ABSTRACT
The purpose of this paper is to reflect on what appears to be the relatively under-used methodologies associated with oral history – principally the interview as a primary source of data – in the writing of sports history. The observation is acknowledged as one made from a UK perspective, not least on account of the authors' status as monolingual researchers, albeit from the different but culturally diverse nations of England and Scotland. The points of reference within this article are, therefore, necessarily drawn from works published in English, and the substantive oral history case studies are mostly sampled from those researched in the UK to date, chosen because they are either groundbreaking or illustrative of the opportunities, methodological challenges and politics that have come to be associated not only with the method itself, but the discipline of sports history. This paper will, therefore, firstly outline the development of oral history. Secondly, it will discuss the ways in which it has been applied within British sports history and, finally propose opportunities it presents for the future development of the discipline and those historians researching sport.
