ABSTRACT
The sport-military nexus has been well covered from historical, sociological, anthropological and other perspectives. Each perspective offers unique insights into the relationship between sport, militarism and war. One of the original contributions in the field, which uses a combined approach, is J.A.Mangan’s study of sport in Victorian and Edwardian periods and its contribution to the building of the British Empire. This is an evolving relationship, and as Jon Garland has recently observed, ‘whereas Mangan illustrated the way in which warfare was infused with sporting imagery in previous eras, popular cultural representations of sport in more recent times have relied heavily on militaristic rhetoric’. 1 Thus, sport can be seen to instigate the rhetoric of war and vice-versa. The reasons will be explored below.
