such as this could do little to halt the game\u2019s professionalisation in 1885. Nevertheless, the FA Cup had its limitations as any club knocked-out then had to revert to individual challenge matches that were often one-sided affairs or, worse, frequently cancelled. Indeed, it was\u00a0the all too frequent cancellation of fixtures that prompted the director of Aston Villa FC, a Scotsman named William McGregor, to propose the formation of a league in which all member clubs would be guaranteed a minimum number of fixtures.<\/p>\n

\"\"The creation of a structure that not only guaranteed a full season of fixtures, but revealed \u2013 in unambiguous terms \u2013 which team was best represented the final piece in a jigsaw that now depicted an entirely modern form of sporting competition. As such, leagues were rapidly established across a range of sports, including cricket, but the public-school elites who controlled British sport reacted so strongly to their meritocratic outcomes, many strived to subvert or hinder sports role as the \u2018great social leveller\u2019.<\/p>\n

For the most part this took the form of strictly enforced ’amateurism’<\/a> that banished working class participants from competing in sports such as athletics or cycling and led, most famously, to the split in rugby in 1895. At lower levels of sport \u2013 specifically recreational cricket in London and the southeast of England \u2013 where amateurism was more difficult to apply, cups and leagues were essentially outlawed after the First World War. But, if village cricket became divided on class-based cultural lines in Surrey between the wars, league cricket in Lancashire embodied an egalitarian, and altruistic, community spirit. This was exemplified by all Lancashire League\u2019s clubs banding together to keep the popular West Indian professional Learie Constantine at Nelson CC after an approach from the rival Central Lancashire League.<\/p>\n

League competition for most of the twentieth century was the best example of the \u2018level playing field\u2019 that sport is supposed to represent, but it has been (despite the re-introduction of cricket leagues to the South from 1968) undermined since the social-economic landscape was transformed by Thatcherism, which completed the abandonment of the post-war consensus.<\/p>\n

Like various public services and industries, football (and cricket) has been steadily parcelled up and sold off into private hands (the Indian Premier League being the most glaring example), whereas market-based economics and\u00a0the classic doctrine of economic neoliberalism \u2013 internal competition and \/ or the introduction of league tables \u2013 have been imposed upon the education sector where the self-selected \u2018Russell Group\u2019 of universities appear to have their own \u2018Big Picture\u2019 agenda.<\/p>\n

Whether or not universities do, indeed, compete against each other (for students and \/ or funding or ’reputation’) is open to debate, and yet avaricious capitalism, by its very nature, encourages consumption and exponential growth. But is everything \u2018bigger and better\u2019 for it?\u00a0It would appear that\u00a0this neo-liberal approach has reached a point \u2013 across all sectors of society \u2013 where it may only consume itself. Accordingly, this regrettable attempt by two of the game\u2019s most famous and wealthiest clubs to grab an even larger slice of the economic pie is entirely predictable because there is, under such an ideological regime, nowhere else to go.<\/p>\n

Those in government, like those with influence over British sport, need to realise that the economic trajectory of the last 40 years has not only abandoned any pretence of a level playing field, it is \u2013 as the Covid crisis has ably demonstrated \u2013 no longer sustainable. If football\u2019s pyramid or, dare I say it, civil society at large, is to thrive the people of Britain, and the institutions that shape it, need to re-discover the altruism demonstrated by the members of the Lancashire Cricket League during the 1930s because, ultimately, we rise and fall together.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 Duncan Stone 2020<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The leaking of Liverpool and Manchester United\u2019s \u2018Project Big Picture\u2019 to, amongst other things, shrink the Premier League (PL) to 18 clubs\u00a0has, despite an offer to the English Football League to share 25% of future television revenue, angered many \u2013 including the PL itself. With 14 of the PL\u2019s 20 clubs unaware of the scheme, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":3853,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-okategoriserade"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t