ABSTRACT
Professor Paul Ward’s adjoining essay is an intriguing addition to existing historiographical debate on sports history, largely because it comes from far outside the immediate fraternity. In his professional career, Ward has not been isolated from sports history, either as a lecturer or as a doctoral supervisor, and he is entitled to voice his opinions not only of what he views as sports history’s weaknesses, but also his own personal preferences. From the sound of it, he has genuine grounds for not enjoying sport, either as a leisure activity, or as a profession, and he is gracious enough to admit the strengths of studying sport’s history, especially in the context of identity. Whether or not his own personal lack of affinity with sport can be used a justification to criticise an entire profession, however, is another matter. My response to Ward’s essay will address the problems inherent in his polemical criticism of sports history, and will take the sting out of his more practice-based arguments, ones that are only partially formed, and are supported by questionable evidence. First, this essay first seeks consensus on Ward’s legitimate critiques of sports history. It will then move on to the meat of his arguments, ones which lack freshness and originality. These problems are compounded by his inability to list authors and publications which display significant weaknesses, and his criticisms descend into a
rather unfortunate binary which sees sports history as the antithesis of ‘mainstream’ history. While Ward rightfully stresses that sports historians cannot privilege sport above wider trends in leisure, he does not acknowledge that some historians have made significant strides towards doing this, and he is equally guilty of ignoring not only sports history’s more interdisciplinary focus, but also the business of sport, one which arguably does make it exceptional in the world of commercialised leisure.
