In this Red Caste we talk to Professor Collins about his Sport in Capitalist Society, a book which could be the text book for this series.

In this magnum opus Tony exposes, inter alia,  the intimate links and interdependencies between the development of UK and international sports and capitalism; the utter, tendentious cant behind the cult of amateurism and the intimate connections between the growth of sport and the gambling industry.
There was no golden age of sporting innocence, that's just another myth idealising a past that never existed.  

Tony is a historian, author, an emeritus professor of history at  De Montfort University,  a Research Fellow at the Institute of Sports Humanities and also a visiting professor at Beijing Sports University.

His books have won the Aberdare Prize for Sports History four times since 1999 and he has been a consultant to numerous TV and radio programmes including the excellent Codebreakers about Welsh Rugby union players who went north to play for League clubs. 

In March 2018 he began the weekly Rugby Reloaded podcast on the history of rugby and the other football codes, which is highly recommended. 

His latest book is Rugby League: A People’s History,  published in July 2020. He is a prolific author  some of his books are listed here:
http://www.tcollins.org

https://www.routledge.com/Sport-in-Capitalist-Society-A-Short-History-1st-Edition/Collins/p/book/9780415813563
Buy the book we are talking about in this podcast here.

http://www.tcollins.org
more information on Tony here.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/rugby-reloaded/id1358627156
Tony's excellent Rugby podcast.