This week we delve deep into the origins of the football codes across Britain, Europe and the Americas with Thomas Adam, author of the new book The Global Spread of football from the 1860s to the 1880s.
His book looks at the emergence of football in England, Germany, Argentina and the United States in the 1860s and 1870s, and looks at the decisive influence of education and educators in the rise of the game. The book is code-agnostic, and so looks at ‘football’ as nineteenth century observers did: one game with many different ways to play. Along the way we also discuss the roads not taken, such as how Germany could have become a rugby nation and the US a soccer bastion.
For more details about the book, go to https://anthempress.com/books/the-global-spread-of-football-from-the-1860s-to-the-1880s-hb
For more on the history of rugby and the other football codes, take a look at www.rugbyreloaded.com (where you can find the links for this episode) and follow me on Twitter at @collinstony
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This week we delve deep into the origins of the football codes across Britain, Europe and the Americas with Thomas Adam, author of the new book The Global Spread of football from the 1860s to the 1880s.
His book looks at the emergence of football in England, Germany, Argentina and the United States in the 1860s and 1870s, and looks at the decisive influence of education and educators in the rise of the game. The book is code-agnostic, and so looks at ‘football’ as nineteenth century observers did: one game with many different ways to play. Along the way we also discuss the roads not taken, such as how Germany could have become a rugby nation and the US a soccer bastion.
For more details about the book, go to https://anthempress.com/books/the-global-spread-of-football-from-the-1860s-to-the-1880s-hb
For more on the history of rugby and the other football codes, take a look at www.rugbyreloaded.com (where you can find the links for this episode) and follow me on Twitter at @collinstony
Today's episode is an edited version of a talk about rugby union's concussion crisis which I gave to the North of England Medico-Legal Society in Newcastle in April 2025, for which I'd like to thank Alex Littlefair for the invitation.
It looks at the history of concussion in men’s rugby union, examines how it has changed over the past fifty years, investigates the impact of professionalism, and looks at the weight of cultural traditions which have held back the sport’s ability to deal with the crisis confronting it.
As well as looking at the evolution of its attitudes to concussion, I also look at how rugby union’s hyper-masculine traditions - inherited from its founders in the mid-nineteenth century - have shaped its understanding of injuries and have remained essentially unchanged over almost two centuries.
Perhaps we can find the roots of the problem not only in today’s hyper-professional sport but also in its roots as the symbol of nineteenth-century manhood?
Rugby Reloaded
This week we delve deep into the origins of the football codes across Britain, Europe and the Americas with Thomas Adam, author of the new book The Global Spread of football from the 1860s to the 1880s.
His book looks at the emergence of football in England, Germany, Argentina and the United States in the 1860s and 1870s, and looks at the decisive influence of education and educators in the rise of the game. The book is code-agnostic, and so looks at ‘football’ as nineteenth century observers did: one game with many different ways to play. Along the way we also discuss the roads not taken, such as how Germany could have become a rugby nation and the US a soccer bastion.
For more details about the book, go to https://anthempress.com/books/the-global-spread-of-football-from-the-1860s-to-the-1880s-hb
For more on the history of rugby and the other football codes, take a look at www.rugbyreloaded.com (where you can find the links for this episode) and follow me on Twitter at @collinstony
