Shortlisted for the Australian Society for Sports History (ASSH) Biennial Book PrizeUnlike every other sport that has captured the nation’s interest, Australian football is not a copy, a clone, or a hand-me-down of European culture. Rather, it is a game with special qualities, which arose from a distinctive series of events in the fledgling colony of Victoria, grew rapidly, and is now the most dominant sport in the country: a social, commercial, cultural and—for ma...

Turnen around the World represents an international effort by an assemblage of prominent sport historians to detail and assess the worldwide scope, effects, and residual influences of the German Turnen movement over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A male nationalistic movement based on gymnastics and other physical activities established in response to the Napoleonic wars became even more political in the German Revolution of 1848. Refugees, colonizers, and immigrants...

This collection of essays is the third iteration in a series of publications dealing with Olympic studies that initially developed out of the tripartite relationship between Western University (Canada), Victoria University, Melbourne (Australia), and the German Sport University Cologne (Germany). However, for this collection, papers were solicited from around the world in order to approach the topic from different and much wider perspectives. To this end, this book combines a diverse range...

Finally a book whose time has come: a comprehensive and authoritative centenary history of women’s Australian Rules football by the country’s two foremost experts in the women’s game. For a century, women have been playing Australian Rules football, but who knew? These days, 200,000 girls and women play Australian Rules football, and the AFL is backing the formation of a women’s league in 2017, but it’s been a hard fought battle to get where we are today. This original history investigates...

The book explores the intersection between the Great War and patriotism through an examination of the effects of both on Australia’s most popular football code. The work is chronological, and therefore provides an easy path by which events may be followed. Ultimately it seeks to shine a light on and provide considerable detail to a much-ignored period in Australian Rules football history, including women’s football history, that was subject to much upheaval and which reflected considerable...

Match-Fixing and Sport studies match-fixing in historical perspective, revealing how match-fixing has always been a major sporting continuity, alongside another longstanding continuity, a widely-held belief in a mythical recent past of pristine purity.The volume begins with a brief overview of match-fixing’s global contemporary contexts, the broad range of sports where it now surfaces, increased recognition of its moral, social, and economic threat, and the varied response...

In 2017 the Olympic Studies Centre of the German Sport University organized a workshop on Sport Development and Olympic Studies. This book resulted from the presentations and discussions they engendered around identifying new international collaborative research fields and deepening research on the Olympics, the Olympic Movement and sport development.The effective application of the hermeneutical method unifies the chapters. The interpretive strengths of this method sharpe...

Soft Power Politics- Past and Present: Football and Baseball on the Western Pacific Rim illustrates the momentous expanse and moment of sport in the Asia Pacific region and through these essays dealing with two of the most prodigious global team sports confronts various cultural clashes that Samuel Huntington would ensure the end of civilisation. They also demonstrate the power sport has to change the world and to inspire and unite people globally. All who sail under the flag ofSport as in...

Reflections on Australia's Summer Game

The best, the worst and the most memorable moments from Australia's best-known sports commentators."I love this book" Peter FitzSimons Without doubt, we Aussies love our sport. We've got passionate opinions about the contest, the players, the refs and umpires - and about the commentators. Love 'em or loathe 'em, their calling of a game or race can lift something ordinary into the extraordinary, while their quick-thinking asides are often as timeless as the event itself. In Back to t...

tawera Nikau is an exceptional athlete and veteran of international rugby league at the highest levels, with a faithful following of fans in New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom. His career on the field has been spectacular, but events off the field have created an air of intrigue, especially his well-documented antagonism towards fellow Kiwi international Richie Blackmore - to the extent that he refused a spot on the New Zealand team if it meant playing alongside Blackmore. the t...

The compelling and inspirational story of the rags to riches life of Kerry Stokes, a remarkable Australian.Kerry Stokes is a remarkable Australian. Not because he is one of Australia's wealthiest and most powerful people, but because of what he overcame to get there and because he has endured when others didn't. His success and his rise have intrigued the business world for decades but there is so much more to him than multi-million dollar deals or mergers.Behind the laconi...