Sport: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Mike Cronin

Author:Mike Cronin [Cronin, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780199688340
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2014-09-20T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4

International

With the emergence of national federations and associations to govern sport in the second half of the 19th century, it was perhaps inevitable that these organizations would look to challenge each other. The first recorded international sporting fixture took place in New York in 1844 at the St George’s Cricket Club in Bloomingdale Park, and pitched a United States team against one from Canada. An estimated 10,000 spectators were in attendance, and some $120,000 of bets were placed. After three days of weather-interrupted play, Canada won. The match is important as it breaks the pattern, which was standard up to that time, of matches between specific local clubs. The organizers of the 1844 cricket match selected their teams to be representative of the nation with, for example, the US team being chosen from the best players from teams in New York, Washington, Boston, and Philadelphia. The game was also specifically advertised as a nation versus nation clash.

The practice of choosing teams to represent the nation was furthered in Britain. In December 1870 the captains of five Scottish rugby teams signed an advertisement in the sporting newspaper, Bell’s Weekly, challenging any team selected from the whole of England. The challenge was taken up by an England side and the game played and won by Scotland in March 1871 in Edinburgh. As with the New York cricket game, the first rugby international was effectively unofficial as it had not been organized by a national association who managed the game. That situation changed in 1872, in soccer, when the English Football Association challenged a Scottish team to a match with the specific intention of ‘furthering the interests of the Association in Scotland’. The game took place in November 1872, in Scotland, in front of 4,000 spectators and ended in a goalless draw.

As sporting clubs and associations spread across the globe, and in particular those countries of the British Empire, so international matches, in the form of touring teams making a series of challenges, began to emerge. In 1868 a touring cricket team made up of Australian aboriginals played 47 matches during a five-month tour of England, and in 1888–9 a touring rugby team comprising New Zealand Maoris played 74 matches in England, Ireland, and Wales. Neither of these tours were officially sanctioned, and both were seen by the organizers as financial undertakings where total gate receipts would deem whether the tour had been profitable and therefore a success. In both instances, given the public debate and fascination with Darwinian theories of evolution and the imagery of the non-white native, large crowds, some exceeding 20,000, would pay to watch the matches. The first formally recognized international matches that involved a British team playing one from outside the British Isles, which were sanctioned by and the team selected by a national association, took place in 1877 in cricket (Australia versus England), 1905 in rugby union (England versus New Zealand), and 1908 in soccer (on a tour of Central Europe, England played matches against Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary).

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