The Oval World: A Global History Of Rugby

Author: Tony Collins

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General Fields

  • : $14.99 NZD
  • : 9781408843710
  • : Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
  • : Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
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  • : August 2015
  • : 234mm X 153mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : 14.99
  • : August 2015
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  • : books

Special Fields

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  • : Tony Collins
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  • : Paperback
  • : Export/Airside ed
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  • : 796.33309
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  • : 544
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Barcode 9781408843710
9781408843710

Description

Rugby has always been a sport with as much drama off the field as on it. For every thrilling last-minute Jonny Wilkinson drop-goal to win the world cup or Jonah Lomu rampage down the touchline for a try, there has been a split, a feud or a controversy. The Oval World is the first full-length history of rugby on a world scale - from its origins in the village-based football games of medieval times up to the globalised sport of the twenty-first century,now played in well over 100 countries. It tells the story of how a game played in an obscure English public school became the winter sport of the British Empire, spread to France, Argentina, Japan and the rest of the world and commanded a global television audience of over four billion for the last world cup final. And how American football - and other games such as Australian, Canadian and Gaelic football - emerged from rugby and highlight just how much the modern gridiron game owes to its English cousin. Featuring the great moments in the game's history and its great names - such as Jonah Lomu, David Duckham, Serge Blanco, Billy Boston and David Campese alongside Rupert Brooke, King George V, Boris Karloff, Charles de Gaulle and Nelson Mandela - The Oval World investigates just what it is about rugby that enables it to survive and thrive in countries with very different traditions and cultures. This is the the definitive world history of a truly global rugby.

Promotion info

A comprehensive social history of rugby around the world from its earliest beginnings to the present day

Author description

Tony Collins is professor of history and director of the International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University, the world's leading centre for the study of the history of sport. His previous books include Rugby's Great Split (1998), Rugby League in Twentieth Century Britain (2006), A Social History of English Rugby Union (2009), each of which won the Aberdare Prize for sports history book of the year, and Mud, Sweat and Beers: a cultural history of sport and alcohol (2003). In 2009, his Social History of English Rugby Union was selected as a book of the year by the New Statesman, the Guardian and the Independent on Sunday. He is historical consultant for the BBC Radio 4 series Sport and the British.