Any Sydneysiders born in or prior to the 1890s would have been aware of the opening of Sydney Stadium. 1908 was the year this iconic boxing arena on the eastern outskirts of the city’s CBD first saw the light of day…literally saw the light of day as it was originally built as an open air stadium. The brainchild of promoter Hugh D McIntosh who constructed a ‘temporary’ outdoor boxing ring on the site of a former Chinese market garden in Rushcutters Bay to hold the world heavyweight boxing contest featuring Canadian title-holder Tommy Burns and Australian challenger “Boshter Bill” Squires. The fight was however just a warm-up for a legendary pugilistic bout in the same arena four months later between Burns and African-American fighter Jack Johnson. The fight garnered a lot of attention in Australia and internationally as Johnson was the first black boxer to contest (and win) a world title… and the heavyweight title at that!
The Australian press of the day predictably invoked the race card in the lead-up to the fight, racist descriptions of Johnson abounded, “coloured pugilist” was one of the few politer characterisations of Johnson (Bush Advocate, 28th December 1908). Burns’s thrashing at the hands of his much bigger black opponent—physically it was a real “David and Goliath” mismatch—prompted a backlash from white supremacists. Writer Jack London (ringside at the fight) put out the call for a “Great White Hope” to restore the white man to his ‘rightful’ place atop the professional boxing tree. The decisiveness of Jack Johnson’s triumph tapped into the prevailing currents of eugenic belief of the day, doing nothing to soothe anxieties about the “moral decay and decline” of the white race.
𝔖𝔶𝔡𝔫𝔢𝔶𝔖𝔱𝔞𝔡𝔦𝔲𝔪 (𝔓𝔥𝔬𝔱𝔬: 𝔑𝔞𝔱𝔦𝔬𝔫𝔞𝔩𝔏𝔦𝔟𝔯𝔞𝔯𝔶𝔬𝔣𝔄𝔲𝔰𝔱𝔯𝔞𝔩𝔦𝔞)
Stadiums Ltd
For almost its entire lifespan (from 1915 to its closure) Sydney Stadium was owned by Melbourne entrepreneur and gambling identity John Wren’s Stadiums Ltd…during that epoch the company enticed most of the top Australian professional boxers including Vic Patrick, Fred Henneberry, Dave Sands, Jimmy Carruthers and Tommy Burns (not the Canadian heavyweight champion) as well as renowned international prize-fighters such as Emile Griffith, Freddie Dawson and ‘Fighting’ Harada, to Sydney Stadium (‘The Wild Ones: Sydney Stadium 1908-1970’, Sydney Living Museums, www.sydneylivingmuseums.com).
“The old tin shed”
In 1912 the stadium was given a lid, an octagonal shaped roof of corrugated iron, and equiped for a capacity of 12,000 seated patrons. As the decades passed, hosting countless boxing and wrestling matches (in operation several nights a week at one point), it acquired the affectionate sobriquet “the old tin shed”❈. From the 1950s while boxing was still its core entertainment, the Sydney Stadium became a venue for popular music entertainers and television stars (eg, Frank Sinatra, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Walt Disney’s Mouseketeers, and so on⚘. This continued into the Sixties with “The Samurai” star Koichi Ose, and perhaps its pinnacle, the Beatles performing there on their 1964 Australian tour (‘Sydney Stadium’, Milesago – Venues, www.milesago.com; ‘World Heavyweight Boxing Championship Title Fight 1908’, Woollahra Municipal Council), www.woollahra.nsw.gov.au).
𓂀𝓣𝓱𝓮“𝓕𝓪𝓫𝓕𝓸𝓾𝓻” 𝓪𝓽𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓸𝓵𝓭𝓽𝓲𝓷𝓼𝓱𝓮𝓭1964
Leichhardt Stadium in Sydney’s inner west never managed to capture the limelight of Rushcutters Bay but was still very popular in its time, it’s Thursday night boxing events regularly ”packed to capacity” (‘Packing a punch’, James Cockington, 01-Jul-2009, SMH, www.smh.com.au). Leichhardt was Sydney pro boxing’s ‘Medina’ to Sydney Stadiums’ ‘Mecca’, together, this brace of stadiums was the home of professional pugilism in Sydney in the early to middle part of the 20th century. The suburban stadium on Balmain Road, Leichhardt, first opened its doors in 1922. The two Sydney stadiums featured many of the popular active Aboriginal fighters, typically stepping up from the touring boxing tents to try to earn their livelihoods inside their square rings, including Ron Richards, Jack Hassen, George Bracken, the Sands brothers and many more. Other names regularly featuring on Leichhardt Stadium’s draw cards included Jack Carroll, Jimmy Kelso, ‘Kid’ Rooney and Hockey Bennell.
‘Blood’ sports and ”show biz” mash-up
Like it’s older relative at Rushcutters Bay, Leichhardt Stadium’s “bread-and-butter” remained pro-boxing and wrestling. However, during the Depression, the suburban stadium, perhaps anticipating Lee Gordon, innovated by incorporating the prevailing popular form of stage entertainment…Saturday night featured a program of boxing contests intermixed with “Vaudeville entertainment” acts (‘Leichhardt Stadium. 1922.’, Sydney Morning Herald, 08-Dec-1930 (Trove); Milesago).
𝔖𝔬𝔲𝔯𝔠𝔢: 𝔉𝔞𝔠𝔢𝔟𝔬𝔬𝔨
ஓ๑ஓ
By the mid to late 1960s Australian professional boxing was in the doldrums and the stadium itself at Rushcutters Bay closed in 1970. Three years later the complex was demolished to make way for the Eastern Suburbs Railway. Leichhardt Stadium’s demise as a boxing venue occurred not long after in 1975.
Footnote: White City’s fleeting existence
In 1913 another landmark was erected in Rushcutters Bay, a 9-iron’s distance from Sydney Stadium. The White City Amusement Park, also built on former Chinese market gardens, was a precursor of Sydney’s better known Luna Park. White City offered pleasure-seekers a smorgasbord of lakes, canals, river caves, “pleasure palaces”, “fun factories”, the city’s first roller coaster and it’s pièce de résistance, a gigantic (Pennsylvanian-constructed) carousel. White City lasted less than four years before being burnt to the ground after a lightning strike in 1917 (‘Lost Sydney : White City Amusement Park’, Pocket Oz, www.visitsydneyaustralia.com.au). In the early 1920’s the White City tennis complex was erected on the site.
𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬𓇬
❈ also known as ” the old barn”
⚘ expat American promoter Lee Gordon was the brains behind this move into pop music, bringing out big US bands, singers and duos for concerts at Rushcutters Bay, backed by Australian support acts
Between 1899 and 1902 Britain and the Afrikaner republics of Transvaal and Orange Free State were locked in conflict in the Second South African War, more commonly known as the Boer War (or more accurately the Second Anglo-Boer War). With the overconfident British failing to secure the expected quick victory over the Boers’ “citizen army”, the war dragged on into a long guerrilla engagement. In 1901, in the middle of the conflict in South Africa, of all things a cricket team from South Africa visited England and Ireland to take part in a series of international matches. How did this sporting incongruity take place while the two countries were engaged in a controversial, bitterly fought and increasingly divisive war?
Lord Hawke’s MCC tourists to SA 1898-99
∘
Making it happen: JD Logan, the “Squire of the Southern Karoo”
In fact, the tour of Britain had been originally meant to occur in 1900ⓐ, but was cancelled due to the outbreak of hostilities, understandably enough. At this point in stepped Cape Province-based expat entrepreneur and cricket patron James Douglas Logan with his (long-cherished) plan to organise a new tour. Logan negotiated with the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) through the highly influential Lord Hawke, who managed to persuade the MCC to give the tour the green light. Despite the war still very much raging and the outcome far from decided, it was rescheduled for the following year. The announcement for the tour to take place in 1901 unleased opposition and misgivings from within both countries.
Newspaper cartoon of James Logan (Source: hermanus-history-society.co.za)
∘
The South African press lambasted the team chosen–a mix of “socialite-gentleman” cricketers (including Logan’s own son who had never played first-class cricket!) and more skilful players—for being overall well below par. Moreover, the press criticised the private venture by the “Laird of Matjiesfontein” as being not legitimate because the touring players predominantly from the Cape Colony had not been officially selected by the South African Cricket Union (which had suspended the Currie Cup and disbanded with the onset of war) {Sport Past and Present in South Africa: Trans(forming) the Nation, Scarlett Cornelissen, Albert Grindingh (Eds.), (contributor Dean Allen) 2013; Peter Wynn Thomas, The Complete History of Cricket Tours At Home and Abroad, 1989}.
Sherlock’s creator: make war, not cricket
From the host country, probably the most vociferous critic was world renowned author (and cricket fan and amateur player) Arthur Conan Doyle. Conan Doyle, in the forefront of countering the anti-war propaganda within the British homeland with his own pro-war propaganda, was incensed that a team of predominantly English-speaking cricketers should be coming to Britain to play when they should be stay in South Africa and fight the Boers. The vexed authorof Sherlock Holmes called it “a stain on their manhood” (Cornelissen, Grindingh).
Conan Doyle in cricket gear (Source: arthur-conan-doyle.com)
Despite the dissenting voices, what ultimately clinched it for Logan’s private tour was the MCC and the major English county clubs’ agreeing to give the tour matches first-class status. Even then there were second thoughts on the South Africa side and a suggestion made that the tour should not go ahead…this was scotched by the MCC who insisted it proceed to prevent the dislocation of the 1901 English season (Cornelissen, Grindingh).
Jimmy Sinclair (Photo: Cricket Weekly Record)
The crickettour 🏏
Logan’s 14-man team was predominantly Uitlanders (‘foreigners’, immigrants, mainly British in composition but from other countries as well)…it included one Afrikaner cricketer Johannes Kotze who proved one of the more accomplished performers. The South Africans’ ‘gun’ batsman coming in to the tour was JH Sinclair, however his batting never really got going on the tour (unlike his bowling which was quite effective). Sinclair had been captured by the Boers but escaped in time to make the trip to Britain. Maitland Hathorn was the most successful “willow-wielder” on the tour (827 runs, average 35.95). Overall the team performed moderately though it did beat five of the major counties and tied one. Financially, Logan lost a substantial sum on the venture.
1901 Sth African tourists (Source: ebay.com)∘
Cricket’s special role serving the Empire
To the English, cricket, the game they invented, was the quintessential sport, and an essential companion of empire building. This was the “golden age“ of cricket (1895-1914) with WG Grace’s shadow still very much dominating the sportⓑ. The Victorians revered cricket as an established institution, it was integral to the ethos of the English gentleman and a sign of his cultural supremacy. Moreover cricket was considered educative, part of an Englishman’s training. Spreading the game to the Empire, to Australasia, the West Indies, the Indian Sub-continent and Southern Africa, symbolised the “civilising mission of the Englishman abroad”. Participation in cricket was equated with the civility of English Victorian society and an endorsement of Anglo-Saxon values. Cricket tours by the MCC, the sport’s governing body in England, stimulated the colonies‘ interest in the English game, but its deeper purpose was to “promote imperial ideology”, extolling the virtues of allegiance to Britain, Empire and patriotic duty {Dean Allen, Empire, War and Cricket in South Africa, Logan of Matjiesfontein, 2015}. Allen’s thesis is that cricket was injected by the English ruling classes into South Africa “as much for political and propagandistic reasons as for sporting ones”
War an instrument of empire with cricket the mentor
The late Victorians affirmed that “manly games” were integral to training for life. Above all the ‘school’ of cricket taught lessons of “discipline, self-abnegation, a sense of fair play and team-work”, it built character. Britain’s willingness to engage in the 1899 War to enlarge the Empire—the scramble for colonies in Africa in competition with Germany and France—brought the cricketing fraternity squarely into the frame. Cricketers, to the English mind, were “made of the right stuff” for mortal combat, they were up for martial challenges (Donaldson, Peter (2017) ‘We are having a very enjoyable game’: Britain, sport and the South African War, 1899-1902. War in History, 25(1). ISSN 0968-3445). Many cricketers enlisted in the South African War (some former teammates found themselves on opposing sides), and there were cricketing casualties in the conflict {Dean Allen (2005) ‘Bats and Bayonets’: Cricket and the Anglo-Boer War, 1899–1902, Sport in History, 25:1, 17-40, DOI: 10.1080/17460260500073033}, including some fine players of the day like Anglo-Australian test bowling ace JJ Ferris.
Australian troops playing cricket at the front in SA (Photo: awm.org.au)∘
Endnote: Pioneering South African XI on the Sub-continent
An unintended co-occurrence of the Boer War was that it led to the staging of the first cricket match between South Africans and local cricketers on Sub-continent soil, 90 years before Apartheid sport ended in South Africa. ‘Representing’ South Africa were Afrikaner POWs incarcerated in Ceylon…Diyatalawa Camp v Colts XI, Nondescripts Club ground, Colombo 1901. The local XI won! {‘The First South Africa. side to play in the sub-continent: Boer Prisoners of War in 1901’, CricketMash, 4-Jul-2020, www.cricmash.com}.
Mafeking reported in cricketing terms (source: independentaustralia.net)∘
Postscript: 1899 South African War, cricket as antidote to physical and moral degeneration
The poor health of many Boer War recruits and Britain’s early reversals in the war added weight to prevailing concerns about national and ‘racial’ degeneration {Robb, George. “The Way of All Flesh: Degeneration, Eugenics, and the Gospel of Free Love.” Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 6, no. 4, University of Texas Press, 1996, pp. 589–603, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4617222.} Some commentators of the day, bemoaning the ”neglect of an active athleticism“, called for more playing fields as an antidote to the decline of young working class men, so that they could be the beneficiaries of the ”cricket way of making honest and healthy Englishmen” {Anthony Bateman, Cricket, Literature and Culture: Symbolising the Nation, Destabilising Empire, 2016}.
𓁾𓁽𓁾𓁽𓁾𓁽𓁾𓁽𓁾𓁽𓁾𓁽𓁾𓁽
ⓐ the English MCC side had just concluded their own tour of South Africa in April 1899, just six months before the war commenced
ⓑ Dr Grace loomed larger than life in cricket during this period as the sport’s first genuine superstar
Currently we are watching, from a distance on television, the Olympics from Tokyo. This is the second time Tokyo has held the Olympic Games, although it is the third time that city has been awarded the Games{a}. The previous time Tokyo hosted the Olympics, 1964, Indonesia, North Korea and the People’s Republic of China, all boycotted the world’s premier sporting event{b}. This disharmonious development within the Olympic community had its origin in the 1962 Asian Games, host Indonesia refused entry to Taiwan (in deference to mainland China) and Israel (to appease Muslim Arab states).
GANEFO opening ceremony, 1963 (Photo from Amanda Shuman’s collection, published in Journal of Sport History) ⇩
Mixing sport and politics
The IOC criticised Indonesia for politicising the 1962 Asian Games, but it’s president, Sukarno, far from contrite, was emboldened to go further in his defiance of the IOC. Sukarno, determined that Indonesia plays a leadership role in the Non-Aligned Movement, enlisted sport in the task of furthering “the politics of anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism”. Sukarno set up GANEFO or the Games of the New Emerging Forces…an alternative Olympics-style event held in 1963 in Djakarta, complete with opening ceremony, giant torch, etc. Like his PRC counterpart Mao Zedong, Sukarno deliberately used sports “to display international prowess” which in turn was meant “to enhance global stature”{c}(Webster, David. “Sports as Third World Nationalism: The Games of the New Emerging Forces and Indonesia’s Systemic Challenge under Sukarno.” The Journal of American-East Asian Relations 23, no. 4 (2016): 395-406. Accessed August 1, 2021. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26549192). GANEFO represented “a Sino-Indonesian-sponsored challenge to the International Olympic Committee’s dominance in sport that also attempted to solidify China’s geopolitical position as a Third World leader“, Shuman, Amanda. “Elite Competitive Sport in the People’s Republic of China 1958–1966: The Games of the New Emerging Forces (GANEFO).”Journal of Sport History40, no. 2 (2013): 258-283.muse.jhu.edu/article/525098.
Pres. Sukarno (Image: globalsecurity.org)
The IOC was hostile to what it viewed as a challenge to its rules and authority, Djakarta’s breach of the Olympic ideal that sport and politics should remain separate. Sukarno responded by calling out the IOC for hypocrisy, pointing out that the IOC by ejecting the Asian communist countries of PR China and North Korea from the Olympics fold, itself was playing politics. In the prevailing Cold War climate Sukarno characterised Brundage’s organisation as “a tool of imperialists and colonialists”. Predictably, the US and the Western media labelled GANEFO as a ‘Red’ event, citing Sukarno’s links to the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and communist China’s weighty involvement in the games as well as the USSR and Eastern Bloc’s participation (‘A Third World Olympics: Sport, Politics and the Developing World in the 1963 Games of the New Emerging Forces (GANEFO), Russell Field, Verso, 09-Aug-2016, www.versobooks.com).
⇩ “Onward, no retreat”, GANEFO motto
The establishment strikes backIn IOC chief Avery Brundage’s mind it was more than just a case of defending the ‘official’ games as the IOC’s proprietorial brand, his purpose in trying to deflect the challenge from emerging Third World leaders like Sukarno has been seen as an attempt to “buttress the Olympic movement as a First World institution in a rapidly decolonising world” (Field). The IOC’s retaliatory response was quick: the Indonesian Olympic Committee was turfed from the Games (communist China had already withdrawn from the IOC). Later, in 1964, the IOC readmitted Indonesia for Tokyo but decreed that individual athletes who participated in GANEFO 1963 were barred from selection for Tokyo. Sukarno rejected these conditions, demanding that “all or none” of the country’s athletes be eligible for the 1964 Games. Consequently, with the IOC and Indonesia at loggerheads, Djakarta unilaterally withdrew from Tokyo in protest (‘GANEFO I: Sports and Politics in Djakarta’, Ewa T. Pauker, Rand Paper, July 1964, www.rand.org).
Who went to GANEFO 63 and who ‘won’?Around 2,700 athletes participated representing about 50 countries – mostly from Asia but many from Africa and the Middle East (including a team representing “Arab Palestine”, whereas Israel was again excluded); the communist eastern bloc states; South America; and curiously for an event comprising “New Emerging Powers” there were contingents from France, Italy, Finland and Netherlands (the presence of Dutch athletes in Djakarta from the ex-colonial power in the East Indies seemed baffling!). China had the biggest team and easily won the ‘unofficial’ gold medal count with 68. ⇧ Olympic stadium, Djakarta (antaranews.com)
Almost all of the delegations of attending athletes were not sanctioned by their countries’ Olympics committees for fear of reprisal from the IOC. Accordingly, most of the athletes participating were “not of Olympic calibre”. It was especially tricky for the vacillating Méxicans whose participation it was feared might jeopardise México City’s bid for the 1968 Olympics. As soon as México City got the nod from the IOC, a Méxican team was hastily cobbled together to attend{d}.
Beyond GANEFO
Sukarno saw the realisation of GANEFO and the forging of close ties between Third World countries in sporting and cultural endeavours, as a pathway to something bigger than sport, an institution that might challenge the existing international order. GANEFO was meant to foreshadow the creation of CONEFO (Confederation of the New Emerging Forces), a new world body which would appeal to left-nationalist and neutralist states emerging out of colonialism. CONEFO Sukarno hoped might come to stand as an alternative, Third World-focused United Nations (Webster){e}.
Chinese ‘MO’
China played a key supporting role in getting GANEFO up in 1963. It was the principal financial backer for the event and the Djakarta games got great coverage from the Chinese state media. Like Indonesia, PRC saw good propaganda value in the games, its participation in ‘goodwill’ games purported to foster solidarity and understanding between Third World countries across the globe was intended to show it in a good light vis-á-vis the Capitalist West. Beijing was eyeing off the prospect of becoming rivals with both Washington and Moscow, it was looking for avenues to exert influence with Indonesia and the Afro-Asian world and the GANEFO opportunity nicely suited its purposes (Pauker).
End-note: GANEFO 66 and finis
The GANEFO games were intended to be an ongoingaffair but the impetus could not be maintained. A second GANEFO games had been scheduled to be held in Cairo in 1967 but were subsequently cancelleddue to rising Middle East tensions. Instead, the follow-up games (“Asian GANEFO”) took place in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in 1966, which tried with less success to replicate the original sporting event in Djakarta. Subsequently GANEFO quickly faded away. The main factors for the GANEFO games’ demise were the overthrow of its driving force President Sukarno and the steep costs of hosting the event (Russell).
◰◱◲◰◱◲◰◱◲◰◱◲◰◱◲◰◱◲◰◱◲◰◱◲◰◱◲◰◱◲
{a} Tokyo was awarded the 1940 Olympics but was stripped of its hosting rights after Japan invaded Chinese Manchuria
{b} in addition South Africa was banned from competing due to its racialist Apartheid policy
{c} now even more important to China as their stand-out performance in the current Games in Tokyo indicates
{d} many of the European participants were from leftist student organisations and workers’ sporting clubs. Military personnel were a component of several nation‘s teams
{e} in 1965 Sukarno pulled Indonesia out of the UN
A symbol of modernisation1964 was a bumper year for the Japanese. In October of that year two events helped the country finally break free of the persisting shadow of an an ultimately inglorious and painful World War II experience. Japan’s capital Tokyo staged the XVIII Summer Olympic Games and Japan launched its iconic high-speed train service, the Shinkansen (meaning literally “new trunk line” or “new main line”), popularly called the “Bullet Train” (弾丸列車 dangan ressha) because of the similarity of the initial (0 series) design of the nose✲. Together, the Olympics and the Shinkansen’s arrival symbolised the fulfilment of “Japan’s recovery from the devastation of war and the beginnings of Japan’s stratospheric rise as an economic superpower” (Braser & Tsubuku)⌧.
(Source: JapanRail Pass)
Planning for the Shinkansen started in the 1950s and had its origins in the realisation that Japan’s conventional rail network was reaching capacity and not up to the demands of modernisation. The country’s geography, climate and population needed a faster, modern network. A VFT was identified as imperative for a land mass that stretched over several islands north to south for thousands of kilometres. Construction (and operational) challenges were manifold and extremely formidable – a mountainous country subject to earthquakes, typhoons, heavy rain and snow and flooding (Hood).
The original rail service, the Tōhoku Shinkansen connected the three principal cities on Honshu island, Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka. The impact on intra-Japan rail travel was immediate and dramatic. With the sleek “whiz-bang” new train reaching speeds of up to 210 km/h⍟, the journey between Tokyo and Shin-Osaka was cut from 6 hrs & 30 mins in an conventional train to around 4 hrs & 10 minutes in the Bullet Train! (in 1965 it was reduced again by a further hour)✪.
Two symbols of Japan (Source: National Geographic)
An accident-free record
As impressive as it is, the Shinkansen’s most impressive attribute is not its rapid speed, but its peerless safety history over a period of 57 years. The Shinkansen service has not suffered a single casualty or even one injury in the totality of its trips. The only blots on the perfect record in this time have been two derailments (one in an earthquake and one in a blizzard) (Glancey).
The JRG 6 (Source: JapanRail Pass)
Rail privatisation
Originally the Shinkansen train network was built and operated by the Japanese government (Japanese National Railways), but in 1987 it was privatised, coming under the ownership of six Japanese Railways Group (JRG) companies. Today they runs nine separate lines, smoothly criss-crossing the densely-populated Honshu and Kyushu islands and extending to the northern island of Hokkaido, it’s spotlessly clean carriages carrying an average of around 150 million passengers a year (JapanRail Pass). The network has two types of Shinkansen trains – Kodama Express and the limited stop Hikari Super Express train.
N700 series (2020) (Source: cnn.com)
Personifying Nihongo efficiency
The latest iteration of the Shinkansen, the N700 train with its aerodynamic duckbill-nose completes the Tokyo–Osaka journey in 2 hrs & 25 mins⌽. The N700S (Supreme) has the advanced capacity to continue operating during earthquakes. Punctuality is also the Shinkansen’s strong suit – the average delay for the railway’s fleet of trains is less than 60 seconds (Dow). The Shinkansen’s efficiency represents “an elegant solution for shuttling workers from one dense city to another” and doing it rapidly, workers living “in distant, relatively undeveloped areas can commute to Tokyo (for instance) in two hours” (Pinsker)〥.
Local dissenters to the “love affair” with the Shinkansen
The Shinkansen has been achange agent for Japanese economy and society, a potent symbol of the nation’s development. Research indicates that those urban hubs with a Shinkansen station experience higher population and higher employment growth rates (Sands). Not everyone in Japan however is 100% behind the Bullet Train companies’ unbending “full-steam ahead” approach. There have been pockets of local rural opposition pushing back against JRG’s relentless land acquisition process. Residents along the routes whose quality of life has been adversely affected by Shinkansen’s noise and vibration have also been vocal in their complaints (Hood).
Japan’s Maglev prototype (Source: ft.com)
Eye on the future
Not resting on the laurels of the Shinkansen series’ cutting-edge technology, research has been happening since 1962 on a linear motor railway system. In the 2000s JR Central commenced testing a Maglev train prototype, the Linear Chūō Shinkansen, which can reach a speed in excess of 500 km/h – this service is slated for introduction in 2027 (Nippon.com).
Postscript: To transfer technology or not to transfer technology?
Japan’s success with the Shinkansen has spawned imitators. China’s vaulting high-speed train ambitions—while denying charges of intellectual piracy by copying the Shinkansen—has seen it have to resort to reliance on German and French as well as Japanese VFT technology for its own high-speed train. Consequently some Japanese railway insiders have criticised the technology leak to China, lamenting that when you put high technical ability on display (as Japan has with its crown jewel train), it gets copied. However there’s no consensus on this point within Japanese government and business. Central Japan Railway Co (owner of Shinkansen and Linear Train Technology) have actively participated in the development of US high-speed trains on an ongoing basis, proponents of this approach argue that by not exporting the Bullet Train technology to countries with large markets, Japan risks losing out to competitors who’ll get in first…the Overseas Rapid Railway Project’s Katsunori Ochiai summed up the gains from exporting: “If the new Japanese model Shinkansen and linear trains are adopted in America, the market for manufacturers of the carriages and signal systems would be greatly expanded.” (Shimbun).
Shinkansen technology transfer’ first export overseas was to Taiwan, successfully helping to develop the Taiwanese High-Speed Rail system.
Taiwan HS Rail (Source: construction-post.com)
ゅ⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯⌯ゅ
✲ a blue snub-nosed design with white livery
present maximum operating speed of the Shinkansen clocks at 320 km/h
✪ another pioneering first for the Shinkansen: the first dedicated high-speed railtrack in the world
⌽ the N700 series has reached 332 km/h in trials
〥 the network’s efficiency and speed comes at a price – a typical ticket will set you back about $US130 (2014), unless you are subsidised by your employer (Pinsker)
<ほのぱほのぱほのぱ>
Articles and sites consulted:
’Japan’s Transfer of Bullet Train Technology A Mistake. China, Of Course, Has Copied It’, Sankei Shimbun, Japan-Forward, 18-Aug-2017, www.japan-forward.com
HOOD, Christopher P. “The Shinkansen’s Local Impact.” Social Science Japan Journal, vol. 13, no. 2, 2010, pp. 211–225. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40961264. Accessed 26 June 2021.
SANDS, BRIAN. “The Development Effects of High-Speed Rail Stations and Implications for California.” Built Environment (1978–), vol. 19, no. 3/4, 1993, pp. 257–284. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23288581. Accessed 26 June 2021.
‘How the Shinkansen bullet train made Tokyo into the monster it is today’, Philip Brasor & Masako Tsubuku, The Guardian, 30-Sep-2014, www.theguardian.com
‘What 50 Years of Bullet Trains Have Done for Japan’, Joe Pinsker, The Atlantic, 07-Oct-2014, www.theatlantic.com
‘Japan’s Shinkansen: Revolutionary design at 50’, Jonathan Glancey, BBC, 15-Jul-2014, www.bbc.com
‘The Shinkansen Turns 50: The History and Future of Japan’s High-Speed Train’, Nippon.com, 01-Oct-2014, www.nippon.com
‘Five things to know about Japan’s Shinkansen: The trains that always run on time’, Aisha Dow, 11-Nov-2016, https://i.stuff.co.nz/
Britain’s sporting lingua franca has by general consensus long been football (better known as ‘soccer’ in Australasia and the United States). For the bulk of the 19th century the “round-ball game” was exclusively the domain of men, but by the 1890s women in Britain were embracing the popular outdoor pastime with passion. Women’s clubs, many based in North London, were formed at this time, beginning with the British Ladies’ Football Club (BLFC), comprising mostly middle-class women (see Footnote).
Working class women discover footballWhat really kicked the sport along for women however was World War I. The escalating demand on manpower to feed the war effort depleted the country’s vital industrial factories of its male blue-collar workers. The same priority had a similar draining effect on the (English) FA’s (Football Association’s) player stocks. The manpower shortages took women in large numbers out of the home to meet the factory shortfall of men. With few men around to play the game, after season 1914/1915 the premier men’s competitions, the FA Cup and the English championship, were suspended and didn’t get going again until 1919/1920. Into this breach, almost by a process of natural evolution, stepped the newly employed (working class) women of England’s factories ‘FA History’, www.thefa.com].
Dick, Kerr’s Ladies FCWith the new infusion of working women taking up football competitively, the stronghold of women’s football moved to Preston in the north-eastern county of Lancashire. Over the next several seasons up until the early years of the interwar period, one women’s club team stood tallest…Dick, Kerr’s Ladies was created out of the female workforce of Dick, Kerr & Co, Preston locomotive and tramcar manufacturers. The highly successful Dick, Kerr’s Ladies side was spearheaded by one of football’s most remarkable ever female players, the chain-smoking, openly gay Lily Parr who scored over 1,000 goals in a 31-year career✱.Dick, Kerr’s Ladies were pioneers of international women’s matches with French women’s sides⍟ and the Preston team’s popularity soared through and beyond the war years. In 1920 a game between Dick, Kerr’s and St Helens’ Ladies at Goodison Park (Everton) drew a crowd of 53,000 – with the gates locked leaving thousands more outside! [‘WW1: why was women’s football banned in 1921?’, (Gemma Fay), BBC News, 12-Dec-2014, www,bbc.com].
Notwithstanding the enormous contribution of Lily Parr, Dick, Kerr’s Ladies was no “one woman band”…centre-forward Florrie Redford netted a phenomenal 170 goals for the Preston-based club in 1921 [Dick, Kerr Ladies FC 1917-1965′, www.dickkerrladies.com]. Another female football star of the day – who DIDN’T play for Dick, Kerr’s XI – was Northumberland’s Bella Reay who played in the north-east Munitions’ comp. Bella’s 130-plus goals in the 1917/1918 season propelled her unbeaten club Blyth Spartans Ladies FC to victory in the Munitionettes’ Cup (drawn from women workers in munitions factories and docks in the north-east who played amateur football to raise funds for charity) [Fay, ‘BBC’, loc.cit.].Bella Reay, Blyth Spartans star striker⬆️
The (FA) empire strikes backImmediately following the Great War the women’s game was at a high point and on the ascent✥. But after demobilisation, able-bodied men who had fought in the global conflict, streamed back into the English workforce…this meant that the great bulk of the women who had filled their boots on the factory floor were now surplus to requirements and so were “quietly shunted back into domestic life” [ibid.]. Englishmen also returned to playing the number one sport with the Football League recommencing in 1919/1920. The FA authorities in England had tolerated rather than supported women’s football during the enforced absence of the men’s league.
Football – a “health hazard” for women!The FA’s disapproval had an ally in some prominent members of the medical profession which shared its lack of enthusiasm for female football – on medical grounds!◘ These medicos tended to endorse the assumption of Harley Street specialist Dr Mary Scharlieb who opined that football was a “most unsuitable game, too much for a women’s physical frame” [ibid.]. At this point (1921) the FA stepped in, banning women and the country’s female competitions from using FA grounds, echoing the (predominantly male) medicos’ sentiments that the sport was “quite unsuitable for females, and ought not to be encouraged” [‘The FA’, op.cit.]. Aiming for overkill, the FA decreed that its officials (referees and linesmen) could not take part in women’s matches, a step intended to further hamper the development of the female game.
To underscore the justification for its arbitrary and discriminatory treatment of the women’s’ leagues, the FA alleged (without any proof) that the women’s setup had failed to give an adequate percentage of its gate revenue towards charitable objects”. This was a classic double standard posture as the men’s clubs was never asked to donate any gate receipts to charity. In response, the captain of the Plymouth Ladies team accurately described the FA as being “a hundred years behind the times”✫ and said the ban was nothing more than “purely sex prejudice” [‘1921: the year when football banned women’, History Extra, (Jim Weeks), Dec. 2017, www.historyextra.com].
So was the FA simply exhibiting a blatant, sexist chauvinism towards the women players? The short answer is yes…but could there be something else behind their draconian action as well? During the war the women’s leagues had built up a considerable following and were enticing impressive crowd numbers to the matches. The FA’s overwhelming remit has always been the health of the men’s game and it was concerned that the women’s demonstrable pulling power might have a detrimental affect on attendances to the Football League (men’s) games [ibid.]. Applying a handbrake to the burgeoning women’s game, indeed sidelining it altogether, was considered a great ‘leg-up’boosting the FA’s objective of rebuilding men’s professional football after the WWI hiatus.
Aftermath of the banThe FA’s ruling did not put an end to women and girls playing football altogether, but the effect of it was to relegate the top-tier players in England to mostly friendly matches. The elite Dick, Kerr’s Ladies team (later renamed Preston Ladies FC) did its best to stay active. In 1922 it organised a tour of North America but even here the meddling hand of the English FA was at work doing what it could to stymie the club’s tour. On direction from the FA the Canadian FA banned the Dick Kerr women from playing in Canada. The team did however manage to organise nine matches in the US which were played against men’s sides [ibid.].
Preston Ladies, 1939➡“Fem-soccer”: Women’s football goes “gangbusters!”The ban stayed in force…beyond the formation of the Women’s FA in England in 1969. It was not until July 1971 that the FA, and then only under pressure from UEFA (Union of European Football Associations), finally lifted the ban. Held back no more by gender stereotypers, the women’s game has gone from strength to strength – in 1972 the first women’s FA Cup, in 1984 the first women’s European Championship, followed by the World Cup in 1991 (the 2011 World Cup Final was played in front of a packed 83,000-strong crowd).
Footnote: “Nettie Honeyball”The founding of the first women’s team British Ladies’ FCis attributed to ‘Nettie Honeyball’…this was a pseudonym for the middle-class female activist (identity unknown, possibly one Mary Hutson) who organised the first women’s match in North London in 1895 (“The North” thrashed “The South” 7-1 before an estimated 11,000 spectators) [‘British Ladies’ Football Club’], Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
PostScript: The Scottish FA, closed ranks with its English brethrenThe FA in England was not “Robinson Crusoe” among the home countries in enforcing discriminatory practices against women players. Other football associations took a similarly blinkered view. In the 1924/1925 season three Scottish clubs (Aberdeen, Queen of the South and Raith Rovers) all had their requests to use their club grounds for women’s matches uncermoniously vetoed by the men of the Scottish FA [‘The Honeyballers: Women who fought to play football’, BBC News, 26-Sep-2013, www.bbc.com].
– —– ——–– — -– ——–– —– —– —– ——–– — -– ——–– —–—- ——- — ✱ in 2002, many years after her death, Parr was the first (and so far only) woman player inaugurated into the FA’s Hall of Fame⍟ although there had been a much earlier women’s match between a Scottish XI side and an English XI that took place in 1881✥ in 1920 there was around 150 women’s teams playing the sport in England plus many more in Scotland and Wales◘ back as far as 1894 medical professionals had advocated that women and girls be barred from taking part in football [‘The Honeyballers’, loc.cit.]. Aside from “medical concerns”, another reason that has been suggested for the opposition to female footballers at the time was that they were seen as threatening the perception of football as a “masculine game” [Mårtensson, S, ‘Branding women’s football in a field of hegemonic masculinity’, Entertainment and Sports Law, 8 (June 2010)].✫ 8.4M British women had recently received the vote, the breakthrough achievements of women’s football was paralleling the Suffrage Movement [Weeks, op.cit.]
Vichy emphasis on youth sport (Coll: Mémorial de la Shoah/CDJC)
⇑Pro rugby
The Nazi-installed, collaborationist Vichy ‘puppet’ regime assumed power in France in 1940—jettisoning the liberté, égalité etfraternité of the democrats and socialists —and adopting in its place the new national motto of travail, famille et patrie (“work, family and fatherland”) as the official philosophy. The new government was quick to focus on sport as a platform for implementing its policies and goals. Taking a leaf from the Corporative State approach of fascist Italy (Carta della sport), Vichy envisaged sport and PhysEd as integral to the “moral education” of the French, an “instrument for constraining and indoctrinating the population in general and youth in particular”. A good illustration of its importance can be seen in the regime’s dissemination of propaganda posters extolling the virtues of physical education (from the start Vichy law made it compulsory for schoolchildren to complete seven hours of PhysEd a week)[1].
The Rugby Wars
The Vichy regime had been in existence for only a matter of months when it banned the sport of rugby league, in France known as rugby à treize, (at the same time taking no action against the amateur rugby code, rugby à quinze). The Vichy French minister for sport, family and youth announced in August 1940 that because rugby league was (according to the government) a ‘corruptor’ of French youth, it would (in his words) simply be “deleted from French sport”. The Vichy regime justified this action by claiming that it wanted to bring an end to professional sport in France, which the regime argued had a deleterious effect on French society and morale, dubiously linking the professionalism of sport to the pathetically feeble and dispirited French military showing in face of the onslaught of the German Nazi war machine. Marshal Pétain and the Vichy leadership associated rugby league with its large working class following in the south with the pre-war Popular Front Socialist government of Leon Blum[2].
Vichy also made efforts to curb professionalism in some other sports, eg, tennis and wrestling were restored to strictly amateur status. The uncompromisingly draconian approach taken to semi-professional rugby league✱ by Vichy however contrasts with its more restrained intervention in the fully professional sports of association football, boxing and cycling (see PostScript for the treatment of football)[3].
f=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/image-1.jpg”> FFR: Haut coq[/capt
From two rugby codes one …
In December 1940 Vichy chief of state Pétain decreed that rugby à treize would ‘merge’ with rugby à quinze (the fifteen man-a-side rugby union game). In effect, rather than a merger, the thirteen man code of rugby ceased to exist, its funds (around 900,000 francs), its players, its stadiums, even its playing gear, were all expropriated and given to the Fédération Française de Rugby (FFR). This benevolence in favour of French rugby union was not simply the happenstance of good luck on the FFR’s part. The FFR had been at efforts to establish a cosy relationship with the Vichy regime from its inception and had actively lobbied for the elimination of its rival rugby code. This was facilitated by the regime’s choices of commissioner of sport, men with active links to the FFR: Jean Borotra, a former Wimbledon tennis champion who had extensive connexions with the French rugby establishment, and Colonel Joseph Pascot, a prominent rugby international for France in the 1920s[4]. Before I address why the FFR was hellbent on taking down the French Rugby League, I will outline some background relating to the two codes in the period leading up to the war.
http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/image-2.jpg”> Jeu de Treize[/caption
Varying fortunes of the two rugby codes
Attempts to kick-start rugby à treize as early as 1921-22 with a planned rugby league exhibition match in Paris between the touring Australian Kangaroos and Great Britain’s Lions was vetoed by the influential FFR. In the early 1930s the established sport of rugby à quinze in France experienced a setback at international level. Because of the French national team’s tendency towards violent play and the widely held perception that the FFR was making secret payments to its (amateur) players, France was kicked out of the Five Nations tournament (with the British home countries and Ireland) in 1931. The ostracised FFR responded by setting up its own European competition outside of the IRFB (world rugby board) comprising rugby lesser lights-cum-minnows like Italy, Czechoslovakia and Germany. Rugby à quinze was on the back foot. In 1932 the FFR banned a union international player named Jean Galia who was suspected (albeit with fairly sketchy evidence) of being covertly a professional⊡…Galia went on start up the breakaway code of rugby league in the south-west of France✧, initially called néo rugby by the French. By season 1934-35 there was a 14-team semi-pro domestic comp underway[5].
Through the thirties French rugby league made progress culminating in victory in the European championship in 1938-39 (on route defeating both England and Wales). Rugby à treize’s crowds were growing, it was a hit with many French spectators⊛ who were drawn to its more open, free-flowing and swashbuckling style of game, which seemed to match the French temperament better than the somewhat stop-start rugby union game. In 1939 three of the top rugby union clubs in the country defected to rugby à treize…the FFR were fully aware of the threat posed to its sport by rugby league. At this point the Vichy regime intervened dramatically to salvage rugby à quinze’s and the FFR’s traditional advantage[6].
The game that dare not speak its name!Eventually, in late 1944, the ban on the Ligue de rugby à treize (French Rugby League) was lifted but three years later the code was split into two bodies: the Fédération française de jeu à treize (governing the amateur RL game) and a Ligue de rugby à XIII (governing the semi-professional game)[7]. Although the sport of rugby league was once again allowed to be played, the League bodies were barred from using the word ‘rugby’ to describe the code, having instead to refer to it as Jeu à Treize (Game of Thirteen). This prohibition lasted remarkably until 1991!
World champions: rise and declineSince its reinstatement rugby league has struggled to establish a foothold in France – despite experiencing some stellar moments in the early to mid 1950s, especially under the leadership of France’s most famous rugby XIII player, the mercurial, cigarette-smoking (during matches!!!) Puig-Aubert[8], Les Chanticleers defeated the powerful Australian side in three consecutive test series. By 1952 having won the European Championships twice and beaten Australia, France could justifiably claim to be unofficial world champs. Despite France’s rugby XIII game reaching this peak rugby à quinze and FFR remains the hegemonic rugby code and body in France, and have by far the lion’s share of coverage in the French media. Today, international results suggest the sport is still in the doldrums, however the rise of the (sole) French club side Catalans Dragons in the English Super League competition, culminating in victory in the 2018 Challenge Cup, (analogous to English football’s FA Cup) is a bright glimmer on the rugby league horizon in France.
PostScript: Vichy’s take on the ‘World Game’
Football (soccer) did not get off entirely unscathed from the pervasive tentacles of the Vichy regime. It was allowed to keep its professional status but it suffered significant modifications. Vichy restructured the French football competition to eliminate or discourage the development of “local derby” rivalries (matches between clubs in the same or neighbouring towns). Professional players were made to take up a second trade and teams were compelled to field four amateur players in games. Matches were reduced from 90 to 80 minutes duration. After the eclipse of Vichy in 1944 things reverted to the old system but the upheaval suffered over the previous four years left French football in a state of flux and chaos for a number of years post-war[9].
Footnote: To this day the FFR (French Rugby) has neither issued an apology to Fédération française de jeu à treize for its role in what happened, nor moved to recompense rugby à treize (French Rugby League) for lost finances and the expropriation of its property and equipment over three-quarters of a century ago.
┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅✱ badminton was also outlawed but in its case because it was deemed by the authorities to be “un-French”!
⊡ FFR’s banning of Galia was intended to show the British rugby authorities that it was serious about cleaning up France’s ‘shamateurism’ [Lichfield]
✧ the south-west was and remains the heartland of rugby à treize – all of the clubs in France’s Elite One competition except one are located there, the exception Avignon is in the south-central/south-east region
⊛ followers and fans of rugby à treize were called treizistes
[1] Christophe Pécout, Le sport dans la France du gouvernement de Vichy (1940-1944)’, www.hssh.journals.yorku.co; ‘Travail, Famille, Patrie … and Sport’, (Mémorial de la Shaoh Musée), www.sportmemorialdelashaoh.org
[2] Vichy also associated it with Free French leader Charles De Gaulle and naturally enough with the United Kingdom, ‘Badge of dishonour: French rugby’s shameful secret’ (John Lichfield), The Independent, 06-Sept-2007, www.independent.co.uk; ‘Rugby league in France’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wiki.org
[3] Lichfield, op.cit.
[4] ‘When Vichy abolished rugby league’, (Mick O’Hare), The New European, 21-Nov-2017, www.theneweuropean.co.uk
[5] Lichfield, op.cit.
[6] ibid.
[7] ‘gentlemen agreement of 10th July 1947’, quoted in ‘Rugby league in France’, op.cit.
[8] the French leadership off the field was provided by Paul Barriere, postwar president of Jeu à Treize who guided French rugby league through the turbulent period and laid the groundwork for the inaugural Rugby League World Cup in France in 1954, ‘Why this trophy for winning the World Cup?’, (Steve Waddingham), Courier and Mail (Qld), 15-Jun-2008, www.couriermail.com.au
[9] ‘Inside History: How Vichy Changed French Football’, (David Gold), Inside Futbol, 06-Feb-2011, www.insidefutbol.com
𝔉𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱 𝔭𝔬𝔰𝔱𝔢𝔯 ~ 𝔭𝔯𝔢𝔰𝔞𝔤𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔞 𝔰𝔶𝔪𝔟𝔬𝔩𝔦𝔠 𝔭𝔬𝔴𝔢𝔯 𝔰𝔥𝔦𝔣𝔱
⚔️ 𝒮𝒸𝓇𝑒𝑒𝓃 𝓈𝒽𝑜𝓉 𝒻𝓇𝑜𝓂 𝒻𝒾𝓁𝓂 𝑜𝒻 𝐵𝓊𝓇𝓃𝓈 𝓋 𝒥𝑜𝒽𝓃𝓈𝑜𝓃 𝒷𝑜𝓊𝓉 (𝒩𝐹𝒮𝒜/𝒜𝒮𝒪 𝑀𝑜𝒷𝒾𝓁𝑒) ⚔️
𝔖𝔶𝔡𝔫𝔢𝔶 𝔖𝔱𝔞𝔡𝔦𝔲𝔪 (𝔓𝔥𝔬𝔱𝔬: 𝔑𝔞𝔱𝔦𝔬𝔫𝔞𝔩 𝔏𝔦𝔟𝔯𝔞𝔯𝔶 𝔬𝔣 𝔄𝔲𝔰𝔱𝔯𝔞𝔩𝔦𝔞)
𝔍𝔬𝔥𝔫𝔫𝔶 ℜ𝔞𝔶 𝔠𝔬𝔫𝔠𝔢𝔯𝔱 𝔞𝔱 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔖𝔱𝔞𝔡𝔦𝔲𝔪, 1957 (𝔓𝔥𝔬𝔱𝔬: 𝔉𝔞𝔦𝔯𝔣𝔞𝔵 𝔄𝔯𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔳𝔢𝔰)
𓂀 𝓣𝓱𝓮 “𝓕𝓪𝓫 𝓕𝓸𝓾𝓻” 𝓪𝓽 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓸𝓵𝓭 𝓽𝓲𝓷 𝓼𝓱𝓮𝓭 1964 
Leichhardt Stadium in Sydney’s inner west never managed to capture the limelight of Rushcutters Bay but was still very popular in its time, it’s Thursday night boxing events regularly ”packed to capacity” (‘Packing a punch’, James Cockington, 01-Jul-2009, SMH, www.smh.com.au). Leichhardt was Sydney pro boxing’s ‘Medina’ to Sydney Stadiums’ ‘Mecca’, together, this brace of stadiums was the home of professional pugilism in Sydney in the early to middle part of the 20th century. The suburban stadium on Balmain Road, Leichhardt, first opened its doors in 1922. The two Sydney stadiums featured many of the popular active Aboriginal fighters, typically stepping up from the touring boxing tents to try to earn their livelihoods inside their square rings, including Ron Richards, Jack Hassen, George Bracken, the Sands brothers and many more. Other names regularly featuring on Leichhardt Stadium’s draw cards included Jack Carroll, Jimmy Kelso, ‘Kid’ Rooney and Hockey Bennell.
ᗝ 𝒱𝒶𝓊𝒹𝑒𝓋𝒾𝓁𝓁𝑒 + 𝒶 𝒮𝒾𝓃𝑜–𝐼𝓇𝒾𝓈𝒽 𝒹𝓇𝒶𝓌 𝒸𝒶𝓇𝒹? 
𝐹o𝓇𝓂𝑒𝓇 𝒷o𝓍𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝓈𝓉𝒶𝓇𝓈 𝒷𝑒𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝒾𝓃𝓉𝓇o𝒹𝓊𝒸𝑒𝒹 o𝓃 𝒮𝓎𝒹𝓃𝑒𝓎 𝒮𝓉𝒶𝒹𝒾𝓊𝓂’𝓈 𝒻𝒾𝓃𝒶𝓁 𝒻𝒾𝑔𝒽𝓉 𝓃𝒾𝑔𝒽𝓉, 𝟫th June 𝟣𝟫𝟩0 (𝒫𝒽o𝓉o: 𝒮𝑀𝐻) 
◥ 𝓦𝓱𝓲𝓽𝓮 𝓒𝓲𝓽𝔂 𝓯𝓾𝓷 𝓹𝓪𝓻𝓴 (𝓢𝓸𝓾𝓻𝓬𝓮: 𝓦𝓸𝓸𝓵𝓵𝓪𝓱𝓻𝓪 𝓜𝓾𝓷. 𝓒𝓸𝓾𝓷𝓬𝓲𝓵) 
⇧ Olympic stadium, Djakarta (antaranews.com)
End-note: GANEFO 66 and finis The GANEFO games were intended to be an ongoing affair but the impetus could not be maintained. A second GANEFO games had been scheduled to be held in Cairo in 1967 but were subsequently cancelled due to rising Middle East tensions. Instead, the follow-up games (“Asian GANEFO”) took place in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in 1966, which tried with less success to replicate the original sporting event in Djakarta. Subsequently GANEFO quickly faded away. The main factors for the GANEFO games’ demise were the overthrow of its driving force President Sukarno and the steep costs of hosting the event (Russell).
Tokyo ‘64 (Source: glacerie123.com)
(Source: JapanRail Pass)
The original rail service, the Tōhoku Shinkansen connected the three principal cities on Honshu island, Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka. The impact on intra-Japan rail travel was immediate and dramatic. With the sleek “whiz-bang” new train reaching speeds of up to 210 km/h⍟, the journey between Tokyo and Shin-Osaka was cut from 6 hrs & 30 mins in an conventional train to around 4 hrs & 10 minutes in the Bullet Train! (in 1965 it was reduced again by a further hour)✪.
Two symbols of Japan (Source: National Geographic)
The JRG 6 (Source: JapanRail Pass)
N700 series (2020) (Source: cnn.com)
Japan’s Maglev prototype (Source: ft.com)Taiwan HS Rail (Source: construction-post.com)
Dick, Kerr’s Ladies FC
With the new infusion of working women taking up football competitively, the stronghold of women’s football moved to Preston in the north-eastern county of Lancashire. Over the next several seasons up until the early years of the interwar period, one women’s club team stood tallest…Dick, Kerr’s Ladies was created out of the female workforce of Dick, Kerr & Co, Preston locomotive and tramcar manufacturers. The highly successful Dick, Kerr’s Ladies side was spearheaded by one of football’s most remarkable ever female players, the chain-smoking, openly gay Lily Parr who scored over 1,000 goals in a 31-year career✱.
Dick, Kerr’s Ladies were pioneers of international women’s matches with French women’s sides⍟ and the Preston team’s popularity soared through and beyond the war years. In 1920 a game between Dick, Kerr’s and St Helens’ Ladies at Goodison Park (Everton) drew a crowd of 53,000 – with the gates locked leaving thousands more outside! [‘WW1: why was women’s football banned in 1921?’, (Gemma Fay), BBC News, 12-Dec-2014, www,bbc.com].
Notwithstanding the enormous contribution of Lily Parr, Dick, Kerr’s Ladies was no “one woman band”…centre-forward Florrie Redford netted a phenomenal 170 goals for the Preston-based club in 1921 [Dick, Kerr Ladies FC 1917-1965′, www.dickkerrladies.com]. Another female football star of the day – who DIDN’T play for Dick, Kerr’s XI – was Northumberland’s Bella Reay who played in the north-east Munitions’ comp. Bella’s 130-plus goals in the 1917/1918 season propelled her unbeaten club Blyth Spartans Ladies FC to victory in the Munitionettes’ Cup (drawn from women workers in munitions factories and docks in the north-east who played amateur football to raise funds for charity) [Fay, ‘BBC’, loc.cit.].
Bella Reay, Blyth Spartans star striker ⬆️
The (FA) empire strikes back
Immediately following the Great War the women’s game was at a high point and on the ascent✥. But after demobilisation, able-bodied men who had fought in the global conflict, streamed back into the English workforce…this meant that the great bulk of the women who had filled their boots on the factory floor were now surplus to requirements and so were “quietly shunted back into domestic life” [ibid.]. Englishmen also returned to playing the number one sport with the Football League recommencing in 1919/1920. The FA authorities in England had tolerated rather than supported women’s football during the enforced absence of the men’s league.
So was the FA simply exhibiting a blatant, sexist chauvinism towards the women players? The short answer is yes…but could there be something else behind their draconian action as well? During the war the women’s leagues had built up a considerable following and were enticing impressive crowd numbers to the matches. The FA’s overwhelming remit has always been the health of the men’s game and it was concerned that the women’s demonstrable pulling power might have a detrimental affect on attendances to the Football League (men’s) games [ibid.]. Applying a handbrake to the burgeoning women’s game, indeed sidelining it altogether, was considered a great ‘leg-up’ boosting the FA’s objective of rebuilding men’s professional football after the WWI hiatus.
“Fem-soccer”: Women’s football goes “gangbusters!”
The ban stayed in force…beyond the formation of the Women’s FA in England in 1969. It was not until July 1971 that the FA, and then only under pressure from UEFA (Union of European Football Associations), finally lifted the ban. Held back no more by gender stereotypers, the women’s game has gone from strength to strength – in 1972 the first women’s FA Cup, in 1984 the first women’s European Championship, followed by the World Cup in 1991 (the 2011 World Cup Final was played in front of a packed 83,000-strong crowd).
Vichy emphasis on youth sport (Coll: Mémorial de la Shoah/CDJC)
The Rugby Wars
The Vichy regime had been in existence for only a matter of months when it banned the sport of rugby league, in France known as rugby à treize, (at the same time taking no action against the amateur rugby code, rugby à quinze). The Vichy French minister for sport, family and youth announced in August 1940 that because rugby league was (according to the government) a ‘corruptor’ of French youth, it would (in his words) simply be “deleted from French sport”. The Vichy regime justified this action by claiming that it wanted to bring an end to professional sport in France, which the regime argued had a deleterious effect on French society and morale, dubiously linking the professionalism of sport to the pathetically feeble and dispirited French military showing in face of the onslaught of the German Nazi war machine. Marshal Pétain and the Vichy leadership associated rugby league with its large working class following in the south with the pre-war Popular Front Socialist government of Leon Blum[2]. 
Through the thirties French rugby league made progress culminating in victory in the European championship in 1938-39 (on route defeating both England and Wales). Rugby à treize’s crowds were growing, it was a hit with many French spectators⊛ who were drawn to its more open, free-flowing and swashbuckling style of game, which seemed to match the French temperament better than the somewhat stop-start rugby union game. In 1939 three of the top rugby union clubs in the country defected to rugby à treize…the FFR were fully aware of the threat posed to its sport by rugby league. At this point the Vichy regime intervened dramatically to salvage rugby à quinze’s and the FFR’s traditional advantage[6].
World champions: rise and decline
Since its reinstatement rugby league has struggled to establish a foothold in France – despite experiencing some stellar moments in the early to mid 1950s, especially under the leadership of France’s most famous rugby XIII player, the mercurial, cigarette-smoking (during matches!!!) Puig-Aubert[8], Les Chanticleers defeated the powerful Australian side in three consecutive test series. By 1952 having won the European Championships twice and beaten Australia, France could justifiably claim to be unofficial world champs. Despite France’s rugby XIII game reaching this peak rugby à quinze and FFR remains the hegemonic rugby code and body in France, and have by far the lion’s share of coverage in the French media. Today, international results suggest the sport is still in the doldrums, however the rise of the (sole) French club side Catalans Dragons in the English Super League competition, culminating in victory in the 2018 Challenge Cup, (analogous to English football’s FA Cup) is a bright glimmer on the rugby league horizon in France.
